Crunk Parody

Does the word "crunk" have any meaning to most of my readers? I'm guessing no. Living in Brooklyn for three and a half years has exposed me to surprisingly little of the world of "crunk."

I do remember Norm using it occasionally a half dozen years ago as an adjective denoting something as negative.

Crunk is the title of the hip-hop music originating in the southern United States, the epicenter of which is now Atlanta. Hip-hop music used to be solely (in marketable acts) a bi-coastal entity, with the East-coast originators holding eminence with Run DMC, et al, then the West-coast style took over the mainstream with the gangsta-rap. Eventually mainstream hip-hop returned to the East-coast...Biggie Smalls and Wu-Tang...

Crunk developed in the dance clubs in Memphis, but the "capitol", as it is, is now Atlanta. In any case, crunk music is different from the west- and east-coast varieties of hip-hop in that the music used as the background is almost always a sample of fast, dance-club style beats, and the lyrics are usually nonsense or very simplistic, and tend to be shouted or yelled (with a heavy dose of repetition), rather than "rapped" with rhythm.

Many in the hip-hop community (outside the crunk universe) decry crunk and its lack of political messages, its glorification of ignorance and shiny baubles and things made of gold.

So...there's some background. Crunk is hip-hop with the lamest messages and the least original way to convey them. Little Jon is the biggest crunk star. He was parodied on "The Dave Chappelle Show," and if you're familiar with those sketches, you already have a base for what crunk is.

Now, here's a link for a crunk parody made by Bomani Armah, a poet and musician from Baltimore, called "Read a Book". Knowing what you know, if you've read this far, this might just be pretty funny. Many people don't get the video/single, calling Mr. Armah a prejudice butthole (in a more spicy fashion), while others find it scary because you can't necessarily tell that it's satire.

There is cursing in the song, so be warned (possibly too late), but the messages that our singer try to impart over a sampling of Beethoven's Fifth are things like, obviously, "read a book", as well as "raise your kids", "buy some land", and "wear deodorant" among the others. It is, to me living in a black community, a dangerous combination of poignant and humorous.