RIFF MARKET

If You Put Something Inside the Internet, Why Can't I Look At It?

So the little Asian kid above must have gotten mad about me finding a video of him dancing to Nelly's "Hot In Herre" in his bedroom, so he's marked the video as "private" and now I can't watch it nonstop like I was planning. YouTube exists precisely to spread the accidental genius this kid stumbled into; now he's being a douchebag about it. Why?

I feel bad that many of you didn't see this yesterday, so to the best of my memory I'll recount to you the video's key details.

This little Asian kid is standing in front of his computer. He's wearing a navy suit, white shirt, and tie, and he has on one of those microphone headsets that Madonna used to wear. The video starts when he clicks play on what I assume is the video for Nelly's "Hot In Herre," the song kicks off, and in front of his web cam he starts rapping along with Nelly and doing a little two-step. He's furiously tugging at his suit coat but nothing has come off yet.

First verse is through, first run at the chorus, and then the jacket comes off. He's still rapping, but when he takes off the jacket he fumbles a little bit through the words and I'm not sure he's gonna make it. Then he takes off his tie--it is an actual tie, not a clip-on, and he can't be more than 10 or 11 so I find the real tie thing pretty impressive. There are a few curse words in the song and he says all of them.

The kid still has pants on but I am starting to wonder about his shirt--it's the second verse and, if he's not lying, his room is getting hot. To surprising effect, he doesn't take off his shirt--he loosens his belt. Then he snaps the belt off his waist, swirls it around in the air five times, then throws it off camera. He's rapping the whole time.

We're at minute 19, minute 20 or so now of this kid dancing to Nelly's "Hot in Herre." He starts working on the top button of his shirt, still rapping, and his two-step is a little more confident. And right as he's about to pop that first button, he freaks out "OH SHIT MY DAD'S COMING!!!!" and the video just stops.

Was the dad going to be (a) angry that his son was taking off his clothes to Nelly's "Hot in Herre"; (b) angry that his son was watching the video to Nelly's "Hot in Herre" but totally fine with the stripping stuff; (c) angry that his son was ripping off his dad's idea to strip to Nelly's "Hot in Herre" and post it on YouTube; (d) angry that he would have to reassemble his son's necktie?

Maximum Discomfort

The following are videos I found of people dancing to Nelly's "Hot In Herre," a song about taking your clothes off when it gets too hot outside (or inside the club). Right now I'm inside my apartment and you better believe I'm playing this song pretty much nonstop. I'm still wearing jeans though.

Edit: Definitely just skip to #5.

#1: Slightly Self-Satisfied Dudes Dancing to "Hot in Herre"



#2: Extremely Uncomfortable/Creepy Dancing to "Hot in Herre"




#3: Dudes Slamdunking Basketballs to "Hot in Herre"



#4: Art Footage of Dude Dancing to "Hot In Herre"



#5: Little Kid Wearing a Suit and Headset, Singing Along to "Hot In Herre"

He Got Shot, Let It Go

Download: "Who Shot Ya Studio Freestyle"

You and I both would love to make a bigger deal out of this than not but frankly I don't think Beanie Sigel can afford to get shot as some elaborate publicity stunt. Did you read the reports? Dude drives a Chevy Impala. Do you know what that is, in terms of laptop computers? It is my friend Reefer yelling out into the hallway of my college dormitory "YO! CHECK OUT MY NEW LAPTOP!" and the rest of us all hurrying into his room really excited, only to see that his "new laptop" was just his old laptop with an expensive speaker system hooked up to it. Then he'd scream "CHECK IT OUT!" again, and we'd all laugh, and it was never a publicity stunt.

To say nothing of: publicity for what? If there's anybody who wants to get back under the radar it's this guy--any time he surfaces he either gets thrown in jail, stuck on alimony payments, or criminally underrated for the albums he's released. And this is especially true in Philly--zero respect. Contrary to popular opinion, Sigel is not the king of South Philly, not even close! He's more like the head programmer for Geno's website, or the systems manager at Philadelphia Magazine. Obviously I'm the king.

Like when kids in my grade school all started campaigning for student council treasurer by photocopying their faces onto dollar bills, staged shootings are blase anymore anyway. Why don't rappers have better publicity stunts? BMX tricks, ollies on a skateboard, something like that? My videographer brother's always looking for guys who can do BMX tricks and rap at the same time (licensing fees), so it's not like rappers don't have a captive audience already.

There's always the internet too, which remains totally underused in the rap publicity stunt sector. Everybody has blogs, sure, and everybody's sick of porn, but here's an idea for a rapper: What about pictures of men having sex with older women, with rapping? You could even have little clips of the porno that people could watch for free--something like a teaser. Then if the people like it they can give you their credit card number--and if the right media people get ahold of your website and porno clips, well! They can give you their credit card numbers too.

A Riff About the Diplomats

Download: "Dipset Symphony"

2005 I remember being pretty amped about this tape, a year later it's hard to know why exactly. Cam's "Get 'Em Daddy" was on there, so was Jim Jones's "Summer Wit Miami," so was the Juelz "My Clip" jack on "The Whisper Song." I don't think I really liked any of these that much.

In my Camp Nama of a bedroom I have stacks of Dipset mixtapes and probably seven or eight copies of Hell Rell's Hell on Earth--I'm not really at "what the fuck was I thinking?" so much as "why am I not as excited about the more-than-music movement anymore?" and even "I can't walk in my room without stepping on J.R. Writer's face five times." That's where I'm at with these guys.

I watched Juelz not put "Pick It Up" on his full-length even though it was the best track on the Fiend Out mixtape; I saw Cam'Ron make a complete ass of himself on that Jay-Z diss; I bought a thousand more Dipset mixtapes and I don't think Rell, Writer, Jim Jones, Purple City, 40 Cal and whoever have gotten any better at rapping in a year and that's disconcerting; I saw Killa Season and dared to give that "Italian dudes chopping off that guy's bird" scene the benefit of the doubt; I heard Killa Season the album and think all the brilliant wordplays and down&out sentiment that exonerated Purple Haze's reprehensible character and often malevolent spirit--sorry, I'm still a wee bit pussy about this--ain't there. I keep waiting for these guys to deliver on whatever promise they've been promising.

Which is something Bob Christgau didn't make mention of in his mixtape piece a few weeks ago--the constant disappointment with mixtapes. Especially with the various artist/Big Mike style tapes, it's like opening a pack of baseball cards--maybe you'll get the card with Jose Canseco giving you the finger, but 99 times out of a 100 every card will be Agallah showing you his balls.

I'm not bailing on Dipset--my fantasy baseball team's pretty much gone to shit and there's something to be said about following something--and I like the idea of New York trying to reclaim hip-hop off the South, true heads or whatever. This is my reasoning: Papoose has put out probably 30-35 mixtapes in the last year. Of those 30-35 mixtapes, he has two good tracks. That means all we have to do is get through 200 more Papoose mixtapes until he can put out a full-length with decent material, all the good instrumentals gone, and he's not a great rapper in the end anyway. See you there.