Showing posts with label ebonics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ebonics. Show all posts

October 18, 2012

AMERICAN IDIOT: Lil Wayne

Some video footage of recently incarcerated rapper Lil Wayne has cropped up on the web, where we witness Wayne answering deposition questions in a civil suit he's filed against producer Quincy Jones. Contained in the video is some of the best recorded footage of the juxtaposition between [for lack of better terminology] street 'attitude'/vernacular and traditional or common English. I just read the previous sentence back to myself and I have apparently aged 40 years more than I was aware.

My sudden outbreak of old-ness aside, there's something inherently infuriating that comes with watching a millionaire entertainer act out like a 5 year old, whilst attempting to retain the rough and tumble attitude and broken english that we've come to associate with the high crime, inner city population. Wayne, at one point, lays his head in his hands and refuses to answer the line of questioning that Jones's attorney presents, only answering with reductive mumbles of "I don't recall" and "I can't remember". Later in the video, when asked what image he is presenting to the media- Wayne again shoots down the question, is told by the presiding judge that he must answer, and decides to inform the attorney that "he [the judge] can't save you in the real world". One can extrapolate that Wayne saw the judge's support of the line of questioning as backing up /siding with the attorney and wanted to remind him that rational debate has no place in his world and violence would reign supreme if the joust were happening in a different context. It's really just an embarrassing 6-minute display of the apathetic and anti-intellectual approach that is "cool" to a substantial block of young people. It's par for the course for Lil Wayne, we've seen this and much worse from him before....but god damn is it frustrating to see him thrive while there are tens of thousands of infinitely more talented (and better adjusted) artists that aren't able to scrape by.