The Prison Industrial Complex has operated as an incubator for prison culture. That culture has spilled over into the mainstream. From Hip Hop to professional sports to Hollywood. The line where prison stops and the 'real world' begins has blurred. 
23 comments:
I was raised to think that revealing one's underpants was the domain of women.
DV...My Man!
While I can recognize the need for these cats to pull their pants up, I cannot honestly say that I see the similarities between the two photos.
One photo is an attempted fashion statement.
The other I see a couple young dudes working on the car trying to escape unbearable heat and humidity of the Memphis sun.
How is that feminine?
What Up Big Wayne!! Where you been man?
But Nah.
Both you cats missed it.
This is not about pants. Nor is it about fashion. It's not about underwear or heat.
It's about expression.
One image is an expression of gender blurred, neutered conformity. Completely non-threatening. Dickless.
The other is an unapologetic expression of masculinity and an aggressive display of blackness. Threatening. Dicky.
Saggin' is to this generation what the Afro was in the 70's.
(And the same handkerchief heads don't like it.)
BTW
Interesting enough, saggin is as much a "Fuck You" to Establishment Negros as it is to the establishment itself, if not more.
They are rejecting, by not seeking, something Plantation Negros hold very dear - affirmation.
Which is the true chain of bondage.
Saggin', funny enough, is an expression of freedom. And geometrically more evolved than a Jena 6 Protest.
Haha..well saggin did get co-opted and re-appropriated as a statement of anti-establishment "machismo"...
Altho ironically, it originated in prison from male bitches providing easier access to their dom tops. So they could drop trou at any time for faster quickies.
"Altho ironically, it originated in prison from male bitches providing easier access to their dom tops. So they could drop trou at any time for faster quickies." Byrd
Need to stop watching Oz on HBO with the amped up imagery of prison sex.
In jail, you don't wear belts. Belts are weapons. Thus pants sag.
An entire class of people has been intentionally imprisoned over the past 25 years of "Progressive" social engineering.
Saggin is to young blacks what a yarmulke is to a young Jew.
A Group Identity symbol. A flag.
" Haha..well saggin did get co-opted and re-appropriated as a statement of anti-establishment "machismo"..."
Word Byrd? By who?
" Altho ironically, it originated in prison from male bitches providing easier access to their dom tops. So they could drop trou at any time for faster quickies."
The fuck is a dom top? I asked six people if they knew until finally my gay homie Picard told me. And then he asked me to introduce him to you. That some homoerotic shit you spittin right there.
Eh. I don't know about you byrd.
" Interesting enough, saggin is as much a "Fuck You" to Establishment Negros as it is to the
establishment itself, if not more.
They are rejecting, by not seeking, something Plantation Negros hold very dear - affirmation."
Well, Big Bro, I don't doubt that "they" do that. But these cats here? Nah. Saggin is as much of their culture as meth labs are to teenagers in Kansas. It's just what it is. Everybody does it. They ain't at a Board meeting with AIG execs. They're workin under the hood of a car in 90 degree heat. You'd probably be wearin a cardigan. What the hell am I thinking. You don't even know what the engine of your luxury sedan looks like.
Without the homoerotic undertones, sagging is more credibly what resulted when money was tight and people didn't have enough to buy all their kids new clothes. So the younger kids got "hand me downs", clothes already worn by older siblings. Many times, still slightly too big, but good enough to work. Pants....sagged.
See what you should have done is switched the placement and put the bottom picture on top, and headed this one as "GLOBAL SYSTEM OF BLACK SUPREMACY" and spun at as this is what byrdeye would look like if he tried to pull off the urban swag that the young brothas got workin.
That, sir, would be much more fitting.
In an interview with a local television station, Dooney explained that saggin' comes from jail, where he argued that showing your boxers has a very particular meaning. "You're letting another man know that you're available," Dooney said.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15654565
Casper is right on time with the Plantation Source: NPR
DV
"Casper is right on time with the Plantation Source: NPR"
Lets see...!
House Negro Source: DV
or
Plantation Source: NPR
You decide!
DV have you ever worn your pants that low?
DV have you ever been to prison?
So prove your case?... Just don't make shit up!
I've heard several different explanation for the sagging thing.
The jail bitch one.
The belt one.
And now, Big Wayne's explanation about hand me downs. (which was a good thought.)
But, like Wayne said, it's just what folks do. Personally, I don't like my pants too tight around my nuts, I like my sperm to work.
So, I but my pants baggy. Inevitably, they may sag a little bit. I don't have my underwear out in public, but my pants do sag. It's that simple.
It's Not Something "Folks Just Do".
Folks just wear baseball caps backwards.
Folks don't just walk around with their pants hanging around their legs and their underwear showing.
It's a statement. Whether conscious or not. It's a statement.
Just like your pleated stain resistant Dockers are a statement.
"And then he asked me to introduce him to you. That some homoerotic shit you spittin right there." BW
Aghhhhhhhh!!!
