I know what the caged bird sings

When you can put "rapper" and "Denham Springs, La." in the same sentence, you know things just aren't going to end well.

And when the rapper in question is a fella named "O G Smoov" . . . one of whose "hits" is "Dat's My Ho" . . . released on Pure Dope Records . . . which has a music video shot with a cell phone . . . you have just arrived at the intersection of hip-hop and irony.

Not to mention just damn funny.


I know Channel 9 in Baton Rouge had some fun with the story:

Not a 'Smoov' move by local rapper; arrested, faces prison time

A rapper from the Denham Springs area has been arrested after police executed a search warrant and found 454 grams of Marijuana, three doses of Alprazalom and a .25 caliber hand gun.

The search warrant was executed after the rapper, Keith Johnson, AKA 'O G Smoov' recently released a rap recording entitled "Still Smoov Till I Lose Life." The photo on the CD cover shows O G Smoov holding a handgun while kneeling over the bloodied body of another man.

Johnson, who was convicted of shooting a woman in 1991 and convicted of numerous counts of illegal drug possession charges over the last 20 years, cannot legally possess a firearm.

Keith Johnson, 39, has been charged with one count of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, one count of possession of Alprazolam, one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and one count of possession of a firearm with a controlled dangerous substance.

I'M SURE Mr. Smoov is explaining to his attorney that it's a bad rap.

With that, the world wholeheartedly agrees.

Wait . . . he means the criminal charges? Oh. Well, no, chances are he's screwed on that account.

In any event, I'll bet I know the last thing this caged bird wants to hear his cellmate singing:

Bustin' a cap in the motherf****** culture

This is about a rap concert. Of course it's NSFW.

The review of rapper Tyga's Omaha show came in before it was even over -- a "hater" threw a garbage can on the stage.

As you can see above, Tyga be hatin' on some motherf****** bad press from "niggas" in the motherf****** front row. And he was going to take it outside after doing one more motherf****** song for his fans at the Sokol Auditorium in south Omaha.

Nobody ever accused rappers of being smart -- certainly nobody reading today's Omaha World-Herald:

National touring rapper Tyga said “haters” started a fight during his Omaha concert Monday night that ended in street gunfire and two of his people shot.

He could be right.

According to people at the show, an Omaha rapper's grudge over being barred from the Sokol Hall stage might have fueled a fight between members of the audience and Tyga.

What began with threats erupted into an all-out fight toward the end of Tyga's performance. Water bottles, then trash cans were thrown on stage.

Tyga returned the challenge with racial slurs and an invitation to meet him outside after the show.

Someone did - armed with a gun, according to Omaha police.

A black sedan followed the Young Money performers' tour van and shot and injured two of the ten occupants, Omaha police said.

Sochitta Sal, 19, better known by her rap name Honey Cocaine, was shot in the arm. Derrick Lowe, 20, of New York, was grazed on his hip.

The van's occupants called 911 about 11:30 p.m. to report that they had been shot at and were being chased. They drove to the fire station at 16th and Jackson Streets for help. Police later found bullet casings near 16th Street and Deer Park Boulevard, a little less than a mile from the Sokol at 13th and Martha Streets.

ANOTHER NIGHT in what passes for the life of the hip-hop anticulture. You know, the one rotting away what now passes for American culture like metastasizing cancer cells.

If you look at these cancer cells under the microscope, you see that they look just like fools weighted down with ridiculous jewelry and with their butts hanging out of their saggy-ass pants. According to leading research oncologists, they derive nourishment from the vulgar and the inane -- and preferably a combination of the two, such as Tyga's rap "Orgasm":

she gon have a f***** orgasm
she gon have a f***** orgasm
uhh, beat, beat it like the melody
she gon bend it over, hands on her knees
she gon have a f***** orgasm
she gon have a f***** orgasm
put it deep where she tellin me
rock her like a baby she gon fall asleep
after she had a f***** orgasm
she had a f***** orgasm
uhh

NO, THAT'S all you're getting of that. The above excerpt was either the high point or the low point of "Orgasm." Take your pick.

Uhh.

I'd like to think Tyga's "haters" shot up his van due to some psychotic break brought on by grievously offended artistic and cultural sensibilities.

Probably not, though.

Uhh.

We lost Gil Scott-Heron

Oh, hell, no.

Not Gil Scott-Heron.

Oh, hell, no.

We lost Gil Scott-Heron.

Dead at 62, died today.

Oh, hell, no.


IT CAN'T be true. But it is, says NPR:

A friend, Doris C. Nolan, who answered the telephone listed for his Manhattan recording company, said he died in the afternoon at St. Luke's Hospital after becoming sick upon returning from a European trip.

"We're all sort of shattered," she said.

Scott-Heron's influence on rap was such that he sometimes was referred to as the Godfather of Rap, a title he rejected.

"If there was any individual initiative that I was responsible for it might have been that there was music in certain poems of mine, with complete progression and repeating `hooks,' which made them more like songs than just recitations with percussion," he wrote in the introduction to his 1990 collection of poems, "Now and Then."

He referred to his signature mix of percussion, politics and performed poetry as bluesology or Third World music. But then he said it was simply "black music or black American music."

