Bling Bling Ggb
Jude Petkus
Bling-bling, often shortened to just bling, is "flashy jewelry worn especially as an indication of wealth or status; broadly: expensive and ostentatious possessions"[1] such as grills and designer bags. The term arose as slang, but grew into a cultural mainstay. Prominent examples of bling-bling include a large cross necklace or Jesus piece.[2]
In linguistics terms, bling is either an ideophone or an onomatopoeia, depending on the definition one uses, with bling-bling being its reduplication. Some have attributed the term to rappers that came before B.G., or to the old cartoonish sound effects meant to convey the desirability and or shininess of gold, gems, jewels, money, and more.[3]
The word was added to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary in 2002, and to the Merriam Webster dictionary in 2006. Companies such as Sprint and Cadillac have used the word bling in their advertisements, for instance. On the other hand, in 2004, MTV released a satirical cartoon showing the term first being used by a rapper, followed by several progressively less "streetwise" characters, concluding with a middle-aged white woman describing her "bling" to her elderly mother.[5][6]
The term has spread to Spanish speaking countries around the world, with Latin hip-hop and reggaeton artists from places like Puerto Rico and Panama. The main nuance is that, in Spanish, it is often stylized and pronounced as "blin-blin".[10] Furthermore, the Spanish word blinblineo also refers to bling and its style. Similarly, in French, "bling" traditionally describes nouveau riche attitudes; such as "wearing expensive suits, stylish sunglasses and conspicuously large wristwatches" or anything that is ostentatious and can be considered of "poor taste".[11] In German, it is usually used as simply "Bling".[citation needed]
The short film Bling: Consequences and Repercussions explains the troubled backstory of many of the diamonds jewelers often use to make the gaudy jewelry. Explicitly, the film takes issue with the fact that, occasionally, the diamonds were originally blood diamonds, that fuel wars, poverty, slavery, and killings across countries in Africa.[12] Similarly, Bling: A Planet Rock (2007) documents and subsequently contrasts the flashy world of commercial hip-hop jewelry against the significant role diamonds play in the ten-year civil war in Sierra Leone.
In this essay my aim is to explore how this racially derived notion of decadence always already relies on a perverse association of blackness with excess, upon which is founded an entire analysis of culture. For bling bling not only transcends class as well as gender; it makes it impossible to distinguish blackness from a racist economy of jouissance that, potentially, can invade and submerge every subject, person, or thing. Accordingly, if blackness denotes a profligacy that exceeds the moral economy of the subject, this is because it broaches the limits of being in general.
We could say that black life is the very experience of a life whose bling involves the exhaustion and degeneration of life itself, and one that necessarily involves a gradual separation of blackness and being. And this is why black life paradoxically coincides with a decadence that can only enrich itself as absolute privation, and an enjoyment that can only enslave itself as a discredited imposture of working capital.
The coincidence of decadence and blackness remains unthought in black political philosophy, which continues to offer us an image of bling bling as that without use, or as that which uses up utility nihilistically, unnaturally. The moral traditionalism of this reading, however, opens to a reading of decadence that is itself decadent, or that at least produces a hyperbolic reading that overflows its own limits.
All this derives from the literal casting down of a bucket: the lowering of the bucket into water that miraculously reveals itself as race capital is itself a transformation of metaphor into allegory. When capital triumphs, Washington avers, blackness ceases to be bereft. The stereotype of black abjection is preserved as the history that must be cancelled out even as it is raised up by the manufacture of a mutually enriching ideal of productive self-creation. Never mind the question of how the boat came to be lost, the question of how blackness was rendered abject; the fact is that it is lost. Washington continues:
What that theory still needs to address is how blackness becomes the primary referent of a pleasure that enslaves itself, or that consumes itself as enslaved. In this connection, I would like to turn to a renowned essay by Hortense Spillers in which the reproduction of gender under racial slavery is discussed in terms of grammar, sovereignty, and naming.
What is new here is the idea of black utilitarianism, which Washington and other writers introduced and described.7 In the field of such rhetorical labor, masculinity, conceived as the productive form, is contrasted to the feminine space of thrift, which is the duty of the one who consumes. Here in the spending of thrifts real black men work; they are not castrated sojourners in the marketplace of capital.
