Jay-Z and Kanye West – "Otis" (2011)

They ain’t see me ‘cause

I pulled up in my other Benz

Last week I was in my other other Benz

(Think about those Kanye West lines, boys and girls.  Imagine having a Mercedes-Benz that people are used to seeing you in.  But one day you pull up in your other Benz.  Which confuses everyone, because just last week you were in your other other Benz!)

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In case you haven’t been to a baseball game since the 1980s, you may not know that teams play brief snippets of popular songs before each player comes to bat.  

There are “walk-up” songs representing every music genre – from hip-hop to metal to country to Latin.

Some players choose new walk-up songs frequently, while others stick with the same recording.  (Bryce Harper has used Moby’s “Flower” for many years.)  

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Before the New York Yankees’ home opener last Friday, Empire Sports Media – an independent digital media company that covers New York’s professional teams – posted the team’s starting lineup, along with each player’s walk-up song:

The Yankees’ walk-up music runs the gamut.  Veteran sluggers Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, and Giancarlo Stanton walk up to the plate to hip-hop recordings.  Ryan McMahon uses a song by the country artist Hardy while Jose Caballero prefers Dandy Yankee.  Trent Grisham goes with a contemporary Christian record.

My two favorite Yankee walk-up songs are Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” (which is favored by catcher Austin Wells) and “Otis,” the Kanye West/Jay-Z collaboration that samples Otis Redding’s recording of “Try a Little Tenderness” (which is the walk-up choice of second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr.).

“Otis” is a silly-bazilly song – its lyrics will remind you just how clever and witty Kanye and Jay-Z could be when they put their mind to it.  (I did a deep dive into those lyrics in 2013.  Click here to read that post, which was published exactly 13 years ago today.)  

Kudos to Jazz Chisholm for choosing “Otis” as his walk-up music.

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The Spike Jonze-directed “Otis” video is one of my all-time favorites.

That video features Kanye and Jay-Z having the time of their lives cutting up a $350,000 Maybach sedan, filling the back seat with hot chicks, and then driving around much too fast.

Click here to watch the “Otis” video.

Jay-Z (feat. UGK) – "Big Pimpin'" (2000)

First time they fuss

I’m breezin’

There’s a memorable moment in episode two of season three of the wildly popular Hulu series, The Bear, when Jimmy “Cicero” Kalinowski greets Teddy Fak by saying “Hey, Teddy,” and Teddy replies with “’Sup, pimp?”

I used to greet people like Jimmy Cicero greets people – “Hey, [name].”  But effectively immediately, “‘Sup, pimp?” is the new official greeting of 2 or 3 lines.

I know that Jimmy Cicero – he’s the guy who put up the money for The Bear restaurant – is a serious dude.  (I get a very strong vibe that you definitely do not want to eff with him.) 

And I realize that Teddy Fak – like his brother Neil – is a dumb jerkoff whose role on the show is to provide comic relief.

But I like “’Sup, pimp?” much better than “Hey, [name],” so I’m going with the dumb jerkoff.

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“Big Pimpin’” is one of my favorite Jay-Z tracks due in large part to the distinctive instrumental sample taken from a 1957 Egyptian record titled “Khosara Khosara.”

The litigation over the use of that sample wasn’t finally resolved – in Jay-Z’s favor – until 18 years after “Big Pimpin’” was released.  (The mills of the American legal system grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.)

When Jay-Z was asked why he didn’t check out whether or not his producer had the legal rights to use the “Khosara Khosara” sample, he said, “That’s not what I do.  I make music.”

Click here to watch the official music video to “Big Pimpin’.”

Click here to buy today’s featured recording from Amazon.

Jay-Z – "Takeover" (2001)

Do not bark up that tree

That tree will fall on you

The entirety of “Takeover” is rapped over a sample taken from the Doors’ “Five to One,” which seems like a very unlikely record to use as the foundation of a hip-hop track.

Doors’ drummer John Densmore didn’t get it either when he first heard “Takeover” – in fact, he didn’t get rap generally.  “I was like, ‘What is this stuff? There’s no melody,’” Densmore told Rolling Stone magazine in 2013, sounding like every old white guy on the planet – except for 2 or 3 lines, of course, who bought a ticket on the hip-hop train decades ago.

Jay Z heard about Densmore’s comment, and got in touch with him. “Jay Z wrote me a letter saying, ‘Hey, we’re fighting the authority just like you guys did back then,’” Densmore said. The rapper also sent him a Def Jam T-shirt.

