Brooklyn Funk Essentials, "I Got Cash"

As a reference for Boethius, The Consolation 2.21:

WARNING: This is a completely filthy song. Totally NSFW. The f-bomb probably appears here more often than any other word . . .  besides maybe the word "cash". It will also offend many sorts of people to no end. You have been warned ;-)

Proceed at your own risk. 

I am hardly a prude, but I don't see any point to simply being crude. I see no purpose in state-sponsored censorship, but I've also never respected writers, artists, or musicians who say something only to be shocking, or to make themselves better by being filthy. I never liked it when Tipper Gore tried to put labels on the albums I bought, but I also didn't like it when performers tried their best for shock value.

I admired the Brooklyn Funk Essentials from day one, as real artists playing real music. I saw them in a dingy club in NYC, and I was hooked. I recall the day I brought home their third CD, "Make Them Like It", and I settled down to what I knew would be an evening of good listening. I got to this track, and I was blown away.

This song works so well, precisely because its scathing satire turns everything on its head. The beautiful irony is that so many people in this world will brag to you about how great they are, how much they own, and how their ideal way of living is the only way to live. They believe themselves to be special, even as what makes them so special is only a tiny little bit of entitlement thrown their way. It is a facade, built upon appearance, and dependent upon tatters of privilege. What they are really telling us is that they are better, because they are richer. They have more than you, and they deserve it.

Well, let's take that to its natural conclusion. If richer is better, you're hardly the richest. If you wish to show off and strut with your toys and status, be sure that you are at the top of the heap. If money is really all you care about, you aren't the greatest at all. You are mediocre at best, or a pathetic pretender at worst.

Real money laughs at you. Real money will buy and sell your alma mater, the one you think gave you all your credentials, before you can sneeze. Real money will take your supposedly socially conscious business, and grind it between its teeth. Real money will buy up your favorite media outlet, and change your mind by manipulating your sense of what is fashionable.

Do you really want to brag to me about what you have? You have nothing. The difference between you and me is that I know I have nothing beyond myself, while you still think you have something beyond yourself that will make you better.

This is why I so love this song, and why I love that last line, "And you can't tell whether or not I'm joking, can you?"

People who only love wealth and status become the perfect victims of wealth and status.

Written in 1/2001

Brooklyn Funk Essentials. "I Got Cash", from Make Them Like It (2000)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbCArXTOVsw

I got cash in fuck you quantities
Know what?
That makes you uncomfortable
Fuck you and the Range Rover you drove in on

Fuck your Saab convertible
And fuck your twice weekly trips to the analyst
Stupid mutha fuck

Fuck the Hamptons, Maine,
And the fly-infested south of France
I'm paid, asshole
I got more cash than God can count
So why don't you just... die?

Choke to death on your damn designer bagel from Balducci's
Low cholesterol, naturally

Fuck your big ol' Sunday New York Times
Fuck the Wall Street Journal
And News Week
And the lot
Including Nation, Village Voice, Guardian and the rest
Stupid set of privileged mutha fuckers
Think its fashionable to have an alternative view

An alternative view

And fuck, if you can
Your pencil thin, Evian drinking, calorie counting, caffeine limiting, sodium sparing, NutraSweet sweetening, rear view mirror preening, carrot nibbling bunny

Go drown in a lake of Diet Coke, fucker

I got cash, what else matters?

I got cash

Slave

Fuck your fencing and screw your squash
Piss on your polo and your Pavarotti
Fuck all that shit you call music and pretend to enjoy

I got cash
Mega cash
I'm happy with that
Oh go and sit on your ski rack
Money talks you little pussy

You let your politically correct pals know
That i think you're a dick also
You neutered asshole

And your idea of multiculturalism
Japanese restaurant on Monday
Indian on Tuesday
And on Wednesday, Caribbean
Not to spicy please!

Well
I got stash on stash and it ain't nouveau cash
Moneys in my family for generations
My great great great grandfather made the bag
Selling European slaves in Africa

I got cash mutha fucker
And you can't tell whether or not I'm joking, can you?
Dumb fuck