When They Say that Rap Is Like Poetry...

...the upcoming video is what they mean.

I'm breaking my silence very briefly (life is chaotic at the moment and I literally have not had time to blather on about things in the past few weeks! But I shall return shortly. Fret not) because, much like Blohan's Fornarina ad (Click. Pop. Fart. Fornarina), it came to my attention today that there are people--namely, again, the ever-savvy Miss Kate--still not familiar with the most genius blend of music and visuals ever committed to celluloid.

You may think that the term 'celluloid' is a bit antiquated, since YouTubery is now pretty much exclusively the province of the digital world. But when you view the video, you'll see that 'celluloid' is precisely the term that should be used as this video was clearly made using a shoulder-resting camcorder from 1987. 

But really, that's the least of our concerns. What is far more important is the central question being posed in this seminal piece of urban artistry: 

How the fuck do we posed to keep peace?

Jump the jump to find out

Ladies and gentlemen and gentlemen who sometimes wish they were ladies, I present to you TBaby.

TBaby comes from the hard-knock streets of my hometown, Detroit (if you consider whitebread suburbs full of girls named Alissa and boys named Clay Detroit), affectionately called "The D" by locals. TBaby is sort of like a latter day Mary J. Blige--tortured, independent and, most of all, elegant--who cannot forget the pain and strife of the mean streets of The D. Here, she shares with us her angst, her tragedy, and her triumph.

Moving, isn't it? 

The dulcet vocals, the powerhouse performance onscreen, TBaby's face glittering with emotion, her eyes darting around as if trying to find a place to center her pain--it all melds into an experience possessed of such poignance, such immediacy, that one can't help but be drawn into TBaby's evocative world. Particularly when the words to the song divert entirely from the beat of the music, rendering the song utterly nonsensical. It's an affecting parallel between TBaby's disconnect from her day-to-day--perhaps even the world at large--as she struggles to reconcile everyday life with the realities of merkin' and doin' time. 

And when, at the 2:46 mark, TBaby begins naming the names of those she loves--particularly that ni**a Sweet Pea--one can almost feel, palpably and tangibly, how very cold it is in the D. 

How the fuck do we posed to keep peace, indeed.

Comments

[C Baby]

Two things I know for sure:
1. It is so very cold in the D.
2. I'd like T Baby and Monica Conyers to collaborate, perhaps "Onward Christian Soldiers"?