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“Takeover” is featured in the fifth episode of the fourth and final season of Succession, the HBO series that is ONLY THE GREATEST TELEVISION SHOW IN THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION SHOWS.  (As soon as I finish this post, I’m planning to watch the final episode of Succession.   I can’t tell you how depressed I’ll be when that episode ends – I wish they had made 40 seasons of the show instead of just four.)

The storyline of Succession features a number of attempted business takeovers, so it makes sense that the producers chose to use a snippet from this record on the show’s soundtrack.  

“Takeover” was released on Blueprint, Jay-Z’s sixth studio album, which was recorded while Jay-Z was awaiting trial for assault and gun possession.  It was released on September 11, 2001.  (Yes, that date is correct.) 

“Takeover” was one of the four tracks on the album that was produced by Kanye West.  (West was strictly a producer at that time.  He released his first solo album three years later.). It’s one of the most famous diss tracks in the history of rap music, responding to insults from Nas and Prodigy with a withering stream of invective.

Click here to listen to “Takeover.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.  

Justin Timberlake (feat. Jay-Z) – "Suit & Tie" (2013)

And as long as I've got my suit and tie

I'ma leave it all on the floor tonight

Shinesty is an online clothing retailer that claims to be “the #1 online destination for attention-grabbing apparel.”  

The company, which freely acknowledges that it is “not J. Crew” (and how), guarantees to sell only  “clothing your mom would hate.” 

I promise that your wife will hate it, too.  (Most girlfriends, too.)

I recently received a copy of Shinesty’s Christmas catalog in the mail.  (I wonder what this post would have been about if I hadn’t gotten that catalog.  Do you wonder about that, too?) 

Here are photos of some of the suits and matching ties that you can find in the current Shinesty holiday collection for men:

For our Jewish friends, here’s the Shinesty “Rock Star of David” suit:

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Shinesty doesn’t just sell tacky Christmas suits and ties.

It also offers “Pit Vipers” sunglasses.  (Slogan: “They want to sit on your face.”)

And then there’s the “Jeado” swim brief – a/k/a the “Daytona Dong Sarong,” a/k/a the “Ding-a-ling Sling,” a/k/a the “Miami Meat Tent,” a/k/a the “Portuguese Pud Purse.”  (Shinesty’s headquarters are located in Colorado, where recreational marijuana use is 100% legal.  That probably explains “Portuguese Pud Purse” and most of the rest of the copy in Shinesty’s catalog.)

The company also sells a lightweight, breathable, moisture-wicking, bulge-enhancing boxer brief, which it calls the “Ball Hammock.”
  

The red-white-and-blue, bald eagle-themed “Ball Hammock” is perfect for us patriotic types:

But you Democrats may prefer your undies to feature a camel, horse, snow leopard, snake, zebra, lion, or golden retriever:

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Here’s how MTV described its reality show about Shinesty, which aired this summer:

Mix 10 mediocrely-good-looking twenty-somethings with a major TV network, add some melodrama, and boom  you get reality TV.  This six-episode “docu-comedy” is not appropriate for all ages and features casual nudity, kidnappings, bikini waxes, irreverent clothing, countless weiner shaped food jokes, and a variety of other very strange incidents that actually do happen in the Shinesty office every week.

Here’s the trailer for the show:

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Right now, Shinesty’s stuff is selling like gangbusters.  But I don’t see the company being successful in the long run.  

I have to think that its typical customer is someone who orders after getting drunk at a Christmas party, and who will have a terrible case of buyer’s remorse when the clothing he orders arrives and he tries it on.  

The company’s investors include the Winklevoss twins (who co-founded Facebook), and they’re a lot smarter than I am, but I just don’t see guys ordering a Christmas suit from Shinesty more than once.  

Of course, most of the guys who will get drunk at a Christmas party this year will get drunk at a Christmas party next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.  So maybe Shinesty will do better than I think.

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“Suit & Tie” was the lead single from Justin Timberlake’s 2013 album, The 20/20 Experience.  It made it all the way to #3 on the Billboard “Hot 100.”

The music video for “Suit & Tie” was directed by David Fincher, the director of The Social Network, which starred Timberlake as Sean Parker, the man who co-founded Napster and who was the first president of Facebook.

Here’s “Suit & Tie,” which features Jay-Z:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Jay-Z (ft. UGK) – "Big Pimpin'" (2000)

We be big pimpin’

Spending cheese

[NOTE: Today’s 2 or 3 lines is brought to you by the fourth-generation iPod Shuffle™ (The Official MP3 Player of 2 or 3 Lines), Jockey™ low-rise briefs (The Official Low-Rise Men’s Briefs of 2 or 3 Lines), Gold Toe™ socks (The Official Men’s Cotton Socks of 2 or 3 Lines), and the Christiana Mall (The Official Tax-Free Shopping Mall of 2 or 3 Lines).]