DV
I seriously think you should have your own TV channel I'd be tuned in 24/7!
Your blog is so informative in so many ways...and what an eye opener!
Lovin it!
Keep it up!
^ I been sayin that.
If DV ever went primetime, he could be a good counterstrike to Oprah & The View. Gawd, all those Jew Yawk Zionist groupies on the View just make me wanna stab my eyes out!
And here's an interesting blog on both sagging and fist taps - asserting that both originated in prison. Which then apparently caught on first with the Black urban subculture, due to the large crossover.
Well you got 2 viewers DV.. I say go for it! They love you!
A lot of Hip-Hop fashion is from old school poverty.
Poorly fitted pants required an oversize shirt to hide one's boxers.
White T's were cheap and easy to match.
Haircuts cost money, if we couldn't keep up a shag or curl - we went East Coast (cut really short) or platted.
Pulling one's pants low is double OG. When one would grow by the end of the school year, they'd pull their pants lower to avoid flooding.
Dickies were cheap at any local K-Mart.
The things we were trying to leave behind from the 'hood are what many kids today are seeking.
Byrdeye has it about right in terms of the 'Hood/Prison crossover.
UBJ got it right.
Poor in funds is one helluvan inducement to be rich in swagger and creativity.
turdy's mythology - otoh - is erroneous as usual.
Nah.
Ya'll all got it all wrong.
Hip Hop fashion has never parroted the broke.
It's not a bottom to the top imitation. It's from the top down.
That's why fake diamonds are a hundred million dollar a year business.
Plus, there hasn't been "Ol' school" poverty in black America since the drug game.
The "poorest" blacks have material wealth.
Thus the rampant obesity and vigorous sales of Air Jordans.
Nah DV, UBJ is right.
I spend most of my time in the now notorious 64130 zip code and rest assured that the overwhelming majority of folks in these hoods don't get to participate in the urban post industrial economic development model simultaneously celebrated and demonized by mass media.
That said, a fabulous amount of creativity, swagger, and flair inevitably bubbles up from folks with large ambit but limited means. It's always been that way, even out here in flyover.
Several years ago, I had a lengthy telephone conversation that I recorded with lynne d. johnson about the origins of hip hop culture. lynne would tell you pretty much the same thing - and her first hand credentials are beyond reproach.
The post hoc branding and commodification of culture arising from the street has been going on forever. My own late sainted mother used to relentlessly deride three classes of folks, rich folks imitating the poor, folks whose prayers were too weak to leave the room, and members of the booz-zwha-zee....,
It always bubbles up from the place where necessity is the mother of invention.
The top has never created a dayyum thing, beyond "agricultural" mechanisms for ruthlessly exploiting and profiting from the exertions of those on the bottom.
Norman Kelley broke this down for cats over a decade ago. But instead of calling it the "political economy of Black music" it should have been the "political economy of Black cultural production".
This same emergent force accounts for whatever possibilities we still want to believe inhere to God's Son too...,
Good points CNu.
But I think it's important to be very careful how we define "Hip Hop" culture.
Yeah, yeah, yeah we all remember when rap was organic and local. We remember our uncle who was as DJ and our little cousin who started dressing like De La Soul.
But Hip Hop. Hip Hop is a media phenomenon. And the purveyors who succeed are media experts and tastemakers adapt at making others imitate them.
You think half these Negros running around here today would have tattoos were it not for Tupac?
Where did Tupac get it from? The prison culture. But who was the amplifier?
RunDMC saved Adidas from going out of business.
Rap Stars imitated the cats with the most style flow and swag - DRUG DEALERS.
The masses imitated the Rap Stars.
Yeah, there is creativity in the hood. But it is used to create the illusion of wealth.
Can't argue with most of what you said magne, but because the devil is always in the details, I think it's vitally important that we recognize the technical point sources from whence all the creation emanates, and the parasitic bastards who appropriate, proliferate, and degenerate the creative spark out to the masses.
there is creativity in the hood. But it is used to create the illusion of wealth.
btw - don't ever say shit to me again about the veracity and elegance of dopamine hegemony brah.
wtf you think I'm talkin bout???
What you said IS the simple cultural expression of dopamine hegemony - international/worldwide.
Lastly magne - I've had the good fortune over the last couple of days of having some of the elders drop knowledge over at my spot on the specific history and nature of the origins of the counter-insurgency implemented against jes grew since the late 60's.
I would love nothing more than to participate in compiling a complete and thorough history of how our political morality (God's Sons), post industrial economic adaptations, and creative cultural genius has been co-opted, exploited, and simultaneously weaponized and turned against us by some of these self-same memetic amplifiers.
Tell you the truth, I was initially drawn into Michael Fisher's ambit in hopes that this was something that he could illuminate better than others from the spot he once occupied in that world.
Oh well...,
Peepin' it now.
I'm not sure if byrdeye meant mentality or fashion.
But the prison mindset is one of respect. Same with a hood mindset.
And whatever it takes to get it in each.
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