(the) American (Novel of)

20 Lynne d Johnson
I’m the carry out kid when my trigger’s in cock
I’ll be carryin’ out bodies stiff as a rock
Carryin’ out a million dollars in my pockets and hand
But I carry out orders from no man
’Cause anything you wanna do, I already did
You used to see me rock the house when you was a kid
But in my MC school, my class is packed
And tricks are for kids so I left your ass back.
In terms of the utilization of popular culture references, the MC
duo of Das Efx took the practice to exaggerated heights. In the song
“Jussummen” on the 1992 album Dead Serious, you can hear insanely
humorous lyrics, wrought with pop cultural references such as:
When I’m proper, I doobity dibble dabble wit my winnings
I drop a Def Jam as if my name was Russell Simmons
I’m funky, spunky, I clock bread like Wonder
I’ll jump and flex, make you think I’m Jane Fonda
I shiggity slam Rito, I’m laid back like Tito
I good gots nuff wisdom like Mama Montigo, amigo
Se Vente, yes I can samba
I’m known like Geraldo, shishi karamba
The jibbity jibba jammage, always with the hippity houser
I got crazy smarts like that kid Doogie Howser.
Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Melle Mel and The Furious Five,
and Das Efx all exhibit and exemplify that rap is a continuum of
African oral traditions. Robin D. G. Kelley, in Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional:
Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America, looks at signifying’s cousin,
the dozens, and further explains its significance in rap music: “The goal
of the dozens and related verbal games is deceptively simple: to get a
laugh. The pleasure of the dozens is not the viciousness of the insult,
but the humor, the creative pun, the outrageous metaphor.” 3
Playfulness and storytelling are central to rap music. In signifying,
MCs often sample (as in the technical-production aspect of hip-hop
music wherein a producer samples a drum track, bass line, or entire
rhythm from a previously recorded song) others’ lives and stories. The
playfulness of rapping can be heard in the wit and egotistical boasting
of the MC’s text. Kelley writes, “But what counts more than the story
is the “storytelling”—an emcee’s verbal facility on the mic, the creative