. . . and I don't feel fine

"To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening." R.E.M.

Old man, get off of that stage

People try to put us d-down
(Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we get around
(Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold
(Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old
(Talkin' 'bout my generation)

-- The Who,
My Generation

When you're 20, a song can be profound because it captures -- perfectly -- your fear and loathing of the Establishment.

When you're somewhere on the far side of 50, that same song can be profound because it captures -- perfectly -- your fear and loathing of the Establishment. Which now is you.

I'm talkin' 'bout my generation. Or, in this case, the one immediately before mine -- not that my Baby Boom generation is any better.

Above, from 2009, we see Gary Puckett singing his 1968 hit "Young Girl" at The Villages, a massive central Florida retirement community. Now it's creepy enough when you have a 26-year-old warbling an ode to age-inappropriate relationships which, back in high school, we used to call "15 will get you 20."

TODAY, the same dynamic will get you nabbed in a police Internet sting. You know, like when the pretty young thing posing as a 14-year-old asks you if you brought the "protection," goes to the back of the house to "freshen up" and then Chris Hansen walks in and says "Why don't you have a seat right over there?"

When the guy who can't get that young girl out of his mind -- or his set list -- is 67 years old, we suddenly have reached the second act in the profundity of "Hope I die before I get old."

Failing that, perhaps I just can claw my eyes out before watching this again.

It's almost as if Pete Townshend, when he wrote "My Generation," subconsciously saw what was coming in a mere four decades. Like old men singing young men's songs about jail bait to an audience of aging hipsters in a Florida retirement village. Needless to say, I don't think we'll see The Who performing "Young Girl."

Sometimes, I wonder why don't we all f-fade away.

Talkin' 'bout my generation.

Simply '70s: Lady Gaga, meinen Arsch

How sad is American culture today?

Let's take a look at the score sheet: Marxist East Germany (1974) gives us Nina Hagen und Automobil. Capitalist America (2008) gives us a pale imitation, Lady Gaga und blecch.

Advantage, communism.


OF COURSE, the totalitarian state had its limits. Thus, the First Fraulein of Punk (der punken?) was not perfected until she fled the dictatorship of the proletariat for West Germany, and then spent time in pre-Thatcherite England amid the emergence of The Clash and the Sex Pistols.

Advantage, democratic socialism.

Above, we see Hagen during a 1979 TV appearance.


CALL ME when Lady Gaga has the guts to do this one.

Of course, back when I worked in Catholic radio, the sight of Nina Hagen singing a punk version of "Ave Maria" would have been cause for an epidemic of the vapors. Trust me, the good God-fearin' folk would be going all Rick Perry on the sacrilegious Kraut faster than Mother Angelica could say “Remember to keep us between your gas and electric bill.”

This is why I'm glad the good Lord got me out of there before I lost the rest of my faith. Trust me, it was close. (As always, your mileage may vary.)

But then you take a look at the translation of the German lyrics Hagen put to Franz Schubert's famous melody:

Ave Maria, Maria of whom I sing
We are asking you for mercy
For people who have already been waiting so long
Totally without hope
Totally without hope

See there, their unhappy lives
It hungers deep, from fear of death
Millions live here on the earth
Still yet, in greatest need

Ave Maria
Ave Maria, Saint Maria
Hear my prayers Maria
Where much suffering has already occurred
Why always does more hurt follow more hurt
Let the people have faith again
Let them understand and forgive
Then all peoples could become friends
And all the races could be brothers
Ave Maria

LIKE I SAID, let's see Gaga have the gu-guts to go onstage and belt out that one.

The frightening '50s

You want to know what those love letters in the sand said?

"I want to eat your brains!"

The Billboard: It wasn't fit reading for the faint of heart.

Music festivals, we may have a problem

Again.

Another outdoor concert, another thunderstorm, another stage collapse, another five people dead. The deaths at the Pukkelpop festival in Belgium late Thursday come as the death toll in Saturday's stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair rose to six.

The latest bad news comes from MSNBC:

The death toll from a fierce thunderstorm that mangled tents and downed trees and scaffolding at an open-air music festival in Belgium has risen to five, officials said Friday.

Hasselt Mayor Hilde Claes said that two more people died overnight. About 40 were injured, 11 of them seriously, she said.

Chicago-based band Smith Westerns was on stage when the structure collapsed around them, NBC station WMAQ reported. None of the band members were injured but their equipment was destroyed.

