Has Hip Hop turned into Professional Wrestling??

As a hyperactive kid with the attention span of Robin Williams on cooked cocaine, nothing soothed my restless soul the way professional wrestling did. The same way being under the influence of something given to me by a local horticulture aficionado while watching a strippers breasts affects me now, nothing held my fascination like grown ass men hitting each other with chairs and shit. I can't tell you how many adolescent douche-bags I put a camel clutch on, or clotheslined mercilessly, or hit in the back with a chair in some random lunchroom because of the influence wrestling had on me. Watching Sargent Slaughter, Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka, Hulk Hogan, Leaping Lenny Poffo, the Iron Sheik, even Junkyard Dog.(I say "even" because my father didn't want me cheering for JYD, he would say "Why do they have the black guy being a fucking dog, I better not hear you cheer for that motherfucker". So around him I didn't, but around my friends I did.)

Even when my father said that "It wasn't real" I didn't particularly care, because these guys were skilled athletes and they were entertaining as fuck. Besides the athleticism behind it, with flying off the top rope and landing on their opponent making it look like they are crippling them but not really hurting them, and all the holds they had to perform and the choreography behind it, the best part was when the wrestlers would get in front of the microphone and talk shit about their next opponent. Like Randy Savage used to do in his pre-fight interview: "Ohhh Yeaah Hogan, I'm going to put a hurting on you like no man has felt before. Oooh Yeah, that's right brother, Your going down like Lil Kim in cell block D. Bring it Hogan, by the way, step into a motherfucking slim Jim!!!"(Minus the Kim and slim Jim reference obviously)

Hip Hop has kind of become like that to me, meaning the "every motherfucker has to have some back-story as their selling point and it's not real" part. Listen, back-stories have been around for as long as I remember, when Big Bank Hank on "Rappers Delight," said "..I got a Lincoln Continental and a sunroof Cadillac", we knew that he didn't have that shit. When NWA talked about gangsta life, shoot outs, killing cops, and any form of criminality that you can imagine, we all knew that they didn't do that shit.(Ice Cube came from a middle class family and was planning on going to college) Kool G Rap is a tough guy but we all know that he hasn't killed anyone(I think..), Nas either, or Jay-Z and any other guy who has lyrics depicting violence in some sort or another. I know this is going to sound crazy, but I don't mind a back-story with the individuals that I named because they actually had talent so it didn't matter to me. I mean, as long as you were a good M.C I could give a flying fuck what image you were trying to push upon the public. Give me a blazing 16 bars, a banging beat, dope flow, and you could claim to have bodies in your freezer and masturbate to "Golden Girls" episodes for all I care.

Granted, not much has changed concerning rappers having a back-story like professional wrestlers, but now it is more of an irritant because they don't have any recognizable talent to back it up. This became apparent a while ago when I tried to get to know a woman who worked for Def Jam "biblicly". I wined her, dined her, wanted to nakedly be behind her(Isn't that a Ice Cube lyric?), and probably could have sealed the deal if I lied and told her that I liked that motherfucker "Young Jeezy". See, for a while she was telling me about an artist on Def Jam named "Young Jeezy" and how "dope" he was. I knew something was up when she never went into detail about his lyrical skill, but went on and on about his background in the drug game and criminal past. As we both sat in her apartment sipping wine, knowing that within minutes I would get to see parts of her body that only her mother, doctors, and probably a million other motherfuckers like myself would get to see, she said a sentence that still haunts me when I'm horny as fuck: "Let me play you some Young Jeezy!" Sounds like an innocent enough sentence, she said he was "dope" and she had pretty good taste, I figured that this was just a speed bump en route to my cruising down the "Vagina Highway".

She played it, and like any Hip Hop fan with legitimate taste will tell you, you can tell that someone is garbage by their first line. The more I heard the madder I got, thinking about how she tried to sell me on his back-story like he was "The Rock" and shit, I suddenly wanted to put her in a wrestling move and make her wack music liking ass submit. After she played this Hip Hop monstrosity to me she asked me, "So HumanityCritic, what do you think? Dope isn't it" I knew that saying "It's wack" would prevent me from getting acquainted with her bedsheets and possible future late night visits where I drunkenly hump her and raid her fridge. I also knew that I needed ass, this girl was smoking, above my pay grade smoking, and lying to her and saying that it was quality music would break my streak of fucking chicken-heads that I won't let my boys meet.

It was quite the dilemma, I even thought that I heard that Jeopardy music in the background as I made my final answer, but in the name of Hip Hop, graph artists, B-Boys, and everyone that held true MC'ing close to their hearts I said: "To be honest, that shit sucks!! He's "dope"? Dope meaning that you would have to freebase cocaine in order to find his shit enjoyable, then I agree!" Her face dropped and that "I'm about to give your chubby ass some of this booty" look disappeared from her face and suddenly a "How can I get this dreadlocked bastard out of my house" look appeared. Suffice it to say I rarely talked to her again, so obviously me ever having sex with her was out of the question. So inadvertently, Young Jeezy cock-blocked me, non rapping fuck!

I'm not focusing in on Young Jeezy, but I went into that ass-less tale because rappers having some intricate back-story without the skill to back it up seems to be the trend nowadays. I guess 50 cent would be the obvious example of this because him getting shot 9 times and his drug dealing past is as important to some as any lyric that he ever put to paper. I know that he REALLY did get shot, and I guess he sold drugs, but when did your past become more important than your lyrical ability. Why is it only in Hip Hop that you find this idiocy, you don't go to a mechanic to get a new engine put in your car and his selling point was that he once was in a gang and pimped on the side. As long as that fucker knew what he was doing and was highly qualified, that's all that would matter. You don't go to a doctor to have major surgery and the reason why you chose him is because he once sold drugs and went to jail because of it. That shit is ridiculous.

Then you see people like Kanye West who doesn't really have a intricate back-story become successful, and he is hated on mercilessly by many, especially those who fancy themselves "Hip Hop writers." Listen, I'm not a Kanye West fan, but I look at him like the current war on Iraq, let me explain: Even though I can relate to why many people despise him and want to hate on him(Saddam), but there are people who are trying to damage Hip Hop and is the cause for its demise, so wouldn't your hatred be better focused on those individuals?(Osama-Lil John, Mike Jones, or those subpar fucks who sing that "I think they like me" bullshit) Just my two cents.

The sad thing is that I have heard people that I respect like Russel Simmons, go on and on about how important it was for a rapper to have a compelling story to be successful. Personally, no disrespect Russ, but I think that is bullshit because if I learned that a dude lived in his mothers basement, or had some fat trust fund, the only thing that I would care about is if he was dope or not. No back-stories. No costumes. No pre fight shit talking. If I wanted to see those things I would watch professional wrestling and relive my youth, possibly putting someone in a figure four leg-lock for old times sake.(I found out that applying said leg-lock to a lover is the quickest way to make her an "ex" lover. Just a helpful hint from HC.)