Designer Thugs

Special Delivery.

2007-08-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

Grammy nominee Paperboy, or Mitchell Johnson as he is known to his mother, was recently arrested for possessing and transporting a ridiculous amount of ganja in the quaint town of Merced, California.

Apparently royalty money for his only hit song, 1993's "Diddy", has proven insufficient, and the artist has resorted to a life of petty crime.

Thankfully, he has legions of devoted fans willing to vouch for his legitimacy. Drop the man some encouraging words here.

Knock 'em out the box, Bonds.

2007-07-11T12:23:00.001-07:00

Being that I'm living amongst the MLB All-Star hysteria (I can literally see the stadium as I type this), I think it's only appropriate to address the rap-relevancy of one of America's most famous and scandalously embroiled drug users: Barry Bonds. If you are one of the few people on earth that remains steadfastly in denial (or blissfully ignorant) of his habitual steroid use, perhaps this chronological series of baseball cards will sway you.

Barry threw a party by my house in lieu of competing in the Home Run Derby yesterday. Super-club Roe, on Folsom, was packed to capacity with San Francisco a-listers. It was co-hosted by Bonds' good friend, none other than Def Jam President Jay-Z.

Unless you live in Lithuania or some shit, you are aware by now that Bonds is chasing Hank Aaron's home run record and is being lambasted for his use of steroids. Nearly every artist ingests some sort of performance-enhancing inebriant to tap into their creative well, though. It just so happens Barry's creations garner him millions of dollars and veritable immortality in the annals of sports history, but who are we to judge his art? As a San Franciscan, I fully endorse his efforts, as does Fillmore rapper San Quinn, who undoubtedly draws the same parallels.

San Quinn- Knock It Out (Barry Bonds)

I never saw that one coming. I do anticipate a rap album (or at least a cameo) by Barry in the next year, though. In fact, I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. Mark my words.

Keys Open Doors.

2007-06-29T15:37:00.000-07:00

...I ain't talking 'bout Lindsay Lohan, I'm talking 'bout that sniff, that blow, man!
-Juelz Santana, 2007.

According to The San Francisco Chronicle (appropriately distributed from The Yay Area), cocaine prices are dropping steadily nationwide. The drug has gained immense popularity nationally, making the U.S. one of the few non-South American countries where the average price for a gram is still generally less than 100$, and prices are dropping considerably. Obviously this is an average, nearly all drugs are less expensive in urban areas, especially ones near southern borders.

Interestingly enough, trends in southern rap have shifted dramatically since 2005, around the same period that cocaine prices reached a decade low, and it's popularity may soon take precedence over that of it's trailer-park dwelling cousin, meth.

Atlanta residents have kinda abandoned Crunk, the energetic party music of the early 2000s. Trunks now rattle with the dark low-end of trap heroes like Young Jeezy, Young Joc, Rick Ross, and (too) many more. Trap music is almost explicitly about cocaine and the resulting violence associated with it's distribution, with epic synths and staccato drum patterns abound.

The romanticizing of the devilish white powder has influenced impressionable children far and wide. The Clipse are thought by many to posses the largest yayocabulary, their 2006 release Hell Hath No Fury is a tedious exercise in illicit synonym use. It's also considered by many to be the best rap album of the last 5 years. Apparently their sphere of influence extends into my home-state of Idaho.

And it only gets better! Young, innovative celébutantes are devising new ways to embarrass themselves while simultaneously damning the futures of their prepubescent fan base. Authorities have been well aware of the presence of flavored synthetic drugs like methamphetamine and cocaine for a while, but I predict an upswing in the incarceration rates of 12 year old girls when major news outlets get wind of this (assuming it is true, which it likely is not).

It probably all stems from the fact that she has been surrounding herself with the wrong crowd, namely, Juelz Santana, who likened her metaphorically to a bag of cocaine in E-40's White Gurl.

Surprised? I'm not. Stoked? Of course.

Ball And Parlay or Leaning Back In The Day.

2007-05-07T12:42:00.000-07:00

Gone are the days, way back in January, when I had the time to dissect the most minute social phenomenon, break down it's ancestry, and analyze it's socio-economical and artistic impact. I'm not with that, player. I now aim to update the page regularly, chocking it full of information pertinent to the art, nay the science, of designer (or thrift) thuggery. This time the entries will be equally awesome, but more concise. Because it's been so long since my last (and only) post, I feel the need to add a personal dimension to this, the sophomore Designer Thug-ism. Let's begin...

It's kind of a dated topic, but I would like to direct the focus of this forum to what is known in Texas as "lean", or Codeine cough syrup, and the thuggish/ruggish subculture surrounding it's use. The late DJ Screw, who ironically overdosed on the very serum that provided him a purposeful existence, popularized a unique style of slowed, re-edited rap music with a veritable shit-ton of lethargic "Chopped and Screwed" mixtapes, propelling himself to celebrity status in the south and abroad.

