Totally Bushwicked

I am white. I am a white guy. There’s no shame in it, it’s just a fact is all. I will never be mistaken for being anything other than a white guy. Well, okay, maybe with my current beard set-up I might be mistaken for an Arab by some xenophobic doofus ready to make a poorly informed decision. In my past life I played guitar and sang in a band here in Houston called Project Grimm. We were, if nothing else, a band of white guys. Seriously. In the sun we would bake in minutes, so pale a swath did we cut through the glades of luminous ultraviolet splendor. Whatever that means.

If you were a Houston resident in the late 80s and liked punishing yourself by frequenting truly defiled locales like, say, oh, Emo’s, then you might have had the pleasure of catching my band. If you never actually saw us, then know that we were fucking brilliant.

One night, one sweltering, humid soup of a night, we stood upon the sweat soaked stage and lumbered our way, gracelessly (as one ex Houston Press music editor referred to us) through our set when before our eyes appeared a miniature apparition of Hip-Hop royalty. Who was this wraith of great cultural import? Why none other than the world’s most famous rapping midget, The Geto Boys’ own micro badass himself, Bushwick Bill.

And the word on the street was that if Bushwick was drunk enough then your band might have the incredible honor of a guest appearance. As we tore through one of our more torpid numbers, the one-eyed madman took to the stage.

Yeah, he was definitely drunk enough. A blind man could have called a visual on that one. Bushwick was lit.

Guest appearance time.

So, you’ve gotta picture this. Here is this tiny little man, this tiny little black man with his googly glass eye, his backpack, and his drunken lack of posture. Here’s this tiny giant in the world of Rap. Here is one of the people who have helped create a well-deserved place in the pantheon of Black American music in the 90s, and what is his current goal in life, on this muggy, stifling night?

Bushwick has come to rap. And tonight, Project Grimm is his backup band.

Into his backpack and out comes his notebook. This must be where the magic is stored. And to think that this little man simply carries around the future of urban culture in a bag on his back. It’s almost too much to believe, almost certainly too much weight to bear for such a small man. He assumes heroic posture with each fluid and intoxicated gesture. And who could blame him? Such a role this little man has played/must play in this our modern world. He is an icon, perhaps even an entertainment genius, the sort of cultural signpost from which all can hitch their steed and ride forth into the darkness of that wicked night, confident of their course, steered by the light of this little seer in baggy (wait, are they soiled?) trousers.

Oh but then it begins. We shamble back into the number we just played, which in the long run can’t matter since nobody was listening the first time anyway (well, nobody save for Bushwick).

And there he goes, on the mic, notebook in hand, crowd on their feet, the excitement palpable… almost too much to bear…

And, no.

He is an auditory atrocity. He is an arrhythmic abomination. Bushwick is far and away the worst rapper I, no wait, man has ever heard. There is simply no way to describe how idiotic and perversely forgettable his lyrics were, how tortuously banal his tone, how staggeringly limp his delivery. Look, I know the guy is drunk. I get that. I too have been very, very drunk on many occasions, but come the fuck on. I once played quarters with tequila shots. Cheap, gallon jug tequila. The kind that has you shitting as much as you are vomiting the next day, hating all that is good and praying for a quick death. Even that night, even after John Woodcock gave me a ride home in his Mystery Van as I rolled from wall to wall with every turn, convinced that I had finally met the devil himself who was both nice enough to give me a lift and evil enough to make it hurt, even on that awful night had John taken me to Emo’s and shoved me up on stage with, say, the Roots or something, I still would have done a better job at the mic than Bushwick.

In mere moments it goes from hopeful, to embarrassing, to outright insulting. We have come nowhere in all these years, the modern day minstrel show in full splendor, the circus in full swing and the tiny, dark skinned clown is acting foolish to the delight of everyone involved.

I could wax rhapsodic about all the ways in which the honorable Dr. Wolfgang Von Bushwickin the Barbarian Mother Funky Stay High Dollar Billstir made short work of both popular Black culture, and worse, the entirety of the Civil Rights movement, but suffice to say that having a “posse” of hangers on years past the time during which you might have been able to actually claim you were viable is not only shameless on the posse’s part, it’s way beyond pathetic on Bill’s.

And you know what?

You’re motherfuckin’ welcome.

P.S. - Tomorrow marks the NAP's 666th post. That only comes around once. What a great responsibility weighing down around the shoulders of a one Mr. Wednesday. To think that I was off by one post. It hurts me. Sure, I could throw together a podacast and usurp that slot, but I will leave it be and defer to my colleague. I only hope he can do enough with his pronounced lack of evil to appease the Dark Lord and grant us safe passage into the undetermined future. If I know only one thing, it's that you don't want to get all ignorant and piss off the devil. That guy is trouble with a capital-T.