"Because Black Americans are now a tremendously diverse essence of all the places we've come from and the music and rhythms we brought with us," he wrote.

Scott-Heron recorded the song that would make him famous, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," in the 1970s in Harlem. He followed up that recording with more than a dozen albums, initially collaborating with musician Brian Jackson. His most recent album was "I'm New Here," which he began recording in 2007 and was released in 2010.

YOU WANT to know why Gil Scott-Heron rejected the "godfather of rap" label?

It's because rap could not live up to him, not live up to him, not live up to him not live up to him not live up to him not live up to him. . . .

Rest in peace.

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.

Genius.

Viral.

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.

Yo, Kanye! Your time is up

I think we've had enough from Kanye West, don't you?

Now off with him, then.

Oh, and I'd like to associate myself with these remarks from Pink, who tried to kick Kanye's ass, but was stopped by security:

"'Kanye West is the biggest piece of s*** on earth. Quote me.'"

Oh, and because this is a low-rent, no-class fool we're discussing, note that the first two videos are filled with off-color language. Why couldn't they just let Pink at him, eh?

Barbara Norton: My ace in the hole

The next time some overly content (yet somehow angry) Louisianian writes to tell me I revel in trashing the Gret Stet and am just a bitter expatriate, I now can invoke the Barbara Norton defense.

Rep. Barbara Norton of Shreveport is the Einstein who invited her godson, the potty-mouthed rapper (Is that too blatantly redundant?) Hurricane Chris, to perform a "clean" version of his hit "Halle Berry (She's Fine)" on the floor of the Louisiana House. And when that didn't go over so well among relatively sane people from sea to shining sea -- Thanks, YouTube! -- the solon defended her boneheaded move by saying, basically, ain't no big thang, 'cause you can't make Louisiana look no worse than it look already.

Uh . . . oh, yes, you can! And Rep. Norton was just the woman to do it -- twice, now.

I BELIEVE Norton's exact quote was: "They been making a joke out of Louisiana and politics for even before I became in the House of Representatives so they're not just now start making a joke out of Louisiana.

"Louisiana has always been a joke."

I rest my defense. One, I'm not a Louisiana legislator and, two, I don't go around telling TV reporters "Louisiana has always been a joke" without at least some elaboration or qualification.

Oh . . . and I usually make at least some sense.

The articulate legislator also introduced House Resolution 134 to "commend Hurricane Chris of Shreveport for his outstanding musical accomplishments and does hereby extend to him best wishes for continued success and happiness in all of his future endeavors."

Because, after all, says the proud godmama, "It's not out there shooting, it's not robbing, it's not killing, it's not selling guns. Let me ask you this right here -- what do you think about the uh, the uh, congressman in Washington who they just said on TV about going out and having a marrited affair?"

Marrited? Uh . . . OK.

Something tells me that, like the rest of us, Halle Berry isn't much amused.

HAT TIP: My Bossier

It was necessary that this happened. . . .

Because you should never have to pay $275 to look like wussy versions of The Ramones.

It's Hammertime!

Barbarism to a phat beat

In the first Dark Ages, the barbarians were the uncouth louts who showed up at the city gates -- or, rather, stormed the city gates -- to kill, rob, rape and pillage. Fatally weakened by the rot within, even mighty Rome could not hold off the Hun armies.

In these new Dark Ages, the barbarians don't need to storm anything. They're homegrown, they're mainstream, and they're a vital part of the "bread and circuses" distracting a postmodern empire as everything falls apart. But for this multitasking generation, our "entertainment" -- in the name of lawyers, guns and money -- also represents the s*** which has hit the fan.

And now -- as the minstrel Reuters regales us -- one tribe of well-paid savages stands accused of waylaying an unsuspecting teen wearing the mark of a rival tribe, and is thus being sued for a share of their plunder:

The lawsuit filed by James Rosemond and his mother, Cynthia Reed, says Universal Music Group -- owned by Vivendi SA -- and its labels Interscope Records, G-Unit Records and Shady Records, bear responsibility for the assault because they encourage artists to pursue violent, criminal lifestyles.

The lawsuit also names 50 Cent -- whose real name is Curtis Jackson -- Violator Management, Violator CEO Chris Lighty, Tony Yayo, a rapper and a member of 50 Cent's G-Unit hip hop group, and Lowell Fletcher, an employee of Yayo.

All defendants declined to comment.

Rosemond says he was assaulted on a Manhattan sidewalk in March 2007 by four men including Yayo and Fletcher.

The lawsuit claims Rosemond was targeted because he was wearing a T-shirt by Czar Entertainment, a management company that represents The Game. The Game is a former G-Unit rapper who fell out with the group and had become a rival rapper.

PEOPLE OFTEN SPEAK of the "culture of death" solely in terms of widespread, legalized abortion. I think that's wildly inaccurate. Abortion is just a symptom. As is the gangsta cultcha for kicks and profit.

The "culture of death" is all about what we -- as free people in a free society -- have come to value, of our own free will. And in so many ways, for such a variety of souls, it is death we crave.

It is death we sow. It is death we reap.

Somewhere, Atilla the Hun surveys what's left of Western civilization, shakes his head and ruefully observes, "And they called me a barbarian."