So, I stole the Converse-sponsored insert on Baltimore music out of the latest issue of ‘XLR8R’ a few days ago and I was sort of shocked by just how silly it all is. At first, I was hesitant to talk about it because it’s pretty obvious that some corporate sponsored psuedo-zine is going to seem a little disingenuous. I try to be mindful of the from-the-town-being-discussed-and-therefore-no-one-else-gets-it mentality because a) it’s stupid and complacent and b) it’s what ends up killing a lot of almost-popular “scenes”, and I’m of the perspective that any exposure is good exposure, but I’d also like to touch upon a few, particularly frustrating things.
First, the entire thing’s rather postmodern in the sense that it’s a hip, cool, print magazine and a corporate shoe company contriving a throwback-looking ‘zine that goes out of its way, in the depressingly titled introduction “Hi Hon!!” to say “we are not trying to write the book on beats in Baltimore”- essentially covering its ass for not being all that good. What saves the insert from being completely horrible- besides Al Shipley’s ‘Mixtape Madness’ article- is that this whole internet thing exists and goofy half-sincere/half-cash-in stuff like this ends up stimulating some conversation; a stream of correctives and qualifiers will spill-out from tons of blogs, websites, message boards, etc. and turn a meh article into thousands of more interesting and better words, pictures, and downloads.
This is what the internet has over the much-idealized pre-internet “mail order” days: Fifteen years ago, someone from outside of Baltimore would see this insert, get interested in the scene, mail-order some records, but generally be limited to what the insert tells them and accept it as fact. The best response would be the few genuine print ‘zines around or maybe, one feels really idealistic and starts their own ‘zine and thirty people read it; it was more the illusion of change than actual change. This is what Rafi at OhWord was talking about in his Into the Devil’s Nest blog which touched upon the reality that in many ways, corporate sites and print publications need assholes like me almost as much as I need them. It’s not as glamourous as photo-copying your ‘zine or sending away for a bunch of records that end up sounding awful, but it’s a lot more useful.
Back to that little intro titled “Hi Hon!!”. For those who don’t know, “hon” is a Baltimore term that’s used in place of a proper name. I would also add that no one under 65 years old really says “hon” and so its placement in the idiotic “Bmore Slang!” section of the zine is not only dumb for their inability to define it properly (their definition: “a greeting”) but because most of the other slang words on the lists are endemic to the rap/club scene. Furthermore, “hon” is the kind of term that even 70 year-old grandmothers who use it, employ with some self-awareness. The only reason “hon” would even become aware to whoever from ‘XLR8R’ stopped in Baltimore is because the city has thoroughly embraced it as a joke. I won’t give you a history of “hon” but it’s essentially something older, vaguely to undeniably white-trash women of Baltimore have said for a really long time. Since something like “the sixties” didn’t really hit an area like Baltimore until the early 70s, there’s a kind of weird lag in people in their 40s-60s and anti-autoritarianism and so they began mocking and ironically employing the use of the word “hon” as one more way to separate themselves from their big, dumb, Eisenhower generation parents.
Of course, Baltimore’s additionally weird because of this 60s lag mixed with a very working-class roots of even educated types, and so the distance between Eisenhower-ian parents and hippie kids is small to non-existent. Except for choice areas that only the biggest douchebags in the world attend, a bar in Baltimore can have a strange, near class-less feeling, as businessmen sit next to dock workers in a way that is neither contrived or some attempt but the aware-businessman to not be an elitist and/or some kind of weird “derelect” sight-seeing trip. And that’s not to mention the strange gay community of Baltimore which too, moves in and out of every circle. This divide between 50s parents and 60s kids that so many hippies- in Baltimore as well- like to latch onto just doesn’t exist in the same way here and its best exemplified by this ironic or at least, self-conscious use of “hon”. If it’s some weird, crazy slang, pretty much every one in the city knows it. I recently had a conversation with my Baltimore-raised Grandmother about a piece of under-discussed “Baltimore-ese”: beans. “Beans” as a kind of weird conflation of “being” and “as” (example sentence: “Beans you’re going to the store, can you get me a pack of cigarettes?”). Now my grandmother’s an overweight lady, who wears Crocs and shirts with beach scenes on them and loves Elvis, but even she has some irony about the language she uses. This is true of all regional slang and maybe I’m taking it all a little personal, but it seems like most regional profiles don’t have quite the same sense of “ISN’T IT CRAZY HOW THEY USE THESE DUMB WORDS?”. Actually, some of the Houston profiles from a few years ago did…
The next one that is frustrating is “Harm City, Bodymore” which are “alternate names for Baltimore, based on its high-crime rate”. No one actually from Baltimore with any sense of the city refers to its as “Harm City” or “Bodymore”. It’s a term employed by people from the county who can’t admit where they are from and wear the city’s devastating and depressing murder rate as a badge of realness even though they rarely venture into any areas that are even remotely dangerous. It’s odd that this is a glossary of terms used not by the actual people of the city but by the people that want to be from the city.
The only time you’ll hear “Bodymore” or “Harm City” used without that sense of condescension is in a rap or club song and maybe from a club DJ shouting it out and in that sense, it has some of the same irony employed by old-ass ladies when they drop “hon”. The glossary’s inclusion of “down the hill”/”up the hill” and “yo”-as-pronoun, while accurate, feel lifted from this scholarly article on Baltimore Club than any actual experience with the city, an experience they try to feign by tossing-out locations like Cherry Hill, Druid Hill, “or other hills in Bmore” (while we’re at it, no one in Baltimore calls it “Bmore”…).
And finally, there’s the inclusion of what is essentially accent issues, presented as “slang”. Okay, I understand lumping it in there because of space issues, but again, they’ve employed the knowledge of people from around Baltimore and not from it, for their explanations. The on-going joke amongst people who like to make fun of Baltimore and also use it for some quick street cred, is that they are from “Balmer”, Maryland (writing it “Bawlmer” would be closer to the pronunciation one hears, but whatever…). “Balmer” is defined as “Baltimore, pronounced in a Maryland accent” but most people I hear say something closer to “Baldimore” or maybe, “Bald’more” (pronounced Ball-Duh-Moore) than “Bawlmer”. It’s also not a Maryland accent but indeed, a Baltimore accent, or specifically, Baltimore City/County accent. The proper definition for “Balmer” should be “A parody of the Baltimore accent, “Baltimore” said by those incorrectly mocking the Baltimore accent”.
Outside of “yo” and the “down the hill” references, nearly all of the terms I’ve discussed are white, working-class slang and have little to do with the primarily black rap and club scene, ‘XLR8R’s focus for the insert. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of condescension for the scene too. Take note of the focus on hipster goons Tittsworth and Dave Nada (Tittsworth’s from DC too, but I’ll leave that alone…) and the angle the magazine takes on Baltimore Club (The music’s really dirty, isn’t that so funny?): “Nothing says romantic like some Baltimore club joints. Just play a girl ‘Wanna F**ck’…”. The weird mixing of different aspects of Baltimore culture is a kind of depressingly other-ing of the city into one big mess of weird, dumbass slang, and dirty dance music.
As I said, it’s Al Shipley’s ‘Mixtape Madness’ section which makes the insert worth reading (or ripping out of the plastic and stealing…) and stands as a kind of corrective to the rest of the insert. He made the most of the opportunity to reach a new audience for Baltimore music and highlights a group of varied rap and club releases that there’s pretty much no way a reader of this insert could’ve known about. His tone, is that of an excited record store clerk, with conversational summaries of the records that never stumble into too-cool name dropping or obvious “shit’s from Bmore” bullshit.
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