Granted, housewives have been abusing prescriptions for years, but H-Town rappers have glamorized “syzzurp” to the point where use of the drug itself has grown immensely. It is one of the south’s biggest narcotic problems, up their with methamphetamine, which has, for some reason, failed to gain any notable proponents within commercial rap. Your guess is as good as mine.

You would think that the FDA would somehow harness this popularity. Maybe Lil’ Flip is onto something. The demand for Sprite is undoubtedly indebted to his genius.

This is where I tie in a touching personal anecdote…

Long before the sounds of southern rap had permeated my fragile, middleclass Idahoan ears, I began to experiment with the various pharmaceuticals found within the medicine cabinets of my parents and the shelves of the local Rite-Aid drug store. During a high-school lunch break, I once downed an entire bottle of stolen Robitussin in hopes that it would make my upcoming biology class more tolerable. Not the case, homeslice. That shit had my eyes bugging out of my terrified skull. My face turned beet red, my scalp itched so bad that I scratched it until I drew blood, and my pupils dilated to twice their normal size. It was awesome, to say the least. I went to the bathroom, threw up and returned to class.

Later that year I did the same with some Codeine my friend was prescribed, and experienced similar, yet more sedentary results. Then an entire city of black people hundreds of miles away decided to steal my idea and make music about it.

Ghostride The Bandwagon

2007-01-16T20:03:00.001-08:00

So, admittedly, I've never been the dude driving said bandwagon, but in most cases I show up early enough to get a good seat. Lately, I've noticed a welcome shift in the quality of daily top 40 radio fodder. It seems that, as of early last year, the most identifiable influence on popular urban music, particularly hip-hop, has been the synth-heavy, uptempo vintage-electro sound of late eighties and early nineties dance music.

Historically, rap has always borrowed heavily from other genres of music. Be it as blatant as sampling an eight bar break, or more ideological, regarding lyrical subject matter, tone, and intent. See, by repackaging a distinct James Brown sample for the anti-establishment anthem Fuck The Police, NWA also managed to convey some of the shared sentiments of the Godfather to a much younger, impressionable audience, and to a notably more extreme degree. It remains an embracement and acknowledgment of the same ideals, not just mere thievery.

Living in California's Bay Area for the past two years, I have witnessed the onset and peak of an indescribable, city-wide hysteria . It's been exciting and enlightening to see an entire sub-culture take the reigns of modern media, to the point that it irritates Sean Hannity.

http://ninoybrown.blogspot.com/2007/01/fab-discusses-ghostriding-on-fox-news.html

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&amp;amp;amp;friendID=45423944&blogID=217630587&MyToken=d892270d-e76b-4210-9c67-5aa6e0c7b2ac

Despite it's similarities to multiple other sub-genres of rap, Hyphy music is distinct in it's roots. While NWA, Pete Rock and, more recently, Kanye West, mirrored the sounds and pro-civil rights ideals of their elders, artists such as Mac Dre and Keak Da Sneak rose to prominence amid a booming Rave-Era electronic music scene. The music of the late Andre Hicks (around 35 official independent releases) rarely tread nefarious ground. In fact, his albums primarily revolved around many of the same themes that characterize the dance music community . He heavily promoted dancing, promiscuous sexual behavior and regularly expressed his appreciation for MDMA, the slang term for which was the name of his independent record label, Thizz Entertainment. Ecstasy was one of the more identifiable through lines of Mac Dre's career.

Hicks was murdered during the decline of Crunk popularity, at a time when bay area releases were becoming intermittently peppered with the sonic characteristics of Electronic music, as well.

Being that you really aren't anyone until you die, Mac Dre's posthumous rise to fame has now fully reshaped the sound and direction of the local rap output. The Hyphy movement is in full swing, having steered from typical thuggish, ruggish rap content into an equally marketable and commercially viable, yet more genuine, avenue. Artists are producing upbeat, danceable music that's downright celebratory, and going so far as even sampling the electro-tinged mega-hits of yesteryear. The slaps on Mistah F.A.B.'s Ghostride It, his latest single, are courtesy of Ray Parker, Jr.'s Ghostbusters. The Federation, whose next album will supposedly be produced entirely by local heavy-hitter Rick Rock, have the girls swooning with a familiar Corey Hart sample, clocking in at around 120bpm. This shit is rife with synthesis.

The funny thing is, the aformentioned singles have yet to see an official release, and this could be due to sample-clearance issues. Who knows. In a post-Dipset world, does intellectual property even exist?