2 or 3 lines moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.  But every so often – today, for example – I like to pull back the curtain and reveal something about myself to my readers, who seemingly just can’t get enough of me.

Last weekend, my second-generation iPod Shuffle finally gave up the ghost.

A second-generation iPod Shuffle

I’m not sure exactly when I bought that iPod.  The second-generation Shuffle was discontinued in March 2009, so I must have had mine for at least seven years.  

I listened to music on that iPod almost every day.  Since it only cost $49, I certainly got my money’s worth from it.

The Shuffle appealed to my minimalist sensibilities.  Unlike fancier iPod models, the Shuffle has never had a video screen, or a camera, or a microphone.  If you’ve never owned one, it’s tiny – it weighed barely half an ounce – but it held about 15 hours of music (which is somewhere between 200 and 300 songs). 

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I bought a new fourth-generation Shuffle (which is even smaller than my old one) at the Christiana Mall in Delaware when I was driving back to my Maryland home from Cape Cod on the day after Memorial Day.  

A fourth-generation iPod Shuffle

The Christiana Mall is a hundred miles north of where I live, but I visit it once or twice a year – which is more frequently than I visit any of the malls near my home.  It’s just off I-95, so I go right by it when I’m driving to or returning from the Cape.  

Not only is the Christiana Mall a convenient place for me to shop, it’s in Delaware – which has no sales tax.  So it’s where I stock up on stuff I need every year – like underwear and socks.

I usually get my underwear and socks at the J.C. Penney store there, but I was disappointed when I stopped there this week.  They had plenty of Jockey full-cut briefs, but didn’t have a single package of white size-36 low-rise briefs.  (They had black low-rise briefs in my size, but I’m not really a black underwear kind of guy.)

There’s a big difference between the two styles.  Here’s a full-cut brief, which is sort of meh:

The low-rise briefs are much racier:

I think I'll eschew these Jockey briefs, which don't leave quite enough to the imagination:

I had more success when it came to socks.  Penney’s had plenty of the black cotton Gold Toe socks I wear most days in a special promotional package: buy six pairs and you got a seventh at no extra cost.  Throw in the fact that you don’t have to pay sales tax and we’re talking MAJOR savings, boys and girls.

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Just as I was about to leave underwearless, I had a brainstorm – maybe the Christiana Mall Macy’s would have white Jockey low-rise briefs in my size.

I trotted down to Macy’s and found exactly what I was looking for.  As I was buying my briefs, I noticed that Macy’s was also selling a special promotional package of Gold Toe socks.  But the Macy’s was giving you two free pairs when you bought six instead of just one free pair.

Those of you who know me well may be surprised to learn that I didn’t buy the socks at Macy’s and return the socks I had bought from Penney’s.  Somehow getting a free pair of socks wasn’t enough to motivate me to go back to Penney’s and ask for a refund.

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I may end up returning my iPod.  After buying it, I found out that it will only work with Macs that come equipped with fairly recent versions of iTunes and the Mac operating system.

My Mac is six or seven years old, and I’m not sure it can handle the software updates that will be required for me to use a fourth-generation iPod.  I might have to buy a new Mac to use my new Shuffle.

Macs start at $1099 and go up from there, so you might think it’s ridiculous for me to consider buying a new Mac in order to use a $49 Shuffle.  But a Mac that’s six or seven years old is almost as antique as I am, so I probably need to buy a new one anyway.

Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure the reason that I bought my current Mac six or seven years ago is because my previous iPod stopped working, and the new iPod I bought to replace it wasn’t compatible with my previous Mac.

The Apple Store at the Christiana Mall

By the way, the Christiana Mall’s Apple store outsells every other Apple store in the United States except Apple's flagship Fifth Avenue store.  Obviously  I’m not the only one who cares about sales tax.

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While doing some research about the history of the iPod, I stumbled across a Huffington Post piece titled “25 Songs Everyone Had on Their First iPod.”  (You grammar absolutists out there are no doubt thinking to yourselves that the piece should have been titled “25 Songs Everyone Had on His First iPod,” while you feminist grammar absolutists are thinking to yourselves that it should have been titled “25 Songs Everyone Had on His or Her First iPod.”)

Those 25 songs included a number that would have been worthy of being featured in today’s 2 or 3 lines – for example, Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping,” Smash Mouth’s “All Star,” 3 Doors Down’s “Kryptonite,” Sisqo’s “Thong Song,” and “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys.  