"By the year 2000, Lil Wayne gon' tear this game up," Baby warns, editing his verse for the radio version to set up the next verse. And then, sure enough, there's Wayne, doing your main lady in a blue Navigat-ey.
What else is there to say about "Bling Bling" that hasn't already been said? It is the foundational creed of Cash Money Records, an orienting landmark for rap itself. When people who don't know a single thing about rap start describing rappers, they invariably drop the word "bling" because it is a thing rappers say. The word made it into the dictionary. "Bling Bling" is the song that transformed Lil Wayne from Hot Boy to hot, boy.
"I didn't know it was gonna be as big," Turk told me earlier this year. "Nobody did. It just was something that we did. And, man, that song really crossed Wayne over. And had people wondering who was Wayne." Turk should know better than anyone: His verse was replaced by Wayne's for the radio edit, which was the version that blew up.
Fate works in unexpected ways. It's never clear how one song might alter history. It just happens. Wayne became the child phenom: not just the kid who could rap circles around people twice his age but also the embodiment of rap's flashy lifestyle. His pinky ring was worth 50 grand, his cars all had Lorenzo rims and Yokohama tires. Every time he came around the city: bling bling! The hook was enough to make him a hit; the verse made him a sensation.
We listen to music for many reasons, but one big reason is because we like to hear songs that make us feel good. And how could anyone not feel awesome as hell listening to "Bling Bling"? This is the platonic ideal of rap music about gleeful excess. It has none of the lush, pillowy comforts of modern luxury rap of the Rick Ross thread count linen school; Mannie Fresh's beat is all eerily dry, laser-like synths. It's weird and almost abrasive, futuristic and gritty at the same time. Many of the lines are clumsily rapped, spilling over the edges of the beat. Juvenile's verse is enunciated like he's just slurped down a bowl of alphabet soup. Baby raps that the Cash Money motto is "drink 'til you throw up." B.G.'s chain isn't just expensive; it's so painfully bright that girls have to wear sunglasses to stand next to him. It's perfect that the song's enduring image, from the video, is of a helicopter set against a hazy sky; this is expensive shit, but it's not soft. That's what rap about taking over the world should feel like. Hell, it's what the best of it still does feel like. You can trace a straight line from this song to the current biggest rap song in the country, Cardi B's "Bodak Yellow."
The Lil Wayne of later years stands out for wordplay and dominates tracks with his confidence. But Hot Boy Wayne is great because he always seems focused on wringing as much out of simple syllable sounds as possible. For instance, check out the economy of, "Drop tops when it's hot / stretch Hummers when it's not / light up the whole block when / you glance at my watch." That's tight and straightforward. It's a microcosm of what makes this song perfect, what makes Cash Money so enjoyable as a musical project. It's not trying to change the world. It's just trying to sound cool. Lil Wayne knows it, too. He closes his verse with all the summary you would ever need, "Tattoos and fast cars, do you know who we are? / I'm Lil' Weezy puttin' down for C.M.R." And guess what? This song? Well, it changed the world anyway.
My question has nothing to do with Hip-Hop but with throwing on a potters wheel, or hand building. I often see videos of people throwing with rings on their fingers, bracelet and watches on their wrist or necklaces dangling inches from the wheel. Before I start in my studio, I always first have to remove every jewelry I wear, even my wedding band. I cannot work wearing bling bling.
I wear my wedding ring. My wife had it welded on. JK. I don't think about it and for the most part I haven't had any clay rips in awhile. Besides, if I take it off, I know I will forget to put it back on. And that might get me fried. Although I have thought about making it into a nose ring. or an ear ring. I don't wear any other bling blings.
Never...and that goes hand-in-hand with using eye shields, masks, gloves-all other appropriate/effective protections for health, safety, and not wrecking your work. Even fingernails can wreck a piece when hit on the wrong place at the wrong time. And to say nothing of the horrors of getting some body part/hair caught in something that has moving parts!
c80f0f1006