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National Features >
SF Weekly
A blogger steals someone else's life story and calls it her own.
By Ashley Harrell
Westword
How William Orr's quest for better, cheaper gas became a crime.
By Alan Prendergast
Miami New Times
The family of a dead judge blames a creeping fungus in the federal courthouse.
By Tim Elfrink
The Pitch
I worked at Kmart with John McCain's director of strategy.
By Alan Scherstuhl
Young Jeezy
Published on April 23, 2008
Somewhere between the early tough-guy posturing of Ice-T and Schooly D, Tupac's Thug Life manifesto, and a slew of late-'90s/early-'00s Pac lites (less nuanced, less talented, more steroided—Fitty and Ja Rule chief among them), the big, bad black man archetype went from traditional to explosive to completely ridiculous over the span of rap's two-decade reign on the charts. Similarly, the fascination with moving weight on scale with Scarface has followed a predictable path from simplicity to complexity to commercial exploitation: from NWA and its ilk's casual descriptions of moving eight balls during the onset of the crack epidemic to Raekwon's intricate Mafioso metaphors ("Somehow the rap game reminds me of the crack game"), we have come full circle with a Top 40 radio playlist littered with a slew of studio gangstas bragging about pushing impossible numbers at impossible prices. Young Jeezy seems like a sort of unholy hybrid of these two clichés; so thump your chest, ship another ki, and dance to the soul-crushing beat. With Blood Raw. 18+.
Fri., April 25, 10 p.m., 2008