But the most worthy song on that list was definitely Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin’,” which featured a distinctive sample from a 1957 Egyptian recording titled “Khosara Khosara.”

Click here to watch the official music video for “Big Pimpin’,” which is definitely worth watching.

Click here to buy today's featured recording from Amazon.

Jaydiohead -- "Dirt Off Your Android" (2009)

Got some dirt on my shoulder

Could you brush it off for me?

"Dirt Off Your Android" is featured on Max Tannone's Jaydiohead album, a 2009 collection of mashups combining music by Radiohead and music by Jay-Z.  As the title indicates, "Dirt Off Your Android" combines "Paranoid Android" (from the OK Computer album) with "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" (from Jay-Z's The Black Album)  Click here if you'd like to read what 2 or 3 lines had to say about "Paranoid Android" a few days ago.

Jaydiohead?

There are about a zillion covers and mashups of "Paranoid Android," by the way.  The Easy Star All-Stars did a reggae cover.  A classical pianist (Christopher O'Riley) and a string quartet (The Section) have also recorded the song.  Weezer did a cover that one reviewer compared to "hearing Tupac sing a Smashing Pumpkins song."

Without a doubt, the oddest cover version to date was the one done by the percussion section of the University of Massachusetts Minutemen Marching Band.  It's worth listening to:

It's hard to imagine two more dissimilar artists in terms of musical style, but most of the Jay-Z/Radiohead mashups on Jaydiohead work reasonably well.  (Jay-Z tweeted "There are 3 or 4 REAL gems on jaydiohead," and Gwyneth Paltrow included a Jaydiohead track on a 2009 list of her ten favorite party tracks.)

"Dirt Off Your Shoulder" got a lot of attention during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Barack Obama responded to attacks by primary opponent Hillary Clinton by pretending to brush dirt off his shoulder -- a clear reference to the Jay-Z song.  (When questioned about the gesture, an Obama campaign spokesman admitted that "[h]e has some Jay-Z on his iPod.")

Ian Kinsler brushes the
dirt off his shoulder 

Pretending to brush dirt off your shoulders is a don't-give-a-damn gesture -- if you get knocked down and end up with dirt all over your clothes, Jay-Z's advice is that you just pick yourself off and brush that dirt off like you don't really care. 

Obama adapted the gesture to the dirty business of politics.  He didn't literally have dirt on his shoulder, of course.  His message was that Clinton's strategy of attacking him was just typical Washington mud-slinging.  The appropriate response?  Just brush all that dirt off your shoulder and go about your business.

Here's video of Obama's gesture:

And here he is appearing to give good ol' Hillary the finger.  (He denied it, of course, but the audience reaction and his reaction to the audience reaction sure make it look like that's what he was doing.)

Here's "Dirt Off Your Android":

Click here to download the entire Jaydiohead album for free.    

Jay-Z and Kanye West -- "Otis" (2011)

They ain't see me 'cause

I pulled up in my other Benz

Last week I was in my other other Benz

Think about that, boys and girls.  You've got one Mercedes-Benz that people are used to seeing you in, but you're not driving it.  Instead, you pull up in your other Benz.  

Which confuses everyone, because last week you were in your other other Benz!

Imagine what it would be like to be Kanye West . . . even for just a single day!

You might think it would be better not to live the life of Yeezy for just a day because you would never be satisfied with your own sad, dull life after that 24 hours of bliss had ended.  But I figure that 24 hours of Kim Kardashian would be plenty for any man -- after that, you'd be happy to have your own life back.

You see a picture like this one, and trading places with Kanye seems very, very tempting.  But pretty soon she'll going to start talking -- and once she does, she may never stop!

Kim from the front (for a change)

Jay-Z is a phenomenal rapper, but I think he has to take a back seat to Kanye as an artist.  And Kanye is younger and better-looking.  But Jay-Z has an edge on Yeezy in one area: he's married to Beyoncé.  Kim Kardashian certainly has her charms, but she's no Beyoncé when it comes to talent and wealth.

"Otis" was the second single from the 2011 Watch the Throne album.  It borrows heavily from Otis Redding's classic, "Try a Little Tenderness," which was one of the songs featured in this year's edition of the wildly popular "29 Songs in 28 Days."  Click here if you missed that post.  

The Watch the Throne album cover

After the song opens with a 30-second snippet from "Tenderness," Jay-Z kicks off the first verse of "Otis" by announcing "I got my swagger back."  (Who knew Jay-Z lost his swagger in the first place?)  He gives a shoutout to his new favorite Swiss watchmaker, Hublot.  

