There are some playas that are so fine they beyond a ‘Shadow of a Dick.’ Everyone has reasons why they like somebody’s looks, want to break them off, be their baby daddy – that is a simple matter of taste, formulated by past lovers, crushes developed in childhood, the ones that kind of look like the ‘one that got away,’ etc. However, all of us come together on certain exceptional people. There is beauty in many forms and textures, beautiful incarnations abound – beauty that is in the eye of the beholder, beauty that is the right of all to claim. There is manufactured beauty and societal pressured sanctioned beauty, but the ones beyond the shadow, therein lies communion. An example would be Andre 3000 from Outkast. My friend Ava and I get into fights over who’s baby daddy he is and neither of us have met him! And I am talking about brawlin’. We have Eminem/Insane Clown Posse style rumbles where I actually fear for my life. Ava is my best girlfriend and my heart, but she is going to have to pry Andre from my cold, dead, rigor mortis fingers. I am sorry – he is that fine. “Lend me some sugar! I am your neighbor!” Then of course, there is Beyonce, who is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, any of us have ever seen. I will eat her pussy until I get TMJ, seriously though. I know that she may not think that is such a great idea, as she had commented on Madonna and Britney’s kiss at the Video Music Awards as distasteful and that God wouldn’t want her to engage in lesbionic behavior, but she would like it with me. I am talented in a few things, just a few, I am no Mr. Ripley. One of those talents is that I can eat some pussy. I go down so good ladies call me the “Yellow Submarine.”
When I go to purchase my cds from these artists, I go to the hip hop section of the record store. Actually, it is the first place I go whenever I go anywhere to buy my music, right to the rap section. Usually it is located in the way back or right in front, so they can be monitored by the staff who stealthily walk the aisles to watch as you peruse that G-Unit or Cam’ron (also playas beyond the shadow of a dick) to make sure you don’t steal nothing. You couldn’t anyway, as they have the jewel cases locked into a special plastic security device. It is like the artist is incarcerated just for being Black. They even lock down Ashford and Simpson!!!! Who gonna shoplift an ASHFORD & SIMPSON record? Do not get me wrong, they are wonderful artists, even though I confuse them with Peaches and Herb, but I don’t think that they are in any immediate danger of theft. Why do the rap records need the extra security? Why are they on lockdown? Is it just assumed by these record stores that Black people steal? It is just a fact, a reality to them, so they are just being realistic and giving a pre-emptive strike by putting a big plastic square shaped handled case on them so you have no way of seeing what songs are on the record, what year it came out, if it is remastered or the original, if it has remixes, etc. You can get Celine Dion or Michael Bolton or David Gray or any of these artists that I don’t know, and I don’t really listen to, laying out practically naked without stickers or security tape and available for the taking, without that suit of plastic armor, the equivalent to “The Club” for cds, but if you want to buy SPEAKERBOXX, you need to get the case unlocked, and go through a million doors like that old tv show “Get Smart” with the lady named 99.
What does that say to the hip hop fan? That you are a thug. You like this thug music, and you deserve to be treated like a criminal for GIVING US YOUR MONEY so you can listen to your thug music in the privacy of your own project. What does the effect of this action, a small but incredibly significant one, have on the self esteem of people of color? We love the music. We want the artists to get paid. We are not gonna steal it. The assumption that we will, that theft is inevitable due to the racial burden we bring with us everywhere we go, that race is the determining factor in thinking whether someone is safe or not, trustworthy or not, is the other side of that impossible beyond the “Shadow of a Dick” beauty. It is the ugliness that is intolerable to look at, that turns you to stone or salt. It is the ugliness that shows us that even though we have had civil rights movements and marches and riots, we really haven’t come that far. The music is segregated. What makes that so different from a drinking fountain or a lavatory? We have made some strides, but not nearly enough. I am not satisfied with the state of the union. I don’t like living in the apartheid that we decide to ignore by never going south of the 10 freeway unless it is to the airport. I am surprised daily at the hatred and inequality I witness. Go to the drug store and see how the products for Black people are placed on the lowest shelves. Open your eyes to the ugly world we live in. Because without that ugliness, we could not see the beauty of Andre 3000 or Beyonce, for they have risen above it all, for the fact that they are fucking amazing that nobody can tell them ‘no,’ because as minority artists, we must be twice as good to get half the credit and they are more than once twice three times as beautiful.
And Andre is still mine, Ava!!!