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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