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Crackaz in da Hood

Or, “Gangstas of the Corn.”

So – I’m driving home, having just picked up Nathanael from daycare.  It’s a nice spring afternoon in Lincoln.  The air is crisp and clean, with just a residual hint of fresh, cool moisture from the previous night’s rain showers.  Dappled sunlight plays across the office buildings, their windows reflecting heaps of white clouds against the brilliant blue sky.  Nate’s had a great day playing with his friends, and is busily telling me about it in his usual, adorable jabber. In one tiny hand he happily clutches his latest masterpiece – an abstract crayon composition on construction paper.

But something is amiss.  It begins with a faint, buzzing rattle coming from the dashboard.  Soon a low, rhythmic pulse courses through the frame of the car seat.  From there it travels up my spinal column until I can feel the throb in my teeth, particularly the filling in a lower left molar – a monument to a fondly-remembered root canal.  And then I can feel it in my entire skull, flashes of light skipping across my vision as tiny bolts of electrochemical energy arc erratically along the surface of my pulsating cerebral cortex.

Is this it?  Is this the big aneurism I’ve always feared?

No, it’s worse.  It’s a kid driving up next to me in a late model Grand Am with his windows down and the stereo blasting hip-hop at decibels that are showing up on satellite imagery as seismic anomalies.  He’s seated almost impossibly low behind the wheel – so low that he must be using an elaborate network of mirrors to see over the dashboard.  He’s wearing a sleeveless basketball jersey that definitely looks like high grade silk.  A baseball cap with severely flattened brim sits deliberately askew on his close-cropped head at an odd (though no doubt precisely measured) thirty-degree angle over his right eye.  Both jersey and hat are so brilliantly white that they bounce the sunlight back with painful intensity, making his pasty, early-spring Midwestern pallor look like he’s sporting a savage tan.  A generic tribal tattoo circles one well-toned bicep, no doubt indicating his social status in some indigenous or inner-city sub-culture.  A razor-thin line of beard swoops along his jawline, forking towards the chin and upper lip with a precision that could only be achieved by high-end military targeting lasers.

To complete the ensemble, his mouth is pursed in the trademark “Eminem sneer” – a look that must have taken hours balancing a turd on his upper lip in front of a mirror to perfect.  Coupled with the hooded-eye, deadpan look on the rest of his face, he gives the impression of being truly pissed off (c.f. Rockin’ the Suburbs, by Ben Folds).  Maybe not as pissed off as the guy on the car stereo, who’s discoursing at length about what he intends to do to those rival thugs and law enforcement personnel who get in his way, but still pretty angry all the same.

Yup – you’re hardcore, all right.  You are definitely street.  You sure are one tough *&^%$#@ gangsta.  Um . . . well, except for the fact that you’re also a total corn-shucking cracker, kiddo.

Look, you can be forgiven for not knowing that your pedigree can be traced to Vanilla Ice, who made a laughingstock out of himself back in the 80′s.  You were probably still pooping your Pampers at the time, if in fact you had already even been born.  You can also be forgiven for admiring Eminem who, whatever my personal opinion of his music might be, is at least authentically “street.”  What you cannot be forgiven for is the fact that you are trying very hard to graft a hip-hop thug image onto your pseudo-urban life in a smallish and relatively comfortable midwestern community.

In all likelihood, the closest you’ve come to a hardcore encounter with gangsta culture was while playing Grand Theft Auto on your PS3.  The closest you’ve probably come to a serious confrontation with law enforcement was the time you cried yourself to sleep in the back of a police car after getting picked up on a DUI on prom night.  The fact that you’ve crammed a sound system capable of servicing a 5000-seat concert arena into your car does not make you street.  The fact that you acquired your urban drawl from the iPod you got on your birthday does not make you street.  The fact that you learned how to flash gang signs by studying rap videos on daytime MTV does not make you street.  Even Sesame Street is more street than you are.  At least that show was originally created with the educational needs of actual inner-city, low-income kids in mind.  You, in contrast, are more like Fraggle Rock with a slightly bad attitude.

On the other hand, if you are a member of a historically oppressed and economically disadvantaged minority, and/or striving to escape or transcend – by any means necessary – urban living conditions that would make your current circle of friends, family and neighbors cringe in abject fear . . . well, you have a shot at being street.

If you’re still in doubt about the authenticity of your urban persona, here’s a quick and easy test that will clear up any uncertainty:

1)  Put on your best urban wear, drape on the bling and head to Trenton, New Jersey.
2)  At approximately 11:00 p.m. on a Friday, begin walking due east from the corner of South Broad Street and East State Street.  (Extra credit:  Use your best pimp swagger as you walk – the one you perfected on the mean streets of Lincoln, Nebraska.)
3)  Continue for three blocks.  Then stop and answer the question below:

Test Question #1: Are you still alive? (Pick one of the following responses)

YES – Congratulations, you might have some street in you after all!  But keep in mind that the neighborhood you just strolled through is like the Hamptons compared to South Central L.A., where the real thugs live.  Now proceed directly to the emergency room.  Those stab wounds should heal in a month or so if they didn’t perforate any major organs.

NO – Thank you for playing, but you are definitely not street.  There are no consolation prizes for our contestants, alas, but we will be happy to pour a libation of Tequila over your grave at the funeral.  You know – gangsta-style.

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