Back Dat Azz Up to 1999

In 1999 I had identified as a fan and consumer of hip hop for almost two years. It was a lot of Bad Boy and No Limit, some of it bad, some of it good, and some great. In those days we had to buy plastic discs from stores, and so I own No Way Out, Harlem World, Life After Death, Ghetto D (which I used as research for a report on crack),



Unpredictable, Da Last Don, Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told and Top Dogg.

I used Sky's the Limit for a poetry presentation in 7th grade. It was edgy at the time to introduce profanity in the classroom, especially as something as revered as poetry. It was also the most meaningful example of poetry in my own life so completely appropriate.



If pressed I can probably remember a handful of movies I watched and games I played in middle school, but it is hip hop I am constantly drawn back to, at least insofar as Bad Boy and No Limit are hip hop. According to This American Life feature on middle school, what we learn in those ages forms the foundation of who we are as adults. So while Marion Strok can still perform tap dances she learned as a middle schooler, I can recite the 10 Crack Commandments, a manual, a step-by-step booklet, for you to get to get your game on track, not your wig pushed back.

I begin to suspect that something was up with the 1999 release of "Back Dat Azz Up" by Juvenile. The lyrical content wasn't particularly dangerous or exciting, nor did it discuss any of the issues I knew concerned Black Americans like growing up in poverty, dead homies, or the flow of capital within crack production and distribution circles. The song is about asses. Asses are what the video should be about, not the song! Most offensive of all, the song employed a rhyme scheme--or more accurately did not--where each line ended with "yeah." It felt like the rap equivalent of reaching into ones coat and coming back with a middle finger.



Being a life-long hip hop fan is a lot like standing on a trap door: the knowledge that any given week a particularly egregious example of hip hop might hit, and undermine the fan's attraction to the whole genre. For me, Back Dat Azz Up was the first time. The song was such an earache I began to wonder, is it satire? Could this be a caricature of the music I loved?

It's already absurd for any middle class American white to listen to music of political and economic struggle, and so the tonal line is thin between hip hop music which mocks itself and its listener, or affirms its own worth. Allow me to explain this ambitious claim. In most art, the actual audience is usually the intended audience, and the thematic messages are likely to arrive safely. This safety gives the artist room to play with expectations, such as through satire. But when the actual audience is largely across a confusing cultural gap from the intended audience, as is the case with hip hop, playing with expectation becomes a volatile experiment (given that record executives know the majority of hip hop is purchased by young white suburbanites, intended audience probably deserves quote marks). The potential thematic takeaway by the audience may not be the intended one at all. To a degree all art has this same dynamic, and that's what makes it so fun and provoking. But this dynamic also impedes the communication between the sender and receiver, which is why the tonal line is so thin for hip hop.

What is the thematic takeaway of Back Dat Azz Up? The question itself is parody. The answer? Also parody. This is the problem of being a hip hop fan. The only space in which Back Dat Azz Up can be considered art is that Juvenile knew what he was doing. And so, the way a Christian believes in Christ, one must believe Juvenile knew what he was doing in the face of evidence he did not, or else redefine what hip hop is. I think that's what most people do.

In perceiving Back Dat Azz Up's failure I got a sense of how I might be the caricature, not the song; after all, I was listening to it. So in an ironic way, Back Dat Azz Up really redefines the genre. Its critique of the listener delivers the reminder that hip hop doesn't belong to or represent me. I might be a fan, but after Back Dat Azz Up I became a bit more conscientious of my role as a consumer and their roles as artists. What a sobering aural flip-off.

Drake's new album is good. In one of his songs he pays homage to how successful Juvenile's satire was. It feels less like "fuck you" and more like "ooh yeah." Both, somehow, are hip hop. Have a listen: