Author’s Note: In the light of what I’d call a series of unfortunate misunderstandings between me and some of the Man Blog Editors regarding a previous article, I still write this. I’d like to thank Peter Juan for the very level-headed (intellectually mindf*cking) discussion on straightening out some crooks in our lines of communication that led to such brouhaha.

And here’s Ade Magnaye’s Part II of his gut-busting series on the jologs.

As I’ve outed my pretenses in a previous post, I won’t try and side by these guys. Plus, Ade’s not targeting rock aficionados anyway. I leave you with my take.

gAnGzTaHs

After having done some researches on the language of rap music, I know that the rap icons kids idolize nowadays as gAnGzTaHs aren’t the legendary rap greats. If you take a walk down rap history’s you’ll realize that it comes from a Jamaican chant form called “toasting” which is a series of hurling criticisms to other DJs. Well, it’s pretty much adversarial but it’s not the way how today, everything seems to revolve around money, women, drugs, and poppin’ a cap up yo’ @$$.

What Ade says here is practically true.

It’s about how blacks try to earn money by selling cocaine, after which they’ll spend the money they earned buying large gold and silver jewelry pieces they call “bling-blings”, horridly colored cars with pointless hydraulics and large houses in which to house their large harems of loose and willing women. Also, they have a strange obsession with covering everything in diamonds.

Pretty much different from what Afrika Bambata, Run DMC, and Grandmaster Flash rapped on. The Sugarhill Gang never used the line “From the window to wall, to the sweat drippin’ down my b*lls” in Rapper’s Delight, right? And if ever they hear about Biggie and 2Pac, it’s all history. These guys were dead even before some of these younger gAnGzTaHs were conceived. I wonder if they even know A Tribe Called Quest?

Even African-American people criticize the way rap is produced nowadays. If you’ve watched Chris Rock’s latest HBO special, he’s one to admit that rap music isn’t what it used to be.

Pinoy Rap

Now Pinoy rap has quite interesting roots too. You’ve got to be a hypocrite if you underwent the Yo! phase and claim to have abhorred FrancisM (everyone’s favorite ism) with his Mga Kababayan. That was beautiful Pinoy music and everyone was rapping with him.

I can’t say much about today’s Pinoy rap. While I do know there are some great and talented Pinoy rappers out there I don’t really think that these fellow Pinoys are what these “gAnGzTaHs” are idolizing. They’re more likely to have caught the whiff of old NWA albums, ready-to-be-incinerated/recycled copies of The Source magazines, and some of the newer rappers with their “hoes” and “blings.” Where’s the East Side and West Side in the Metro anyway? Manila and Pasig?

Conclusion

But I do have some reservations about this. I was once invited to a rap contest sponsored by one of my political affiliations back in college. And the theme was that the rap lyrics should be the “Sigaw ng Kabataan para sa Bayan” (“Shout/Voice of the Youth for Country”). Pretty nice concept if you’d ask me. Still, all of them were wearing over sized basketball jerseys and pants with waists so low. It’s pretty hard to think of nationalism when you see some kid wearing a Detroit Pistons Ben Wallace jersey rapping about how he loves his country.

Anyway, this leads me to ask whether it’s the music that’s dictating all of this – rock, rap, novelty songs… So who do we have next, reggae? Those fake Rastas who don’t even know where on the globe Jamaica is? (Emphasis on “fake” since I know there are true practicing Rastas around and I respect them for their beliefs.)

Join me in waiting for Ade’s next post.

Postscript

But wait, I was reading the Great Jolographer’s blog and what do you know, Scotland has worse jologs than we do (IMHO). Just read his post.

Check out these other posts:

1. “Jologs” and Pinoy rock
2. Beware of what you wear: more on “jologs”
3. Diskurso sa kulturang jologs versus the middle-class mindset ng Pinoy Web 2.0
4. Loverage 3 aftermath: Condemning the jologs
5. What’s our answer to Freebird?