Writin' Dirty: An Anthology

By Byron Crawford

Byron Crawford is the founder and editor of the pioneering hip-hop blog ByronCrawford.com: The Mindset of a Champion, and the author of the books The Mindset of a Champion: Your Favorite Rapper's Least Favorite Book, Infinite Crab Meats, and Nas Lost: A Tribute to the Little Homey.
Writin' Dirty is a collection of the 100 best essays he wrote from 2006 to 2011, when he wrote a daily column for XXL magazine's website, selected from over 1,000 total, i.e. the top 10%—this is a book both Mitt Romney and the black guy who operates his car elevator could appreciate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Byron Crawford
• Release date: May 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311890511

Byron Crawford

Considered a sage in Iran, Byron Crawford is the founder and editor of legendary hip-hop blog ByronCrawford.com: The Mindset of a Champion and the author of The Mindset of a Champion: Your Favorite Rapper's Least Favorite Book. He blogged for XXL magazine for five years.

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Writin' Dirty: An Anthology

By Byron Crawford

Copyright 2014 Byron Crawford

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Southerners, quit yer bitchin'

Is rap music misogynistic enough?

Minstrel show rap

Diamonds are a Jew's best friend

It goes both ways

Russell Simmons, OG in the Pimp Game

Gettin' some AIDS

The Not So Wonderful World of Cease-A-Leo

Making it rain at Strokers (nullus)

Lupe Fiasco, jihadist

Dissent is the mother of ascent

Is Jay-Z on the DL?

Kill the white people!

How I know hip-hop is teh ghey

Damn you, Beautiful Girls

A mouse like everybody else

Hands off Jay-Z's wallet

Screw buying you a draaank

Conscious rap is for gays

Keep Jose out of Newark

The Future of the Music Business

Why women can't rap

Killing a dog is so 1998

The gulliest TI in all of hip-hop

An epic wigger battle

Ludacris' two favorite foods

SOHH had its own pedophile army

Free Lil Wayne!

Soulja Boy Kill Ya'self

Niggas putting systems on bicycles

Helping massa build a new house

Putting the RZA out to pasture

Don't be a fag

Tyler Perry must be stopped

Jennifer Hudson is the new Aunt Jemima

Did Puff really have 'Pac set up?

Keep it on the down low

Jay-Z could use more people

Why Prolyfic's children are starving

Trapped by a cougar

Having weed in your pocket while black

In semi-defense of hipster rap

Sometimes a nigga get confused

No, really, Soulja Boy, eat a dick

Is Killer Mike with the terrorists?

The real reason Bill O'Reilly hates hip-hop

It's so cold in the D

Are the Native Tongues secretly gay?

Change we can't afford to part with

Yes there is anti-Obama hip-hop

But I thought this had been solved?

Should hip-hop boycott Israel?

Jermaine Dupri: A company man until the bitter end

U gon get Internet raped

Free Chris Brown

Select crab meats

Best cans I ever saw

Al Qaeda is the new Koch

The real reason Oprah loves Jay-Z

Favor for a favor

Posse on Trendwatch: Trolling for alcohol

What was Kanye thinking?

PSA (Public Service Announcement)

Untimely, unsolicited advice for Derrion Albert

LisaRaye: The future Mrs. Al Sharpton?

Is Diddy losing his edge?

Why Lil Wayne is facing a year in jail

Bangs hits the big time

How I know the Clipse really are drug dealers

Five things I learned watching Precious

Atheist state of mind

Desperate much, black women?

Never trust a man in retro tennis shoes

Fuck you, I won’t tidy my bedroom

Tainted love

Text Yele to 501501 to buy Wyclef a new Bentley

Translating Jesse Stu

Five reasons Jay-Z is a member of the Illuminati

The MP3 Blogocaust

We did it again, Brooklyn

The little homey’s little problem

Time off for good behavior? What part of the game is that?

Is Wale trying to tell us something?

