Hip-Hop High School
by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

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Description:

Cee-Saw bobbed her head up and down, watching all the folks fill the room. "Some good stuff gonna be happenin' this year," she said to me, "Good stuff."

"Dat's straight up, girl," I answered back as we traded another slap-slap-bump high five on the down low. "Dat's straight up."

My life is weird. It's like I speak two languages. In my head I talk a normal kind of English, but when I chat with my friends or any of my peers I rap to them in this kind of ghetto slang. It's like I purposely mispronounce words and disobey all them rules of grammar. Like, I never say "with." I say "wit'." And I don't say "that." I say "dat." And I sort of slur my "what's up" too and turn it into "wuzzup." One of my favorite things to say to my friends is, "Wuzuup wit' dat?" It makes me sound cool.

Actually, it makes me fit in. And fittin' in 'round here is huge. Your clothes got to be fresh, your attitude has to be stylin', and if you talk too proper, you might get jumped by a crew of four or five. That's because people will think you're trying to act white. They'll take you down for that. We got all kinds of unspoken rules like this arouind here and people who violate them end up paying the price. It may not make sense to an outsider, it may not be reasonable or rational, but it is what it is and only stupid people don't play along.

And I ain't stupid. At least not like that I ain't

Hip-Hop High School
by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

ISBN: 9780786855155
ISBN-10: 0786855150
Publisher: Jump at the Sun (Hyperion Books)
Publication Date: 2006
Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Book Type: New