Stop, Collaborate and Listen

You wouldn’t know it by looking at me, but I’m kind of like the skinny white Polish girl version of Snoop Dogg.

This is where I add the mandatory disclaimer or “Hugs, not drugs.”

No, I don’t have dreads, a criminal record or say “shizzle my nizzle” – that often, anyway—and my skills leaned more towards piano than profanity-laced rap when I was younger, but straight up yo.  I’m kind of hardcore.

Okay, not “hardcore” exactly. But for what it’s worth, I’m not one of those people that thinks the word “rap” is missing a silent “c” at the beginning.

True to my commitment issues, there’s no one kind of music I like enough to claim as the best. There’s good country and then there’s “poke your eyes out with a pitchfork” country. There’s good alternative, and then there’s “poke someone else in the eye with a guitar pick” alternative. Each genre has ups and it’s downs—including rap.

But this girl loves her Eminem, so much so that she would put aside her spinsterhood for him and engage in a long distance relationship that involved a weekly phone call and mandatory date night that did not involve sleeping over.

I still need my space.

I also like Kid Rock, so as you can tell I’m a Michigan girl who lived in Detroit for a bit at heart. However, I have no interest in creating a lukewarm distant semi-romantic relationship with Kid Rock.

I would rather date an actual rock.

But unfortunately, other than a menacing looking gnome in my garden, that’s about where my street cred ends.

I have no idea what Drake “sings”—for lack of a better term—but if some old school LL Cool J comes on, I can bust out with every word and be instantly transported back to middle/high school.

Then once the horror-filled memories of middle school seep from my brain, I can put on a thugtastic version of Salt-n-Pepa’s “Shoop,” “ Push It” or “Whatta Man.” And even though I can’t remember why I put my keys in the fridge, I can rap every word to Arrested Development’s “Mr. Wendal” from 1992, the song from which our ghetto rescue cat Wendell (spelling change) was named, may her one-toothed, crooked crotched furry little body RIP.

But you have to understand where I’m coming from.

Nice eyebrows, Homeboy.

I grew up with a white boy from Dallas telling me to, “Stop, collaborate and listen”—all three at the same time?—and a black dude named Stanley wearing Hammer pants reminding me I was, “Too Legit to Quit.” There was hardly any profanity and instead of their pants hanging off of their asses, they pretty much just wore them backwards a la Kris Kross.

Now they have “99 Problems” and one of mine is the fact that I can’t understand a damn word that most of them say.  Another one is the fact that when flipping around on the radio recently, both “Baby Got Back” and “Bust a Move” were playing ON THE OLDIES STATION. 

Sigh.

Shizzle my nizzle, indeed.

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