For the first time in history it's going down, baby!
Okay, so I've watched this new Three 6 Mafia video about a hundred times now, and I have no idea why I want to, but I think it's a masterpiece. A masterpiece dedicated to its title: "Stay Fly". Haven't seen it yet? Here's a link.
Motherfuck. Every frame is just about as fly as you can get without leaving the atmosphere. Starting with Juicy J's room, where he's got the two lady friends, and he's wearing an emerald green and black skull (long sleeved!) T-shirt, and matching (matching!) sunglasses. Red tree wallpaper in the room. Motherfucker gets a towel in his face as he leaves the room -- thrown by his girl, who just got out of the shower, naked underneath but out of view. And he still leaves the room. That's fly. Puts on his top grill and he stops. Background smears away. Caption reads: "JUICY J". That's fly. He's still there, mid-way to putting on his top grill. That is very fly. Motherfucking time starts again... he puts in the bottom grill (now that whole intro-chorus action is a fly bit of hip-hop directing/editing/lifestyle combo if there ever was one), and then J starts to walk down the hall just as the damn verses he's spitting come off the record. Essentially, it's all one cut, minus the one special effect. Which is hot direction. He's going down the fucking hallway with his sizzurp cup, waving his hand like a pistol, scaring the shit out of old white hotel guests, and it's like the Robert Altman of the gutter is directing this bitch. Juicy J's scene is timed perfectly, so he gets in the elevator and back out to the ground floor, leans into the camera to growl "I ain't Denzel, but I know I'm a star", then leans down to get into the limo (we'll pick him up again later when he's in there with MJG) just in time to do a sweet fade from leather interior to the unveiling of a club scene with DJ Paul (the two heads of the Three 6). Juicy J's scene is the ultimate fly sequence, but the rest are just bringing home the point from other perspectives.
DJ Paul's scene starts with him pushing his hat down over his head, and goddamn if he isn't the ugliest man ever on Earth. He says it: "DJ Paul is a dog. One you do not trust". He's followed into the club by the other two members of Three 6. It's as if we've gone for a car-ride with them, and here they are at the club now. I should quote Paul's entire minute, because every rhyme is spectacular, and the guy just gets uglier with every shot. His first verse is all about what happens if you leave something near him, including what happens to weed, drank, and women. His next verse is just insane. I think he says, "Make a coupla nuns...", but I'm not sure. He definitely says, "Yee-yurple". Motherfucker's Hynpotized Minds chain is swanging across his chest like an oil donkey.
Obviously J did the chorus, 'cause he gets the footage, and look at him scratching the air. The guy was born for this shit. He's surrounded by what he knows, ladies like sex on a stick. This video is so fly, and the chorus is what? Fly. They changed it for the video from "high", but "fly" is so much better. Has so much more meaning and possibility. High is obvious. Fly is outstanding.
Which reminds me that all the hand-moves in this video are all from the top shelf. Everybody's got their own style. Hand-moves are all about style. If you don't have your own hand-moves, you are not fly (I admit to having no hand-moves of my own, unless you consider home row on the keyboard a hand-move, ergo: not fly). And flyness is the essence of this video. Everyone is doing great hand-moves, but Young Buck (free on bail after stabbing the dude who tried to kill Dre -- talk about hand-moves) is sitting down through his whole scene, but that's because lookat the motherfucker's hand-moves. Buck is sitting there with his friends and he's brushing through his money, and he's gang-signing, and he's waving at you like you're worthless, and best of all, he's changing lanes. He changes lanes one-handed, talking about trying to stay out the way of the "po-po". Buck has been around for a minute in Tennessee, but he deserves to be on this cut with these older dudes, because Buck is so fly.
And speaking of old, holy shit. Crunchy Black isn't just a veteran of the rap game, he's a veteran of World War Two! How in hell did he end up the third member of the Triple Six? Every time I see him I'm baffled that this old dude is rocking it with the sickest verses on Triple Six tracks. The blogger on Gel and Weave who posted the link to this video called it a "crease", and there's no better word for that thing on Black's forehead. A fold? A hack? A ravine? For all the world, this is the flyest homeless guy you've ever laid eyes on. Does Crunchy Black have teeth? He has no hair, but shit, is he ever dressed up nice. Dude looks perfect. The gold around his neck is like honey dripping down. And those are the flyest sunglasses on Earth. He's rocking the brown stripes, brown hat, brown frames, like he discovered brown. His verse is short, but it doesn't matter, though, because Crunchy Black is a goddamn blues singer: "What's up Mary? / How you doing, Mary Jane? / Since I met you, girl, you ruined my brain / You stole my heart, right from the start / So I broke you down, my ___, and putcha in my car".
Crunchy Black also gets the fly last shot of the chorus, pointing across the room to 8Ball, who starts it rolling fast. 8Ball is wetly lisping above his fat chin and big cheeks. He's got on a "fatboy" gold chain. He looks like he's about to fall over backwards like a bowling pin. He might be looking at the ceiling for all you know, with those fly as a motherfucker sunglasses he's got on. He doesn't need to move. The guy is solid as a block of cheddar. His hand-moves are on the same shelf as Buck's -- his two-handed wheel turns are somehow just a little classier. And again quoting Plumdrank, the epigrammatic best line of the entire track goes : "Smoke all night, sleep all day / That's the real American way". The most fly part of his scene comes when we get to the parts that are all bleeped out, and all you get is: "Roll that__, light that___ , hit that___, hold that___, blow that __ out slow and pass it to me, bro".
There's so many reasons why MJG gets the last verse, but most of all because it just wraps it all up, all the themes so far, and has a smashing punchline. And the fact that his hand-signs are unbelievable. This is one shelf higher than all the rest. No one can reach these heights but MJG. When your audience is always right in front of you, that changes everything about how you write, and surely gestures go a long way to offering personal style when the genre has such a rigid structure for lyricism. The subtle "sprinkling" motion that MJG does before getting out of the mirror-topped limo where he was kicking with Juicy J is brilliant. He's talking about sprinkling a little on a "cigarillo like a lumberjack". The way he flinches his shoulders up, he owns it. You can't flinch your shoulders up now without it being a bite off MJG. Most important, there's the fact that when he jumps out of the limo, motherfucker stays nice and crouched to the ground, running at the camera all the way through the hotel lobby, flicks his braids up, keeps running, pushes his fly-as-fuck platinum sunglasses up his nose, running, bumps into his best friend 8Ball's elbow on purpose, just after miming a drink of Hennessy, and just before he pinches up the nipples of his white golf T-shirt saying "put some herr on your chest", and he's still running. The whole time he's moving at a brisk speed. MJG has fly down cold. He gets into the elevator just at the right moment, so you can't see his mouth skeet the punchline. Perfect. The direction on the video is perfect. The acting is perfect. It should win some kind of award for flyest video ever made. The elevator shuts as the Three 6 Mafia lean in to cap it off, waving good-bye to us on the "Fly-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay...", and we're out.
I've seen rap videos. But this is rap videos.
— 1 September 2005
