Commit That

One of my favorite songs by Dipset cutie-pie Juelz Santana — he of first-verse-of-“Hey Ma,” I’m-eighteen-and-live-a-crazy-life fame — is “Kill Yourself,” which, according to the ID3 tags on my MP3 of the song, was on some fake “advance” version of Santana’s recent album What the Game’s Been Missing! “Kill Yourself” is one of those tracks that harps so insistently on a single absurd theme that one can’t help but fall under its spell; in this case, the theme is the necessity of the listener’s suicide. To wit:

Commit that!
Commit that!
Cock your shit back
And commit that
Suicide, yes, suicide.
Take a .45 and bang:
Kill yourself!

And that’s the chorus. The plot gets even thicker when Santana starts rattling off different suicide techniques that you — yes, you — ought or ought not to consider. Being “dragged over a lake,” for instance, is too good for you; best to “tell your man to go to the roof and drop a rock on your head.” This all relates to the big think piece about the use of the second person in hip-hop that I’ll one day write.

Anyway, I was poking around on Google to see if anyone else likes this song. As it turns out, Last.fm has caught 274 people listening to “Kill Yourself” — a clownish 1.7% of the pro-(Sant)ana population as a whole. Some of those brave 274 have taken the time to tag the song, too:

User Tags
dipset fun hip-hop

I suspect that the Santanaficionado “xkiz” contributed the “fun” tag. After all, the dude has clocked 182 Juelz listens in the last week alone, not even counting the 56 Diplomats songs, which probably include at least a few Santana appearances. Even at second place, Lloyd Banks (59 listens) doesn’t come close. Always a bride’s maid, never a bride.

I’m not the first person to notice xkiz’s predilection. First entry on his “Shoutbox":

NessDX said:
wow. a lot of Juelz. lol. :)

Nor am I the only one worrying about tagging. If you check out Young Jeezy’s Last.fm page, you’ll see “ambient” listed under “User Tags.” Now, I’ve certainly used Jeezy as background music in the past, but all the same, I’m sure Brian Eno is spinning in his grave right now.

Actually, two people tagged Jeezy “ambient.” Did they mean Ambien? (In the tags shoutbox, deus_exmachina says, “i bought crack from this guy once.” teflon_hearted replies (though not really, since this is in reverse-chronological order), “AYYYYYYYYYYYYYYE!”)

There’s less support for “rap it up” — just one user tagged Jeezy with the phrase. Likewise, one vote was cast for each of “jukejukejuke,” “rap i guess” (um), “my black side” (mine too!), and “shake shake.” Also: “black.”

As for the alluded-to worrying, I guess it’s mostly just me and mikey_oakcrest wringing our hands over this folksonomic foofaraw. No sir, mikey is not fucking happy about this stuff:

correct tags plz??
who the fuck would label Young Jeezy as metalcore???

But don’t be fooled by Mikey’s number-one favorite tag, “emo”: the dude’s a true fan. Five days after complaining about Jeezy semantics, and three days before today, he made the big announcement:

young jeezy
i’m going to see Young Jeezy tonight

Dinner and a movie, I imagine, a little Bright Eyes playing softly on a phonograph in the background. Jeezy puts balsamic vinegar on his salad, thinking this a classy move; he’s left the ghetto behind, he eats at the Spotted Pig with Jay-Z, etc. Mikey cringes inwardly, knowing that balsamic’s beyond played, a childish, Olive Garden–level tactic at best. Some chasms can never be crossed. Mikey cries that night, only half for himself.

Kill yourself.