The Clipse Called Me a Tree-Hugging-Ass-B*tch.

I am a really big Clipse fan. Naturally, I have been listening
to We Got it for Cheap Vol 4.

Last week, I had a moment where where I asked myself, did Pusha just
call me a "Tree Hugging Assed B-tch"?

At 13:58 Pusha says,

"Tree Hugging Assed Bitch came up to me the other day on some
Yo, yall nice and all but, how come yall only talk about
dope? How come you only write about street shit?
Come on?

I was like Tree Hugging ass bitch please! I rhyme for
my niggas on the corner, all 20,000 of them. 20 thousand
money making brothers on the corner. Lets go.

It reminded me of the blog post on where we discussed
what it means to be a feminist who sing's "Ain't no Fun"
in the club.

Brandon Soderberg brings some in analysis about
the skit as well. He writes,

This kind of defense or half-defense met with an angry assertion about “street niggas” or “niggas on the corner” isn’t new to rappers’ attempts at sounding “real” but it seems more glaring because well, the Clipse simply aren’t rapping for those “street niggas”. Maybe they are in the sense that that’s their intended audience, or maybe they mean it in some instructive way, but in terms of whose ears are open to Clipse, it is not who they claim to be rapping for; if this were true, Pusha wouldn't even be confronted with a woman offended by their crack rap, you know?

Now, I firmly believe that contradictions are make people interesting.

If you have no contradictions you are either lying to yourself
or you have a pleasantly sheltered life.

Remember when Pac was on some Dear Momma and
Wonder Why They Call You B-tch.

I mean here was a dude that had so much love for Black women
but talked a whole lot of sh-t about us as well.

I mentioned the idea for this post to Jase last Friday because I
was so conflicted on writing. My rationale was that
so many other people trash hip hop, why should I add to the chorus.
At the same time, we criticize what we art. Thats part of the process.

I know that The Clipse aren't the only cats that rap about
being street dudes. Jay, like The Clipse, talks about hustling as well.
But, part of Jay's appeal has been his remorse, ambivalence,
certainty about the both up and downsides to hustling.

In fact, there is a element of remorse and self awareness
on Hell Hath No Fury, such as "Momma I'm So Sorry"
that flies in the face of "I rap for my twenty thousand n-ggas
on the block".

And the fact that 1 in 100 Americans are in the prison system,
and approximately a million of the people in the prison system
are Brown and Black, I can't help but think of the REAL lives of these
20 thousand n-ggas on the block. It ain't sweet.

In many ways, is WGFT Pt 4 is JUST music, but it is also crazy
real in the same way The Wire is just entertainment,
but also borderlines on a documentary for me. I haven't watched
it past the first episode this season.

In a lot of ways The Clipse music is a soundtrack for The Wire.

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Art is Reality. Reality is Art.

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