#130) "Ridin'" by Chamillionaire feat. Krayzie Bone - A couple weeks ago, I lauded the satirical greatness of White and Nerdy by 'Weird' Al Yankovic, and I feel that recognition would not be complete without taking a moment to laud the greatness of its inspiration.
And yet, in doing so I feel self-conscious, feel like I'm going out on a limb. Too many times Ridin' has played on my phone at work and prompted someone to say, with eyes and mouth wide, "This song's on your phone? Really? Wow...!"
Yes, I'm 41, white, and Midwestern, mostly small town, have never had much direct contact with rap or hip hop culture, but by including this song on the soundtrack of my road trip, I'm not pretending to be something I'm not. I don't ride down the street with it blasting at top volume, slumped down in the driver seat, hand draped over the steering wheel, pants around my knees, hat cranked sideways, flashing symbols with my fingers. It doesn't perpetuate my image...er, wait, what image? I'm not the least bit fly for a white guy, and perfectly okay with that. ;-)
I just like the song, the way it sounds, and it's disheartening to realize so many think of music in such narrow terms. Culture, style and race mean nothing to me. If something is good, it's good. If something grabs my attention and holds it, I'm going to jam to it. If it moves me in some way, any way, I just might want to bring it along for 14,000 miles.
For my Midwestern white boy money, Chamillionaire sets the bar here for all rap music and rap artists. Ridin' is complex, at moments astonishingly so, the lyrics (especially Krayzie Bone's Verse 2) coming so fast they spin into an hypnotic kaleidoscope of sound that seems almost incoherent, but isn't. This, like what 'Weird' Al did in his parody, is not easy. Rapping well is not easy. Truth is, a lot of black artists are terrible at it. Why? Because it's not about race at all really, it's a skill like any other that not everybody possesses. It's relatively easy to merely assume the look and the style, wear all the right clothes and posture in just the right way. To be a wordsmith, as rapping was originally intended, and to insert those malleable words into music in such a way that creates an unforgettable hook that listening to feels like an experience, is something else all together.
Also, there's a message to the song, about racial profiling and/or police brutality, that shouldn't be ignored. Once again, in no way can I pretend to be able to relate, but as the nation waits tensely for the grand jury ruling in Ferguson, Missouri, I've been thinking more about my own unnerving experience with the police, long ago.
When I was a teenager, I had a long, flowing mane of hair hanging all the way down my back, and this attracted the attention of police. I would be cruising up and down the main drag in my 1977 Chrysler Newport minding my own business, completely sober, totally going the speed limit, my only crime perhaps searching for someone to buy me beer (and even then, when/if I found someone, I was conscientious, never drank in the car, never drove while intoxicated), and yet I would routinely get pulled over for no reason. They'd check my license, search my car, ask where I was going and where I'd been, then let me go without comment once they ascertained this long-haired, acne-ridden teen's only real offense was being unsightly.
This happened numerous times during the summers of 1989 and '90, enough for me to become aware of a pattern, to develop a Pavlovian response to the sight of a squad car pulling up behind me. Most of the time there was no problem. I wasn't a trouble maker, I just had long hair, and I've always found that 'Yes sir/no sir...yes ma'am/no ma'am' goes a long way with cops But one time, I was pulled over by an officer who revealed himself to be a true pig. Seriously, I'm a law and order guy for the most part, a supporter of cops and a proponent of the difficult job they do. But I went to school with this guy's son, and knowing what I knew of him, I guess it should have come as no surprise that his father would act the way he did on this particular traffic stop.
I knew something was up right away: when he first clambered out of the squad car, he slammed his door shut. The impact echoed off the houses across the street.
He came up to the driver side window, this big, neck-less barrel of a guy, and barked, License.
I handed it over (I had it ready for him), and he snatched it out of my hand. I looked at the person I was riding with and she flashed my look of concern right back at me.
Whose car is this?
I told him it was mine. I sensed he did not completely believe me, or didn't want to, but what else would I be driving at 17 but a car with rusted out wheel wells and rear bumper barely hanging on? Better question: why would I steal this thing?
This your current address?
Also a dumb question. I was still a kid. I'd barely had my license a year. But his tone of voice was surly, had this kind of juvenile hostility not unlike his son (although I would not realize this was his father until much later) and put me ill-at-ease.
I said yeah, it was my current address.
Those sunglasses prescription?
I should have lied, could have, I guess, and been reasonably sure he wouldn't rip them off my face to check. No, I told him.
You got a restriction on your license. That means you wear glasses when you drive. Do you understand that?
I said, I know.
Your glasses in the car?
I pointed to them on the dashboard.
Get 'em on your face! he yelled, loudly. A volume better suited for, Get on the ground!