By the time Kanye gets to Arizona

Further proof payola is rampant in online hip-hop journalism

Drake: The softest rapper of all time

Slim Thug goes to strip clubs primarily to eat

What kind of Muslim doesn’t support the Ground Zero Mosque?

Possible proof T.I. is not a snitch

I kissed a pr0n star, and I liked it

A child’s stomach just growled, did you hear it?

They don’t call it Four Loko for nothing

The real reason Dubya is upset with Kanye

Since when is bootlegging terrorism?

Blame it on the Hennessey

I’m not sure what I’d do without World Star

Why I’m not donating to Kool Herc

Lupe Fiasco is part of the problem

Eminem, Alcoholics Anonymous and the Illuminati

Odd Future: Black juggalos?

About the Author

Southerners, quit yer bitchin'

4/3/06

Pseudo intelligent music critics, who make their living patronizing certain elements in the black community, like to claim that backpackers are the most annoying group of fans in hip-hop. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the true most annoying group of fans in hip-hop (other than, of course, women) are fans of southern hip-hop.

The knock against backpackers seems to be that they’re boring and negative. They spend too much time telling you what they’re against rather than actually telling you what they’re for. Many of them even have the sheer balls to suggest hip-hop is not nearly as good as it used to be.

For business purposes, hip-hop can’t appear any better or worse during any given year, at least until the TIs find something to replace it. Reggaeton, perhaps?

Southern rap fans, meanwhile, make it a point to draw no distinction between the best and the worst their particular segment of the hip-hop community has to offer. They may not actually pretend to like Laffy Taffy, but they’ll be quick to call your ass a bigot if you suggest that it’s arguably history’s greatest abortion in musical form.

And they all rallied around Pimp C as if he was Leonard Peltier or somebody, but come to find out he can hardly rap. Is everybody aware that he was locked up for pulling out a gun on a woman in a mall? Personally, I don’t find his release fair to all the rest of us men who have resisted the urge to commit an act of violence against a woman.

As far as I’m concerned, his ass should go back to jail. Where’s the hip-hop feminism community when you need them? Wait, does this constitute snitching, or would it have to be your sister or something? I generally advocate staying out of another couple’s business, even if it is in a public place such as a mall.

I can understand that this is the first time their communities have produced anything the critical establishment even pretended to like since the heyday of Blind Melon and Better than Ezra (UGK fans, do your homework), but I’m not going to sit here and pretend to like something I don’t really like, especially if I have no financial stake in the matter.

The truth of the matter is that the southern rap of today, both in its style of rappin’ and especially its beats, bears very little relation to the hip-hop most of us grew up listening to. In that sense, it’s not unlike disco was to rock music in the late ’70s. Interestingly enough, disco artists also tried to cry racism when rock fans burned disco albums on the field at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.

In 2006, southern rap is the style of rap music that the tall Israelis who run the music industry have decided to promote, to the detriment of all other styles of rap music. Therefore, not unlike the Mexicans who think they’re retaking America’s Southwest, fans of southern rap no longer have any legitimate claim that they’re being discriminated against.

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Is rap music misogynistic enough?

5/16/06

New Rule: If black women want their complaints about misogyny in hip-hop taken seriously, they should go on a diet.

In all of the talk about how horribly misogynistic hip-hop is, rarely do you see any discussion of the actual effects all of this misogyny is having on black women. To hear the Essence magazines of the world tell it, black women should hardly be able to walk out of their front doors without being raped or beat up.

Meanwhile, according to that noted expert on education Bill Cosby, in his recent commencement address at Spelman College, 70% of all blacks graduating from college this year are black women. Indeed, it’s black men who should worry about getting either beat up or raped, since as the Cos notes, most of them are in prison.

Furthermore, if rap music is as awful as these bitches say it is, it obviously hasn’t done much for their self-image. When a white woman is greeted with images that portray women as objects, she takes that as an opportunity to eat less and work out more, so as to fit the standard of beauty put forth by magazines, TV commercials and what have you.

