Ode to a White Suburbanite Gangster

Backward hat facilitates oral sex

I can tell just by the way you wear a ball cap on your head sideways that you are a man of taste and refinement. The sideways cock of your hat lets women know that you are a devastating sexual animal, and the kind of man who leaves others of his gender feeling horribly inadequate. The sideways hat shows that you are not like the masses of uniformed conformists who dare only to wear their hats with the front in the front. The Man dictates to all that hats must point to the front, but you thumb your nose at convention; you don’t play by the rules. You are different. Besides, all your friends wear their hats to the side.

With your baggy pants you yell out to the world that you refuse to live within the arbitrary constraints of life—like waist sizes and inseams. When you walk it looks as if there is a five pound steaming loaf in your drawers, and who knows, maybe there is. Maybe there is, because you don’t live to be a slave to the restroom—that’s for bitches.

The heavy gold chain that you wear around your neck must have set you back at least three paychecks before you were fired from the landscaping company for breaking the leaf blower. The Mercedes Benz hood ornament on the chain tells the world that you are an outlaw who no longer has need for a landscaping job. You will make a fortune on the illicit sale of drugs as soon as someone will spot you a dime bag, which you will in turn sell to your little brother at a comfortable profit. You all about “doin’ bidness.”

But no one will spot you a dime bag, and your little brother already warned you that he will tell mom if you try to take the money he got for his birthday from your aunt. So you have no cash money, but what does that matter to a gangster like you? You, who are content to stand around for hours on a downtown street corner being loud and trying to act threatening. You and your homeys throw gang signs to each other until your bus comes. All gang activity is put on hold so that you can get home to watch Malcolm in the Middle because that shit cracks you up.

Much like your unconventional ways of dress, your speech blazes new trails far from the beaten path of grammar and syntax. Your speech is free of the normal rules that confine and limit language. There is beauty in your simple language of about 50 words and a series of unintelligible grunts that come from the new poetry of hip hop.

You are truly an original. You are the new American archetype, from the same mold as the cowboy—never mind that in reality the cowboy was a filthy, uneducated agricultural worker. You are exactly what America needs to regain our hegemony in world affairs. Stupid, violent, and inarticulate are the foundations of the character of the hip hop gangster. So many aspects of our culture promote these values that I am confident that we will soon be the dumbest and most violent society the world has ever known.