Cities around the country are trying to make it a crime to wear pants in the popular hip-hop style, and Dallas is the latest to sniff the wind, so to speak. One school board member is encouraging the Dallas City Council to prohibit baggy pants, and numerous billboards are declaring “Represent yourself like you present yourself – pull ’em up!”
Static spoke with two local rappers, one of whom is considering starting a new hip-hop fashion called High, Tighty, and Mighty, while the other isn’t about to change his low-slung ways.
Rapper A supports, um, support: “Baggy pants are wack, an attack on my senses/ You’re a fashion victim with your droopy drawer offenses,” he said. “My hip-hop booty is so slender and svelte/ When I tighten up my flow I’m tightening up my belt/ Your jeans are obscene the way they dangle ’round yo knees/ Make you waddle like a penguin with babesia disease.”
“Word to your mother!” he continued.
Rapper B begged to differ. “I drop my drawers to the floor/ When I’m headed outdoors,” he noted. “See the underwear I wore/ When I’m carryin’ Coors from the store/ I wear a belt, yo, but I don’t wear it tight/ If it dangles round my ankles I know it fits right.”
He went on to criticize the Dallas police chief, for no apparent reason, in an impromptu chorus. “I let my moon shine, I let my moon shine/ The chief says ‘Oooh my’ when he hears my booty rhyme/ I let my moon shine, I let my moon shine.”
Dallas school trustee Ron “Bammer” Price prompted the furor in Dallas. “It’s something wrong when we say it’s OK for people to walk around our city with their underwear showing,” he told NBC News, not even bothering to rhyme once.
Other cities, such as Shreveport, Richmond, Atlanta, and Baltimore, have discovered the ordinances are difficult to enforce, since police are inclined to turn the other cheek. No word on whether the plumbers union plans to protest.
Static is woefully tired of saggy-bottom boys but doesn’t agree with legislating fashion, although it might consider a ban on pork-chop sideburns.