Organizers canceled the annual Pukkelpop festival near Hasselt, 50 miles east of Brussels. Buses and trains were pressed into service to transfer the 60,000 festivalgoers home.

The brief but violent thunderstorm on Thursday evening tore down concert tents, several trees and main stage scaffolding. Panicked concertgoers ran through fields of mud looking for shelter.

DO YOU think there might be a pattern here?

Do you think that the typical design of the typical outdoor stage might be inherently unstable and prone to collapse during weather not atypical for spring and summer -- outdoor-concert season?

Let's review. And note that I've probably missed some incidents from the past couple of years.



August 13, 2011. Indianapolis, Ind.



August 7, 2011. Tulsa, Okla.



July 17, 2011. Ottawa, Ontario.



July 6, 2010. Concho, Okla.



Aug. 1, 2009. Camrose, Alberta.

Socialized swing

Today, the tea party would call this "socialized music."

And if you recognize what "this" is, you're either over 80 or a certified geek.

(No, I am not over 80. Therefore, draw your own conclusion.)

Suffice it to say that during World War II, the government was in the music business in a big way with V-Discs, special recordings of popular music that went to the troops -- and which couldn't be sold or broadcast in this country.

Even during a full wartime mobilization, socialism in popular entertainment only went so far.

Today, this morale-boosting service likely would be performed by the military-industrial complex -- Halliburton Records, anyone? -- and would consist of bad knockoffs of popular acts. These compact discs, sold to the Pentagon for $99.95 per, would contain only eight songs and would tend to fly apart when played.

The first CD to be released would be Melvin Klingman's cover of Cee Lo Green's "F*** You."

Thank God we're not Charlie Sheen. Right?

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

Here I am, watching Charlie Sheen's psychotic break -- live on tape on Ustream -- and I can't turn away, which would be decent. No, instead, I'm sitting here transfixed as he rants and raves to a sycophantic Baba Booey, the Howard Stern sidekick and executive producer, resplendent in his bed hair, 12 o'clock-the-next-day shadow and snorting a cigarette like it's a line of Colombia's finest.

What I seem to be doing is watching a suicide for my own amusement. I -- we -- may be sicker than the man ranting for the camera about his "tiger blood."

In my defense, feeble as that might be, this is the cultural moment you can't ignore. I'm not entirely sure what that moment is yet, but I know Charlie Sheen is a metaphor for the rest of us -- for our Western society -- in some important manner.

HE'LL END UP blowing his own brains out live for the camera . . . on Ustream. We'll think it's "epic."

Because we're "winners."

Of course, this presupposes that "winner" has been defined down to "Someone who congratulates himself on how clever he is while thinking of ways to leverage a drug-damaged madman's prolonged public suicide into higher brand visibility and a significant profit-making opportunity."

Hey, Charlie! Lookin' good! Dead yet? No?

Duh . . . winning! Let me tweet that. Get the latest update up on my website.

Make sure to make fun of the screwing-a-porn-star thing. That's safe enough. Not that we object to that, necessarily. It's just we know we won't get the chance, so what the hell, you know?

Because we're winners. And Charlie Sheen is a deluded . . . loo-serrrr!


YEAH, Sheen is a loser. But that doesn't make us "winners." We just don't have the fame and the cash to be an "epic" loser.

Unless, of course, you step back and look at us on a societal level. Together, we're "epic." And Charlie Sheen, when you look at it that way, isn't just a train wreck, he's a metaphor. For us.

When you look at all the stats and all the trends and all the crime reports and all the lives of quiet desperation . . . when you look at all the undone husbands and Real Housewives of Exurbia . . . when you look at stressed-out, sexed-out, maxed-out teenagers who decide to check out in alarming numbers . . . when you look at bling and "haters" and paranoiac commentators . . . when you look at all that, Charlie Sheen starts to look a lot more normal.

This is not a good thing.

Carlos Estevez is us. All the immaturity of us, all the lust of us, all the superficiality of us, all the drinking and drugging and bacchanal of us, all the self-importance of us and all the pettiness and madness of us, writ small enough for some voyeur sitting in front of his computer screen to get his little mind around.

Charlie Sheen is a metaphor.

Charlie Sheen is a symptom.

The problem is us.

Duh . . . winning!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This just in: Charlie Sheen wins again!

