Crib Notes

Not everyone is feeling the buzz surrounding Young Jeezy’s new video for the song, “Circulate.”

According to the Liberator magazine blog:

If Jeezy says anything worth saying in this song it’s, “when shit get rough no tellin what they’ll sell you”. Cause really I think he’s subconsciously telling on himself. Afterall, dude is using a sample made famous by Dilla, to sell Vodka (who cares what brand) by using remnants of the Obama-hype from his “My President” anthem and theme.

The unnamed vodka company referred to is Belvedere Vodka, for which Jeezy is now a spokesperson. Belvedere partnered with Jeezy and financed the video, which resembles a recently released Belvedere commercial that also stars the Atlanta rapper. Appearing on Young Jeezy’s latest album (The Recession), the DJ Cannon-produced “Circulate” samples the 1975 Billy Paul classic “Let the Dollar Circulate” — which speaks to today’s hard-up economy as well as it did 34 years ago. The song has been sampled in the past by producers J Dilla (for the artist Spacek) and 9th Wonder.

Shot by Terry Richardson, the video certainly makes for a paradoxical backdrop — with Jeezy throwing red, white and blue confetti and dancing on the bed with bikini-clad dime pieces — while the bridge features Paul singing, “interest rates going up/seems like no value’s in the buck.”

But like so many of today’s artists, Jeezy’s literary device of choice is irony: “It was all good a week ago, Young the big tipper/Grinding all week and threw it all at the stripper/Got me lookin’ at my stash like where the fuck is the rest at/Lookin’ at my watch like it’s a bad investment.”

It’s hardly much to agonize over. And with copious amounts of alcohol to swig and an over-sized chocolate cake-replica of the White House on hand, Jeezy doesn’t appear to be suffering much. But therein lies the compelling sales pitch. Because if we’re to believe the values he espouses in his lyrics, Young Jeezy is a capitalist above all else. Whether the product is coke or Coke makes no matter to him. When hard times hit — as they did in the music industry long before the rest of the country began to feel the pinch — a hustler must find a new way to grind.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that Jeezy’s Belvedere-sponsored video creates an orgiastic mess of things — mixing the cultural pride expressed over the election of Pres. Obama with the capitalistic excess symbolized by a bottle of top-shelf liquor. It’s a celebration, bitches. And suddenly, a song Billy Paul originally meant as a plea for economic mercy becomes a commercial hyping young America to swag it out.

The message is clear as a fifth of Belvedere: Let the vodka “Circulate.” It’s the American way.

(Photo courtesy Belvedere Vodka)

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First Congressman John Lewis, now rapper Young Jeezy.

In the August issue of Vibe magazine, Young Jeezy is quoted in the cover story as saying, “No disrespect to Barack, but I fuck with John McCain.”

Turns out, he meant to say the opposite. At least, that’s what he’s saying now in a classic what-had-happened-was moment. He’s even posted a YouTube video statement to clarify his position, saying “somewhere down the line my words got misconstrued.”

In the video, he wears a shirt printed with the words, “My president is black,” and aligns himself with the Democrat party, saying “I represent the streets, the struggle. I represent Democrats.”

In a not-so-ironic twist, his upcoming CD scheduled for release this summer, is titled The Recession. The high cost of gas is just one of the topics he plans to address.

The quote in question came after Jeezy met Senator McCain in May on the set of Saturday Night Live where they briefly shook hands. McCain was hosting the show and Jeezy was there performing “Love in this Club” with Usher. In the YouTube video posted last week, Jeezy disses McCain while addressing Senator Obama with the cool moniker, “Barack-O.”

Whether it’s a pure publicity stunt or a genuine flub Young Jeezy wanted to correct, it shows how much of a pop phenomenon Obama has become that a rapper of Jeezy’s commercial caliber would go so far to align himself with a presidential candidate.

But here’s something I can’t help but wonder: Can the support of a rapper like Young Jeezy — who’s been alleged to have ties to the BMF drug syndicate and nicknamed himself ‘the Snowman’ (hint, hint) earlier in his career — do more harm to Obama’s campaign than good? Or will the dope boy constituency be politically ignited to vote en masse, thereby countering those who might otherwise be offended?

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