Meanwhile, I don’t think I need to pull out any statistics here to illustrate the fact that black women have been doing nothing of the sort. Indeed an argument can be made that if black women were objectified more often, maybe they’d be that much more motivated to hit a treadmill or eat a salad.

And not one of those salads from Wendy’s that’s basically a bowl of fried chicken, either.

If anything, I wonder if hip-hop isn’t going hard enough on black women. Numerous awful rap songs have been made about the dedication and sacrifices made by black single mothers, but not a one has been made blaming black single mothers for the myriad issues currently facing the black community, and especially black men.

After all, if most black men these days are either unemployed or in jail, and most black men these days were raised by black women exclusively, I don’t think it takes a Rhodes Scholar to put one and two together.

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Minstrel show rap

9/22/06

Insidious new trend: Minstrel show rap.

Flush with revenue from the likes of Mike Jones’ Who Is Mike Jones?, the Ying Yang Twins’ Wait (The Whisper Song), Three-Six Mafia’s Academy Award-winning theme to Hustle and Flow, and D4L’s Laffy Taffy, record labels are rushing out to sign the most coon-like negros they can find.

Granted, it can be argued that hip-hop became a minstrel show of sorts the first time some jig put on a gold chain and began pacing back and forth gripping his unit. No Richard Simmons. But that was unintentional. The following can only be viewed as an outright and purposeful embrace of minstrelsy.

DJ Webstar and Young B – Chicken Noodle Soup

Ironically, while minstrel show rap obviously has its origins in shitty southern hip-hop, it was a group of jigs in Harlem, New York who were the first to cross that line into actual minstrelsy. If you notice, there’s hardly a difference between the Chicken Noodle Soup dance, which is all the rage on YouTube these days, and the actual dances performed in 19th century minstrel shows.

As educated jig Marc Lamont Hill put it:

Am I getting old or is this dance, with all of the shuffling and light footing, nothing more than new-school minstrelsy?

Even DJ Webstar’s name has circus freak show connotations as it calls to mind the hit ’80s TV series Webster, which starred an adorable 25-year-old black midget. No Neverland Valley Ranch.

Jibbs – Chain Hang Low

Similarly, you have to wonder if the minstrel show connotations in young St. Louis rapper Jibbs’ current hit Chain Hang Low aren't purely a matter of coincidence. As revealed in the New York Times earlier this week, the songs melody has its origins in a song that was once a staple of minstrel show routines.

To wit:

In the 19th century it was a minstrel mainstay known, depending on the lyrics, as Zip Coon or Turkey in the Straw. [...] And now, thanks to the St. Louis rapper Jibbs, the old song provides the basis for a new hip-hop hit, Chain Hang Low.

If Jibbs wasn’t aware of this, you'd have to think the TIs at Geffen were. Indeed, I doubt this was a coincidence at all.

Ms Peachez – Fry That Chicken

That said, I’m sure a case could be made for young black kids like Jibbs re-appropriating once-racist music the same way black people haven taken all of the fun out of the word nigga. Ms. Peachez’ Fry That Chicken, meanwhile, is just indefensible.

I’m not sure what the deal is with actual minstrel show music (Turkey in the Straw) as well as modern day minstrel show rap (Chicken Noodle Soup, anyone?) referencing food in general and poultry in particular(?), but fried chicken itself obviously has racist (if mostly true) connotations.

Also, what’s the deal with Ms. Peachez frying chicken outdoors on what appears to be a plantation?

Perhaps predictably, the hipster community having a field day with this one. As one cracka-ass cracka in the comments section at YouTube put it:

I read in the newspaper that Ms. Peachez is suing the man that filmed this because he did so without her knowledge. Apparently this was a private family reunion and not a rap video at all.

Yeah, real funny.

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Diamonds are a Jew's best friend

12/5/06

Conflict diamonds are diamonds mined in war zones and sold in order to finance tribal warfare. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.