Here's what we have so far, posted on MSNBC.com:

"After careful consideration, Warner Bros. Television has terminated Charlie Sheen’s services on "Two and a Half Men" effective immediately," the company announced in a statement.

A source familiar with the decision to terminate Sheen’s contract said that Sheen was informed of the news, “shortly before” the statement was released, at approximately 4:30 p.m. ET. At approximately 4 ET, Sheen tweeted, “#winning.”

"This is very good news," TMZ.com quoted the actor as saying. "They continue to be in breach, like so many whales. It is a big day of gladness at the Sober Valley Lodge because now I can take all of the bazillions, never have to look at whatshisc**k again and I never have to put on those silly shirts for as long as this warlock exists in the terrestrial dimension."

SEE . . . I told you he was winning!

Like, this means they totally will be paying him that $3 million an episode he was demanding to come back. Right? Right?

Oh . . . you mean in the TERRESTRIAL dimension. Well, no, then. In the terrestrial dimension, the warlock isn't doing so well.

Good thing it's not important. If it were, we'd have to define "winning" down to nothing at all.

Obeying the voices in our heads

Video streaming by Ustream
It's a fact that popular culture -- the boob tube, music, movies, celebrity worship -- drive and shape our larger Western culture.

TV gets into our brains -- puts ideas in there -- and our brains begin to think different things.

Movies tell us stories, and we respond to them, and our beliefs shift.

Music goes to our minds and our hearts, and it affects what we think and what we believe.

One way or the other.

Video streaming by Ustream
WHAT COULD go wrong?

What could go wrong with a culture that takes its cues from popular entertainment -- from Hollywood, from the music industry, from the celebrity biz -- when lots of those faces on the screen and voices in your iPod belong to people who are out of their f***ing minds?

Really, what could happen?

All right, let me take this tack . . . what can we learn from this?

I'll start. I'll tell you what I've learned from Charlie Sheen today.

I've learned that this is 42:38 of my life that I can never, ever get back. If you want to waste nearly 43 minutes of yours, that's your own affair. You've been warned.

Simply '70s: Bowie, unpainted

Apparently, this is David Bowie's first television performance, during a 1970 closed-circuit telecast of Britain's Ivor Novello Awards where his 1969 composition "Space Oddity" won a special award for originality.

This rarity shows what the man looked like when he looked like . . . a man. And before advancing age forced him to ditch androgyny because, frankly, Old Guy in Drag doesn't exactly suggest dollar bills busting out of one's bustier.

Hip-hop all the way to hell

Culture precedes politics . . . and everything else.

Music both produces and is produced by a culture.

A culture centered on titty bars -- music deemed stripper friendly before it can burrow into your children's brains -- is no culture at all. It is an anticulture.

NPR was on the anticulture beat Thursday. I'm not so sure the reporter would have been this bemused had she known what she was dealing with. Then again, maybe the NPR report is part of the anticulture just as much as titty-bar-tested hip-hop singles -- I don't know.

JUDGE for yourself:

Hip-hop producers have been breaking records in Atlanta strip clubs for a long time now — at least as far back as 2003, when Lil Jon was doing it with songs like, "Get Low." He's been quoted as saying "the butts don't lie," meaning if the strippers can dance to it, the song has potential. In Tamara Palmer's book, Country Fried Soul: Adventures in Dirty South Hip Hop, Lil Jon says "Get Low" had a slow start: the dancers "didn't feel it at first." But eventually it grew on them and several dancers at different strip clubs asked the DJs to play it during their stage sets. "Get Low" took off — in mainstream clubs and on radio and TV across the country.

What attracted us to this story was that the strippers seemed to have a lot of power in the hip-hop hit-making process. Obviously they are the focal point when a new song is being played. As DJ Scream told me, "There's nothing like seeing a woman dance to a record. There's records that I hate and when I see a woman dancing I think, 'It's not that bad.'"

Another reason strip clubs are the perfect place to test out a song is the clientele. In Atlanta, I'm told nobody thinks twice about going to strip clubs for a bite to eat or just a night out. They're so popular that some of the dancers are treated like local celebrities.

On any given night you might find record label execs and radio programmers, other professionals, college students and couples watching the booty shake.

The dancers have an incentive to make a song exciting: They get paid when the patrons 'make it rain,' or throw money on the stage while they're dancing. I asked Sweet Pea, one of the main dancers in the Snack Pack at Magic City, if she'd ever refused to dance to a song she didn't like. She made it sound as though that just doesn't happen. "If it's got a good beat, you can dance to it," she said. In other words, even if she doesn't think a song has potential, she'll give it a try because she knows the folks from the record label will make it rain extra hard when she's dancing to their song.