As he stormed back to his squad, I reluctantly replaced my sunglasses with the eyeglasses I hated. My companion and I looked at each other again, surreptitiously, as if doing so was a crime. I wanted to think I was imagining all this, but every time I looked over, the look on her face confirmed I was not.
We sat there for several minutes, much longer than a run of someone's driver's license should have taken. Other motorists passed us slowly, giving a wide berth to the flashing cherries. Across the street a lady emerged on her front porch to water a hanging plant. A guy walked by with a dog, cast his own surreptitious (and seemingly scornful) look in at us. It was as if the cop was back there in his squad smoking a nice long cigarette, fleshing out our anxiety. When he finally came back, he asked a strange question. You been stopped by an officer before?
I replied, "Yeah, it's been happening a lot lately as a matter of fact."
That's all I said, and with no attitude at all. There was no need for attitude, it was just a truthful remark. It had been happening a lot lately.
His response was even stranger, and kind of outrageous. I bet it has, he smirked. And with his pointer finger and thumb, he flicked my license back at me. It hit my chest and landed in my lap.
He flicked my license at me.
I know it's a G-rated version of that kind of story, but it easily could have been much worse. And it happened, though I wasn't doing anything wrong (except driving without wearing my glasses), with no mention made as to why I was pulled over in the first place. That cop was loaded for bear about something that could not possibly have had anything to do with me. Any number of adult world stressors might have been eating him alive in that moment, and I was just unfortunate enough to cross his path at the wrong time. Maybe he was fighting with his wife, or his son was giving him grief (I'd bet). Maybe he was being foreclosed on, or hadn't had a drink yet that day, or maybe he just hated all kids because he wasn't one anymore.
Doesn't really matter; he had no right to take any of it out on me no matter what. But the scary part is he could have. With the law on his side, that silver badge punctuating his 'right', he could have escalated that traffic stop, and who knows where it might have led. Looking back twenty-five years later, I wonder how much separation there actually was, emotionally and mentally, between flicking my driver's license at me and grabbing me by my long greasy hair and pulling me out of the car onto the pavement, just because he felt like it, just because he was having a shit day?
I wonder how he'd have acted if someone else hadn't been with me.
And that experience was just a one time thing. It does not hold a candle to what many African-Americans, whether they're doing something wrong, have to deal with every day, the Pavlovian response they endure when they see that squad car pull up behind, hoping sometimes beyond hope the officer (s) will observe the thinly traced boundaries implied - if not spelled out - in their charge.
"They see me rollin' / they hatin' / patrolling they tryin' to catch me ridin' dirty..."
#131) "Women I've Never Had" by Hank Williams Jr. - This song also comes up fairly frequently on some of my playlists at work, and one time, a girl, in her mid-20s, listened to a few measures, looked at me with a kind of hybrid smile and roll of her eyes, and said, Is this your jam, Jared?
She meant it playfully. Women I've Never Had - musically at least (if I'm to go by what she played when she was allowed to plug her phone into the radio) - was nothing she'd probably ever heard before. She was no fan of country music in general, this was certainly not Brad Paisley, and she was goofing on me a little, as if to suggest that I might be as quick to strike a pose with this song as I would with Ridin'....only instead of anything 'gangsta', it'd be a huge pair of sunglasses, huge collar, jeans and a belt buckle the size of an old vinyl record...or maybe a polyester leisure suit, doing little gunshots with my fingers....er, something.
Without missing a beat, I looked her right in the eye and said, You may find this a difficult pill to swallow, but this is every man's jam.
She wasn't entirely thrilled with my response (I can't imagine any woman would want to hear that). It too was meant primarily as a joke, of course, but there's truth there, for sure. Common sense, a sense of decency, maturity, these things keep good men grounded in their lives, keep them from making mistakes. And the bottom line is, sleeping around, especially those who will sleep with anything that moves, doesn't do anyone any good, male or female. But the impulse made evident in this song? Speaking honestly and candidly? In the most fundamental sense? Oh yes, it's every man's jam. And in deep, unconscious ways, down where the stuff of human behavior that changes very little over millennia is buried, it's part of what enables our species to propagate successfully.
If nothing else, Women I've Never Had is an addictive song. Its whole New Orleans funeral horn section is kind of goony, but hey, humor is one cornerstone of sexy.
"I am into to happy and I don't like sad / I like to have women I've never had...."
#132) "Mary Jane's Last Dance" by Tom Petty - I suspect this is what people might think would be on my phone, although I'm okay with being pegged that way. Tom Petty - at this point - should be on everyone's phone. He's achieved living legend status, and really, how cool is his music from the late 80s and early 90s? Mary Jane's Last Dance is also very much 'every man's jam' at one time or another.
Tired of myself, tired of this town, indeed.
"Well I don't know, but I've been told, you never slow down, you never grow old..."