Rapper Kanye West paid lip service to the issue (no Boutros?) on the remix to his hit single Diamonds Are Forever, called Diamonds from Sierra Leone. And conflict diamonds are at the center of a new Hollywood film opening this weekend – Blood Diamonds, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

As noted in a story in the New York Times the other day, tribal warfare financed by the sale of conflict diamonds seems poised to become the hot new cause du jour among not only Hollywood’s celebrity elite, but also many of today’s hottest rappers.

Indeed Africa is already having the proverbial best year evar, what with the likes of Bono campaigning for debt relief by talking Pink Floyd into reuniting to play Live 8, Madonna shopping for AIDS orphans in Malawi as if they were Ugg boots, and Jay-Z handing out bottled water on MTV.

As such, it’ll be interesting to watch the celeb-charity fallout from the Blood Diamonds film. Already, rapper Nas has contributed to the film’s score (how so?), including a new song called Shine on ‘Em – the video for which I posted here yesterday.

Of course the DeBeers family, which controls the bulk of the global diamond trade, is decidedly non-plussed. They’re making it a point to note that trade in conflict diamonds only makes up a tiny fraction of the overall diamond trade.

Reportedly, they’ve even gone so far as to lobby Warner Brothers to have a disclaimer placed on the film noting that the events portrayed in it are fictional and that the film takes place in the past. (The film takes place in 1999.)

Obviously the concern is that knowledge of the conflict diamonds issue might make buying diamond jewelry unfashionable. I wonder though if the deeper concern is that people might begin to wonder about the sale of diamonds that don’t go to fund tribal warfare.

As noted in the Times story from the other day:

Part of the problem, in Sierra Leone in particular, is that very little of the profit finds its way back to the people. The government officially gets a 3 percent commission on the rough stones, but since a diamond that sells for $5,000 in America typically comes from a rough stone worth about $500, that commission amounts to about $15.

$15 for a $5,000 diamond? Even Sato in the Karate Kid Part II wasn’t that cold! And keep in mind that $15 goes to the government of Sierra Leone. How much do you want to bet trickles down to the poor bastards who actually risk life and limb digging these damn things up?

Presumably countries like Sierra Leone would be much better off if they actually benefited from the rich natural resources of their own native land. (An obvious parallel can be drawn to the situation in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez vis a vis, say, Saudi Arabia.)

Which brings me to my point: The diamond trade in Africa doesn’t have to fund grisly, Hotel Rwanda-style tribal warfare to be essentially exploitative in nature, which it is. And that’s the real reason to think twice before you cop any more diamond jewelry.

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It goes both ways

2/13/07

I was sitting in the drive thru of a Jack in the Box the other day and I got to thinking: man, I really need to get my life together man, black people really do love True by Spandau Ballet.

Which is ironic because I don’t know if I know any white people who are into that song. Not that I’ve conducted any surveys or anything, but I remember one time we were having this meeting at the BGM and True came over the Muzak. One person was like, Good Lord, not this song. Everyone else just kinda chuckled. My guess is that if I wasn’t the only black person working at the BGM, someone would’ve been like, Damn, that’s my jam!

True story, no pun intended.

Of course True was most famously sampled by PM Dawn, who famously got tossed from a stage by KRS-One. But according to one of these essays I was reading from this year’s Pazz and Jop, PM Dawn was every cracka-ass cracka’s favorite group of 1991, not unlike the Clipse 15 years later. Hmm…

But I’m sure white people’s[1] tastes in hip-hop have evolved quite a bit since then, right?

Of course they haven’t, but here’s the thing: It goes both ways. White people tend to fetishize certain aspects of black music that aren’t particularly worth a shit, but white people might actually have better taste in black music than black people do in white music.

Case in point: black people’s fascination with John Mayer.