As for the strip club DJs, they get paid when the dancers tip them at the end of the night. So it's in their best interest to keep the dancers happy and play whatever songs they request. Record label executives usually spend a lot of money on those nights they're trying to break a record, not just on the dancers but on drinks and food. When the song is working, and the dancers are happy, it might rub off on the patrons who — it's hoped — will spend even more money. So the strip club owners fully embrace the process. Sweet Pea says, "It's like a little promotional circle." One DJ told me, "We're all just hustling each other."

ANTICULTURES CANNOT long endure. They're either going to collapse utterly of their own societal, dysfunctional weight, or they're going to fold like a cheap tent before some opportunistic onslaught. See Visigoths, The.

Decline and fall -- one way or the other.

Laugh if you like. The ancient Romans did.

Using Auto-Tune for good, not evil

You know how I said this was the one awesome use of Auto-Tune ever? I was wrong.

This one is better. In fact, this is the best thing to come out of Kansas City since Big Joe Turner and the jump-starting of Karrin Allyson's jazz career.

In fact, this is to awesome what the Kansas City Royals are to suck. Trading Zack Greinke? Really? Two words: Johnny Damon.

Anyway, as I said back in September. . . record labels, you are so over. Buhbye!

The hit record labels missed

Here is the story of a crime that led to an impassioned soliloquy from the victim's brother that led to the most awesomest use of Auto-Tune ever (OK, the one awesome use of Auto-Tune ever) that led to one of the awesomest viral videos ever that led to an iTunes single that led to . . . the Billboard Hot 100.

Outstanding!

Is this a great country or what? I mean, great if you don't have to live in the projects, which I'm hoping Antoine Dodson's family will be able to leave with all the money to be made on the "Bed Intruder Song."

Oh . . . I hereby pronounce record labels irrelevant. That is all.

For the record. . . .

Once upon a time, when young folk bought these things called "LPs" for $3.98 at a retail establishment called a "record store," you actually got stuff.

You got a 12-inch vinyl disc with grooves on the surface -- the "record," which was played on a "phonograph." It came in a large cardboard sleeve with artwork on the front and back covers. This artwork was large enough to see, as was the track listing on the rear.

If during one of your treks to the "record store" -- in, say, 1972 -- you happened to purchase Melanie's "Stoneground Words" album ("album" is what we often called "LPs," or "records"), you also got lyrics (again, large enough to actually read) on the "inner sleeve," which held the "vinyl" within the "sleeve."

And for your $3.98, you also got a fold-up display of many photos of Melanie, suitable for hanging on the wall of your room because, frankly, Melanie was a babe.

Can you get all that with iTunes, bunkie?

I didn't think so.

The eyes of Texas . . . saw too much

In the immortal words of Bart Simpson . . . "HAAAAAAA haaaaaaaah!"

The source of my glee is this story in The Dallas Morning News:

Erykah Badu took her clothes off, but Dallas officials have decided it is the city that feels stripped of its dignity.

After consulting with city prosecutors, the Dallas Police Department has decided that it will issue a disorderly conduct citation to the Grammy-winning artist for getting naked in Dealey Plaza last month.

Initially, police said they had no complaints about the artist's taping of a video in which she disrobed in public, and had no plans to pursue any charges. But after the video went viral Monday, the subsequent brouhaha made national headlines and became the subject of talk radio and the blogosphere.

Dallas Police Deputy Chief Mike Genovesi, who oversees the special investigations division, said Friday that he expects that citation – about as serious as a traffic ticket – will be issued next week.

In a news release, police state that Badu had disrobed in a public place without regard to other individuals and children who were in close proximity.

Genovesi said police had one witness come forward Thursday, and she told authorities that she "observed Ms. Badu remove her clothing on the public street. The witness had two small children with her and was offended."

Not that there aren't more than a hundred thousand witnesses if you factor in the people who have watched the many versions of the video posted on YouTube.

In the video, for the song "Window Seat," Badu strips down as she strolls toward the location where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. A rifle sound, edited into the video, rings out and she collapses to the pavement as bystanders watch.

SOMEHOW, I don't think the court will buy "EVOLVING" as a defense for gettin' nekkid and actin' crazy in a public place. Score one for "groupthink."

