"I think I know you from somewhere, yeah"

As promised, a whole post dedicated to Lil' Doogie. And the sociological questions prompted by his existence ("Brah, I'm real?" "I am a puppet, but not really a puppet, I'm more like a man 'cuz I'm real, you know, I don't play no games...You know sometimes people look at me and think that I ain't really real, but I'm just out here to breathe like every other man.") Ok, not those questions...more like, is "wigger" a racist term? How far have we come from the days of minstrel shows, when white men wore black face and played characters that were caricatures of black folk? Is Lil' Doogie a social commentary on the petty caricatures of African-Americans in the media, and the plight of the white kid who mistakenly appropriates the media-inspired "ghetto" culture of the black man for his own identity? Or is he merely a perpetuation of these negative stereotypes, a contemporary version of those "minstrel shows"? Is it more a laugh at "ghetto" black people, then at the racist, misguided white youth who falls for the stereotype?

First off, potential offensiveness aside, Lil' Doogie is funny as shit. I did show his videos to a kid from the Upper West Side, Manhattan, and a kid from Princeton, New Jersey, and neither of them got it...but what do you expect.

So, who is Lil' Doogie? My boyfriend Odoms does the voice for the puppet, Douglas Fontaine, aka "Lil' Doogie," an aspiring rapper from Marrero, and, basically, a white kid(puppet) who thinks he's a "thuggish black guy." There-in lies the humor; everybody knows dumb-asses like this, and when reincarnated in puppet-form, we can hardly hold in our piss. Lil' Doogie is especially funny to New Orleanians, because he is our local version of this wigger-phenomenon, which occurs in pretty much every moderate-sized-to-big city.

I would argue the analogy that Lil' Doogie is to Marrero, Louisiana, (yah, dat Westbank) as Ali G, (aka Alistair Leslie Graham) is to suburban Staines, London. Both are white, or at least, not African-American, or any of the other ethnicities, or stereotypes of ethnicities, that they project. They affect, without any irony or self-awareness, a ghetto, thuggish demeanor, speak in slang, and aspire to be a part of hip-hop "ghetto" culture. However, the creators of Lil' Doogie (Ballzack and Odoms) and the creator of Ali G (Sascha Baron Cohen) do craft their characters with an ironic perspective. That's why it's comedy.

So how can we be sure Baron Cohen and Ballzack/Odoms are being ironic, and not just carrying the minstrel-show ideology into the 21st century? For one thing, Odoms gives voice to a white character who takes on the stereotype of an African-American, as Baron Cohen acts out a white guy who takes on the stereotype of an African-American. In the minstrel shows, white men wore black face, playing caricatures of black people. The satire of Lil' Doogie and Ali G works because it's twice-removed. The characters Lil' Doogie and Ali G are ignorant of the racial, sociological issues that they prompt, but their creators aren't.

Our times are more complex these days, the lines between class and race much more blurry than in the days of minstrel shows. Back then, the culture of whites and blacks was firmly divided. One could argue that a character like Lil' Doogie, or his real-life counterparts, occur because of the intermixing of black and white culture. Ballzack and Odoms, from the Westbank, aren't "wiggers," but they are heavily immersed in New Orleans "bounce" culture, in which they have picked up certain qualities generally associated with African-Americans (as "bounce music" is predominately black). Perhaps Lil' Doogie is more credible because there is a little bit of him in his creators, rendering them self-aware, and capable of self-parody.

Another Ali G/Lil' Doogie type of character that I found out about is Saul "Tre" Cohen, a Jewish kid from Berkeley, California who also thinks he's a ghetto rapper. Played by Rene Solomon, a Jewish kid from Berkeley, California, there might be a little bit of him in Cohen, lending more credibility to his satire.

All right, here are my favorite Lil' Doogie videos, so you can decide if you think he's funny:


Doogie Gras from lil Doogie on Vimeo.

Westbank Crush part 2--Odoms

Odoms, I know you have a girlfriend and all, but in the words of my friend Sascha, Ever heard of cheating?  Plus, in "Man-fuck" I took note of the fact that maybe your girl might be flirting too much with other guys.  "My girl knows a lot of dudes/they all like the way she moves/I know you're saying, you just friends/You better tell them little dudes 'bout your boy and them!"  Odoms, I would never treat you that way.  Now, I know everybody likes you; Ballzack says, "The ladies love Odoms 'cuz he so shy/He could get himself a dank blow-job."  And you say you're "handsome, come and talk to my face..." wouldn't I like the opportunity.  Anyway, I'm just going to use you to get to Lil' Doogie anyway.  See y'all August 16! (promo below):  

Lil' Doogie HOB promo from lil Doogie on Vimeo.

Westbank Crush

(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!