(Check it out, for y'all who don't know: the land south of the Mississippi river, labeled "Westwego, Marrero, Harvey, Gretna, Algiers" constitutes the Westbank.)
The time has come for me to blog about Ballzack and Odoms, Westbank heart-throbs. If you've gotten all my allusions thus far, then you're up to speed. I got ahead of myself, but now I'm gamin'. Usually they're in italics to give you a heads up and so I don't get accused of plagiarism or something. Can bloggers get accused of plagiarism? By rappers?
To me, Rami Sharkey, aka "Ballzack," and Adam Bourgeois, aka "Odoms," are the only New Orleans celebrities out there because I don't know them. I like it that way, it gives me something to hope for when I get out of bed in the morning. No, I'm just playing; really, I live for my blog. And my dog. But Jude knows them, of course, so that means it's only a matter of time before me and Jude are in the same place, I spot them, and I'll be like, "Oh hey, you know Jude?" or rather, Jude will be like, "What up Rami, Adam; you know Kate?" And then we'll know each other. I'll still bump Yeah, Indeed every day in my silver Mazda Protege, and I'll still try to convince Odoms to go out with me, but they will have descended down from Marrero to East Bank New Ahyens, where God has yet to show us a rainbow because he's still punishing us with flood.
(here they are in the video for track one, "Rainbow in Marrero," off Yeah, Indeed)
Angus Lind just wrote today on the subject of celebrities in New Orleans stepping down from the pedestal and scooting up the bar stool to mingle with the locals. Yeah.
So, Ballzack and Odoms are kind of a big deal. Times Picayune music critic Keith Spera recently featured the duo on nola.com as publicity for their July 12 One Eyed Jack's CD release party (I was there), and Gambit's Noah Bonaparte Pais wrote a cover story about them and Lil Doogie (who we'll get to later). Briana Prevost interviewed Ballzack on nola.com's The Perfect 10. According to up-and-coming New York rapper Sleek, a New Orleans ex-pat, they "haven't made it to New York yet"...but I mean, who really wants to?
Why are they so great? Think DJ Jubilee meets Cake. Composed in the New Orleans bounce style, Ballzack's songs feature call-and-response choruses and goofy-ass rhyme schemes set to beats created by simple drum machines. Self-proclaimed "tongue-in-cheek," Ballzack writes lyrics that are ridiculous, embarrassing, and ingenious. His catchy choruses and local jokes make for great driving, sing-along music. However, the shout-outs that make local listeners grin don't exclude outsiders, but instead create a setting in which to ground Ballzack and his subject matter. How does a rapper define himself, if not by where he's from? If Lyrics Born raps about crossing "that Oakland Bay Bridge;" Big Boi name-drops "College Park, East Pointe and Decatur they got my back,/So We gon' keep on jammin and stabbin off in the track;" Lil' Wayne both alludes to Outkast and sets himself apart with the line "I'm a red and yellow thang old school Atlanta hawk/Like I'm from College Park/But I'm from Hollygrove;" then listeners can dig when Ballzack raps "steady bumming joes on Lapalco." I'm a native, but an Eastbanker, so I had a lot to learn from Ballzack. He opened me up to the joys of the Westbank (stay tuned, we will be blogging about the next Westbank Thursday)! Its five boroughs (Gretna, Harvey, Westwego, Terrytown, and Marrero), the delights of pho, indigenous slang, like "shybe," "crustache," "Chalmetairie," etc. (Bonaparte Pais included a Gretnese-to-English dictionary in his article.
As I was saying, the lyrics are chock full of New Orleans nuggets. Ballzack has fun with New Orleans's coffeehouse culture in the title track, "Yeah, Indeed," in which Ballzack and Odoms, after debating whose mama would drop them off or pick them up at the mall, decide "Let's go to the coffeehouse," and in unison, agree, "Yeahhhh." Then, Ballzack rhymes "Let me get that iced mocha girl earn that tip/if I like the way it tastes give my boy a sip." With the line "We drinking bubble teas eating Vietnamese/it's the middle of the winter I'm rocking short-sleeves," he hails the Westbank's culinary attractions. In "Tadpole," a song about crossing the Mississippi River Bridge to get to the Westbank, Ballzack chants "That toll-booth lady got a new hair-do" three times, and then cries "Please, just let me through!" And in the hit would-be-single, "Rainbow in Marrero," Ballzack dedicates a whole verse to New Orleans inside jokes: "I don't go to Metairie unless I really have to/clothes smell of smoke and hands smell of shampoo/don't tell Cox but I'm stealing their cable/I got my name on a Bud's Broiler table." Good stuff. Check it out!
3 comments:
I too have done this before. You know, I mean a Westbank Crush. Yeah, and it wasnt Cwissy either.
Sometimes, you must realize what you are doing before you engage in westbank activities. In the duration of this time period I did in fact learn the science of Algiers Point. fabulous really. Quaint and charming, not like the science of my westbank crush at all really. However, one of the four points made during my westbank cruch. *point of information* in the past 7 seconds i have come to realize that westbank is no longer capitalzed.
dont do it.
Hey! I came across this entry whilst looking for a picture of the "westbank". I hope you don't mind, but I've linked to it in my blog. There was something in this entry that I wanted to reply to but I've forgotten. Hope you've gotten to hang with the boys since this has been posted :)
Pretty cool site you've got here. Thanx for it. I like such topics and everything connected to them. BTW, try to add some images :).
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