The ticket carries a $500 fine. But the satisfaction from seeing this loon get charged is priceless.

A window seat in Amsterdam Dealey Plaza

There's a lot I could say about Erykah Badu's tasteless new video for her unremarkable new single, "Window Seat."

But it would just be repeating what the flabbergasted hosts of The Early Show said on CBS television this morning. I show the CBS report instead of the video itself because -- in today's music-promotion economy -- embedding her video is exactly what Badu would have me do.

When you're protesting "groupthink" by flashing your ta-tas and your booty and your noonie in Dallas -- in Dealey Plaza, no less, in front of small children as you make some nutso-licious attempt to "telepathically" communicate your good intent to them -- well, Cap, they ain't much you can say about that that does justice to the bat-s*** craziness of it all.

SO I WILL just say this: Badu isn't an individualist so much as she's a Looney Tunes, antisocial exhibitionist.

She's the Fernwood Flasher making a political statement at the expense of a murdered president. I hope a Kennedy kicks her ass.

Until that happens, however, somebody hand the woman a trench coat.

And make sure she keeps the damned thing buttoned.

The Sex Pistols were right

If EMI couldn't promote the Sex Pistols back when record labels were record labels, music was music and no one knew what "downloading" was, except that it sounded vaguely dirty, is it any surprise the company didn't know what to do with the latest OK Go video?

Back in 1977, the Sex Pistols had the last laugh on EMI, and now OK Go is ready to do a little giggling itself. All the way to the bank, now that the group gets to keep all the profits.

YOU HEARD it first on NPR and All Things Considered:

Since the advent of streaming Internet video outlets such as YouTube, bands and record labels have repeatedly been at odds over how to address the issue that, when a user watches a video online, no money is generated for the label or the band. In an interview with All Things Considered host Robert Siegel, OK Go singer-songwriter-guitarist Damian Kulash says that he — and the rest of the band — view videos not as a potential source of income, but rather as another creative outlet.

"This is all sort of part of the creative project for us," he says. "I mean, the animating passion for us is to get up and chase down our craziest ideas, and sometimes those are filmic, and sometimes they're purely sounds."

The band's label, EMI, didn't see things the same way. In an effort to maintain some control over the dissemination of the music video, EMI denied listeners the ability to embed it on their own Web sites and blogs. After receiving a deluge of complaints, the band eventually persuaded EMI to enable embedding. Soon afterward, however, OK Go parted ways with EMI to start its own record label, Paracadute.

WHAT ESCAPES bloated corporate collections of shortsighted moneygrubbers like EMI is this: The OK Go video isn't a revenue stream, it's free advertising.

The cost for putting it on YouTube? Zero.

The cost of producing it for the band? I'll bet it wasn't much, considering they got State Farm to sponsor it.

The promotional dividends from having it embedded on websites and blogs (like this one) everywhere? Limitless.

YOU WANT to know what's priceless, though? From now on, OK Go doesn't have to get nickeled-and-dimed by a record label that didn't know what to do with the Sex Pistols back in the day, and hasn't learned a damned thing in the intervening 33 years.



P.S.: One more thing. . . . Because of the promotional value of the video and the All Things Considered piece, I'm going to iTunes and buying the album. And the only credit EMI can take for that is indirectly, via the law of unintended consequences.

See no future, pay no rent. . . .

Well, if this isn't a sign of the times, I don't know what is.

EMI is selling the Abbey Road studios, which it established in 1929 and which the Beatles made famous in the 1960s. From the Financial Times:

It was not immediately clear whether EMI would sell the Abbey Road brand name along with the property, but one media lawyer said: “The brand is worth more than the building . . . anybody who wants the studios will want the brand.”

EMI bought the house at number 3 Abbey Road for £100,000 in 1929 and transformed it into the world’s first custom-built recording studios.

In 1931, Sir Edward Elgar used studio one to record Land of Hope and Glory with the London Symphony Orchestra and by World War II Abbey Road was used for propaganda recordings for the British government and BBC radio broadcasts.

The Beatles put the studios on the map, using it for 90 per cent of their recordings between 1962 and 1969 and naming their final album Abbey Road. EMI used the studios for last year’s release of remastered Beatles albums.

Pink Floyd recorded Dark Side of the Moon at the studios, which have also been used by Radiohead, the Manic Street Preachers, Travis and Blur.

