Maybe “Area Codes” was a true story

You know I don't do this, but... props to Ludacris for having the number one album in the country.

The other day, in a post about my new favorite video ho, the girl with the towel wrapped around her in Luda's video for "How Low" (if you've seen it, you know which one I'm talking about), I mentioned how the video might not air very many times, since no one seems to give a shit about this Battle of the Sexes album, but apparently I was mistaken.

I checked this site's news section just now, to see if Lil Wayne has met Fleece "Booty Warrior" Johnson yet, and I saw where Battle of the Sexes is set to debut at the top of the Billboard 200 next week. I was shocked. Granted, it's only expected to sell about 120,000 copies, which is only an impressive figure by 2010 standards, but that's still enough to make it the number one album in the country.

Unless you count my boo Ke$ha, which some people don't (haters), this might be the last time a female rap album is the number one album in the country evar - barring something unexpected, like Foxy Brown posing for photos like the ones she took for Ill Na Na, with her new jumbo size cans. Which actually don't strike me as being all that hot, despite their size (it might be what I heard about her personal hygiene), but I find myself compelled and drawn beyond my will to stare at them every time they pop up in a YouTube video. Like this one she just put out with Ron Browz. I'm not gonna lie - I watched that like three times.

The only other thing I could think is if Lauryn Hill got her shit together, at least for as long as it would take for her to record another album. You see how many people ran out and copped that Sharday album (don't google Sharday), not to mention Susan Boyle. People like the idea of an older women taking one more go at it. If they let Queen Latifah sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl, who knows what the response to a new Lauryn Hill album might be. She must make a dollar every time a cracka-ass cracka in a Hawaiian shirt sings a Bob Marley song in a bar on a Thursday night. Otherwise, she probably would have tried that shit a long time ago.

When I saw that Ludacris was putting out an album full of guest appearances by female rappers, of course my initial thought was that he'd run out of ideas and was just trying to buy himself some time before he put out his next real album. If Battle of the Sexes didn't sell worth a shit, he could just claim it's because it's got a lot of women rapping on it, and people don't want to hear women rapping any more than people want to hear a woman tell a joke.

But maybe Ludacris knew what he was doing. I don't think Ludacris knew an album full of collaborations with female rappers would sell as well as it has, but maybe this is part of an overall scheme to build his female audience, for his movie career (where all of the real money is), and the fact that people actually bought it was an unexpected bonus. It does seem to follow in a pattern I've noticed of him pandering to women, seemingly for no apparent reason. Like that time when he was so adamant to get on Oprah (no Stedman). And that godawful song "Runaway Love."

As I've discussed here before, there's no money to be made these days being a man. Hoodrats have all the money. I've learned this the hard way. I've spent years and years developing my craft as a writer, when I could probably make way more money posting pictures of celebrities, if it wasn't for my testicles and being prepared to do the right thing, whatever the cost - the two things that make us men. Nullus. If only I could be as cynical as Ludacris. I could escape this shanty town before one of the natives steals my laptop, in which case I'd be really shit out of luck.