Black people love John Mayer – so much so, in fact, that it didn’t seem out of the ordinary when they had him perform in a neo-soul showcase alongside the likes of John Legend and Corinne Bailey Ray at this year’s Grammys. He’s basically a black artist at this point.

MTV did a story on this a little over three years ago. I did a story on it then for my own blog, which again highlights how very little I’ve done with my life.

As Jay-Z put it back then:

[He's] smooth. You can throw it on in the car, you know, get lost in your thoughts.

Kanye West:

His lyrics are really inspirational. He words stuff with a real, I guess it’s witty, intelligent, very human [sensibility]. I would like to grab some of those qualities.

Pharrell from the Neptunes:

He’s dope and he’s talented. You get this ’70s pop-rock sensibility with the writing that he does. You know, the dude is a real musician. It’s like anything you ever loved in Joe Jackson or anything you ever loved in any ’70s rock. You’re gonna get it out of this dude. He’s a real student, and it comes through in his music.

To be sure, John Mayer is pretty well liked among actual white people. You don’t get to take pictures of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s boobs on TV (like caressing the holy grail) unless you’re pretty good at what you do. (He’s also been linked to Jessica Simpson, which I think is a pretty good indicator of what he’s into.) But would he be where is today if black people had better taste in white music?

Here’s the thing: I don’t begrudge anyone the freedom to listen whatever kind of music they like. If you see something in True beyond what’s there, i.e. nothing, good for you. At least someone’s enjoying their life.

I think it becomes bothersome when other people’s misguided tastes begin to actually dictate the course of popular music; when Hell Hath No Fury becomes the most critically acclaimed album of the year because white people think the Clipse actually sell crack, or when John Mayer gets one of the R&B spots at the Grammys because he reminds Pharrell Williams of Joe Jackson.

At the same time, it’s important to remember that taste is subjective. It’s easy to mock someone else because their own tastes don’t align with ours, but how many of us can really claim that our own taste is beyond any sort of criticism? I know I can’t, and I can’t say that bothers me.

[1] Note that I like to speak in generalities here. It makes my stories more interesting.

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Russell Simmons, OG in the Pimp Game

5/5/06

Russell Simmons may not be the most influential man in hip-hop, according to the tantamount experts at Time magazine (which is no XXL), but P Diddy could stand to learn a thing or two from the way the man manages his personal life. We all could.

When I read recently that Rush and Kimora were headed for a heartbreak, Winger-style, I wondered what the likelihood was, really, of Ol’ Rush being taken into a courtroom and getting ethered in the a, as if he was Johnny Carson or somebody. This is, after all, a man who once considered opening his own modeling agency so he could fuck all the models. Maybe he could care less about running a record label, but he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to play when it comes to his pussy.

Lo and behold, it doesn’t look like Kimora Lee (Simmons) is going anywhere – at least with Rush’s money. According to her own Wikipedia page, she owns about as much of Baby Phat as I do XXL, i.e. nothing at all.

Contrary to popular belief, the fashionista is not the founder of the Baby Phat brand, which first came into existence as a publicity tool for her husband’s Phat Farm clothing line [...] they became such a phenomenon that the decision was made to launch an entire Baby Phat collection. He brought his wife on board as creative director.

In other words, if she ever did try to walk, Rush would just fire her ass from her own company, Damon Dash-style. I’m sure she would receive some settlement (gotta take care of those kids!), but it wouldn’t be enough to float her high fallutin’ ass for very long. What’s a few million dollars to a woman that uses a solid gold toilet? It’s no wonder, then, that it was announced in a matter of days that the two of them weren’t actually getting divorced after all.

The whole time, Rush didn’t bother to keep it like a secret (I know) that he was dropping it off in the damn fine-looking Denise Vasi, as well as, possibly, that weird, hairly-looking broad from America’s Next Top model and any number of other young modeling chicks.

In fact, Rush had probably been getting his Bob Barker on the whole time they were together, knowing good and well he had Kimora, who’s still good for a boink, stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Which is some cold shit.