However, the studios have faced cheaper competition from recording facilities in other countries, and technological advances allowing artists to record using only a laptop computer have made it harder for labels to justify owning expensive recording infrastructure.

“What you have is a very, very expensive piece of heritage. If an artist goes to a label and asks to record at Abbey Road they will be met with maniacal laughter,” the media lawyer said.

MAYBE Paul McCartney saw the future coming. Or maybe all media is now run as if by shady rock 'n' roll managers:

Out of college, money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money's gone, nowhere to go
Any jobber got the sack
Monday morning, turning back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go
Oh, that magic feeling
Nowhere to go
Nowhere to go

Old school

Avant le déluge. . . .

Avant le déluge, our popular culture regularly turned out beautiful songs about bittersweet affairs of the heart.

Exhibit A would be this "standard," recorded by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Lou Rawls . . . and on and on. The beautiful version above was by the late Phyllis Hyman:

Here's That Rainy Day (1953)
Music: Jimmy Van Heusen
Lyrics: Johnny Burke

Maybe I should have saved
those left-over dreams
funny, but here's that rainy day!

Here's that rainy day
they told me about
and I laughed at the thought
that it might turn out this way!

Where is that worn-out wish
that I threw aside,
after it brought my lover near?

Funny how love becomes
a cold rainy day
funny, that rainy day is here!

Funny how love becomes
a cold rainy day
funny . . . that rainy day is here!

APRÉS LE DÉLUGE, a marginalized few turn out work as beautiful as Jimmy Van Heusen's and Johnny Burke's, but in today's popular anti-culture, the vulgar rutting of barbarians has proven much more popular.

I say this as someone who was an early adopter of the Sex Pistols back in the day. Alas, Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious were George and Ira Gershwin, compared with vulgarian cretins such as Yo Gotti, who's moving up the hip-hop charts with pop-culture diarrhea such as this:

5-Star Bitch (2009)
Vile misogynistic illiteracy: Yo Gotti

If ya credit score high
And ya nails stay fly
If ya juice box wet
And ya head sumin fly
Dats a 5 star bitch
I wanna 5 star bitch
I need a 5 star bitch
I wanna 5 star bitch

I am top notch nigga
I do grade A s***
I'm a keep it 100
I wanna 5 star bitch
Talkin mouth game serious and can ride dat d***
Shawty walk like she talk like she kno dat she da s***
You dnt live witcha momma plus u moved up out da hood
Couple years on ya own and ya still doin good
You ain't fightin in da club u ain't on dat stupid s***
You ain't worried he got money you ain't on dat groupie s***
But still money make ya c**
Gotcha swagg game together
Gucci dis louie dat u gotcha bag game together
Gotta mean pump game and a sick shoe fetish
Say you left ya last nigga cause his ass was too petty

If ya baby daddy left ya
Raised ya kids on ya own
And you need a real nigga put my numba in ya phone
If you never left da city
Neva been up outta MEMPHIS
I can be dat thug genie
Give ya three lil wishes
She a stone cold freak
She can get a nigga right
She can cook she can clean
Know how to treat a nigga right
Dats a 5 star bitch
Red bone so thick
Long hair don't care
Dereon outfit
Go to church every sunday
She a teacher at da school
Ya did it big last night
I had her drunker than a fool
Say she had to call in she could'nt even go to work
Told her come and let me put a couple hundreds in her purse

You went to school to be a nurse
She's a AKA
Shawty fresh up out da hood but went to TENNESSEE STATE
And friend jus as fine swere to god I ain't lyin
She a DELTA she be throwin dat dynasty sign I
Pay for both of they tuition
Pay for both of they beautician
Coogi dis
Bb dat
And she luv tru religion
Dats a 5 star chick cause her future so bright
She gotta a cool sense of humor
And her attitude right
She go to real estate school
She do hair on da side
Went to school to practice law
I need her on my side
Dats a 5 star chick you a fool not to keep her
I'm a show u what to do if I eva get to meet her

BE STILL, my heart. Forgive me if I don't have the stomach to show you the video.

Somewhere in Chicago -- where the 'hood is descending into real anarchy, mayhem and murder -- some hip-hop radio station likely is promoting efforts to "stop the violence," taking shout-outs to the dearly (and violently) departed and running public-service announcements about HIV testing.

They're "keepin' it real." And then it's back to the jamz, and a little (bleepified) Yo Gotti action.

Just another day on the mean streets, where the first ass to get capped was Irony's.