Predictably, Kimora is pissed and has taken to accidentally revealing to the media issues Rush may or may not be having with his unit. Which is really about all she can do at this point. (Maybe she’ll fuck with one of his cars, too.)

"I am happy and wished that Russell and I departed years ago. Russell and I had outgrown one another years ago and the little blue pill did not help our sex life. she said.

"This is off the record, oh hell you can report it, Russell was awful in bed!!!…We will continue our business relationship and we will both be active in our kids lives, but the romance is what?…Over!!!

Which sounds less than likely to me. Nullus. Granted, Rush is an old-ass man – even a bit older, in fact, than both of my parents. But I find it hard to believe that such a stud would ever have a hard time performing in the sack. You wonder if it ever occurred to her that maybe he was having a hard time getting it up because he had just climbed down off of something else.

You know he likes ‘em tall.

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Gettin' some AIDS

8/18/06

Does anyone else find it ironic that Cassie’s Me & U is reaching the peak of its popularity at a time when some pretty nasty statistics are coming out with regard to AIDS in the black community, especially among black women?

In the past decade, AIDS has become an increasingly black and increasingly female disease. I’m sure we’ve all heard the grim statistics before, but it bears repeating: Black women are 23 times more likely to have AIDS than white women (yikes!), and AIDS is the leading cause of death for black women between the ages of 25 and 34.

NAACP President Julian Bond spoke on the issue at the international AIDS summit this past Monday and went so far as to call AIDS a black disease.

The story of AIDS in America is mostly one of a failure to lead and nowhere is this truer than in our black communities, said Bond, chairman of the NAACP. We have led successful responses to many other challenges in the past. Now is the time for us to face the fact that AIDS has become a black disease.

Given what we know about AIDS and its effect on the black community, I can’t help but wonder the degree to which all of this nasty R&B music is playing a part. As I’ve mentioned before on this site, I won’t be certain that Cassie is part-black until I actually meet the girl’s father and have a few words with him, but there’s no doubt that her audience is made up of young black girls. Who else would be watching 106 & Park?

As I mentioned in another post on this site, Me & U is almost certainly about giving a man oral sex. Furthermore, I have it on good confidence that Cassie read the post on my own site, in which I break down in graphic detail how the song’s lyrics relate to swallowing a man’s unit, to which she is said to have responded by squealing in disapproval. Later, she would deny these claims in a post on her own blog.

Yo, some things need to be cleared up right now. First off I’d like to say that the media is absolutely ruthless and will do ANTHING to tear people down. This week particularily has been the worst with media for me. They’ve released statements that I never said about the intentions of my first single ‘Me & U.’ I never said that the song is about oral sex. Take it as you wish, I NEVER SAID THAT, EVER!

Riiight.

Here’s the thing: It’s not like she wrote the song anyway. Who is she to say what the song’s actually about? If the kind of d-bags who post here can figure out that the song is about shining a knob, then I think you’d have to admit that that’s what the song is about. More importantly, I think you’d have to assume that kids, who are blowing each other as if it’s going out of style these days, are going to realize what the song’s about.

Not only are songs like Me & U, which are targeted towards young people, part of a culture that leads a lot of young kids (in many cases, as young as 11, 12, and 13 years old) to make a lot of bad choices, but I think Cassie’s utter denial of a relationship between her music and these issues is endemic of the kind of denial that leads so many people to think that they aren’t susceptible to HIV and AIDS.

Meanwhile, the grim statistics obviously prove otherwise, and I think that Cassie and other artists such as herself should be held accountable for the role they’re playing in this epidemic.

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The Not So Wonderful World of Cease-A-Leo

5/26/06

Here in the Midwest, we don’t have smelly Africans posted up on street corners selling mixtapes, bootleg DVDs, and remaindered copies of Al Sharpton’s Al on America. In fact, I’m not even sure why that’s allowed in New York. (Seriously, wtf?) Therefore, I’m not as up on my