Jay-Z used to be an Audemars Piguet guy, but recently allied himself with Hublot -- likely in exchange for an equity stake in the company.  Click here to read what Forbes staff writer Zack O'Malley Greenburg, the author of Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went from Street Corner to Corner Office, has to say about the Hublot deal.

Here's the Hublot "Big Bang" watch that Beyoncé bought for her hubby recently.  It has 1282 diamonds and cost an estimated $5 million:

Jay-Z's Hublot "Big Bang"

The highlight of Kanye's first verse are the Mercedes-Benz lines quoted above, plus an out-of-left-field reference to Phillip Drummond -- that was the name of the rich white guy (played by Conrad Bain) who adopted two black orphans named Arnold and Willis (played by the late Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges) on the Diff'rent Strokes TV show.

The Diff'rent Strokes crew

Jay-Z cranks up the narcissism in his second verse:

Photo shoot fresh, looking like wealth

I'm 'bout to call the paparazzi on myself

You might think that the reference to a "G450" in this verse is a reference to a Mercedes-Benz G450, but you would be wrong.  (You obviously don't own one Mercedes, much less an other other Mercedes.)

There is a Mercedes-Benz GL450, but there's no G450 model Benz.  Jay-Z is talking about the Gulfstream G450, a twin-engine long-range business jet with a list price of about $38 million.  Jay-Z owns a G450, although I'm guessing Beyoncé is helping pay for it.

Gulfstream G450

The good thing about being rich enough to have a Gulfstream G450 is that you can get the hell out of Dodge and bribe everyone you need to bribe if the sh*t really hits the fan some day -- Jay-Z says he's got five passports, so he's never going to jail in the good ol' US of A.

Kanye follows up with some luxury-goods-related lines of his own.  His brags that his verses are "couture-level" in quality, "the Hermès of verses" -- like high-end fashions, his rap "is never going on sale."

Kanye with his Hermès "Birkin" bag.

The next lines display the sophisticated wordplay that is West's hallmark:

I get it custom, you a customer

You ain't accustomed to going through customs 

Kanye has always mixed the sacred and the profane in his lyrics -- he "writes his curses in cursive."  He closes the verse by observing that (unlike most men) he doesn't have to impress women -- the women show off in hopes of impressing him.  After he's "done" with one of the many women who throw themselves at him -- this song was recorded before he found true love with Kim K, of course -- he starts to make the obligatory promise to call her tomorrow, but then changes his mind . . . and shows that he's a master of wordplay in more than one language: "I'll hit you up maña . . . NAH!"

In his second verse, Jay-Z picks up where he left off in verse one, which ended with him using his Gulfstream, his passports, and his cash money to get out of the country and obtain political asylum elsewhere -- perhaps in Havana, when he can indulge in his love of cigars with Fidel Castro.  

But Jay-Z says that he and all the other "illegals" that he consorted with when he was a drug dealer (Mexicans, Dominicans, etc.) will find their way into the United States regardless of the measures our government takes to keep them out:

Build your fences

We digging tunnels

Kanye's final verse is a tour de force.  Of course, so many of Kanye's verses are tours de force that the term has little meaning when applied to him.  He begins by taunting all his rap rivals, who have to take tour buses to get from concert to concert, while Kanye and Jay-Z travel on the G450:  "Can't you see the private jets flying over you?"

Jay-Z and Kanye in the "Otis" video

Kanye's closes out "Otis" with a reference to Reinhold Niebuhr's "Serenity Prayer" -- since other rappers can never match him, he hopes they don't drive themselves crazy trying:

Lord, please let them accept 
The things they can't change

And pray that all of 
Their pain be champagne

The champagne/"sham pain" pun in the last line is quite old.  There's an 1860 book titled The Toast-Master's Companion that contains this drinking toast:  "Champagne for our real friends, and real pain for our sham friends."  Click here to listen to Fall Out Boy's 2005 song of the same name.

Kanye and Jay-Z had such a good time doing this song -- that's obvious when you listen to "Otis," and it's even more obvious when you watch the music video (which is embedded below).  

Apparently they really did chop up a Maybach for the video.  (A new Maybach runs about $350,000, and it's estimated that another $150,000 was spent modifying it for the "Otis" video, which was directed by our old friend Spike Jonze.)

The "Otis" Maybach

Which reminds me of one final line from "Otis": "Maybach bumper sticker reads: 'What would Hova do?'"  (Hova, of course, is one of Jay-Z's many nicknames.)  A sacrilegious play on "What would Jesus do?" bumper stickers?  Yes, of course -- but isn't putting a bumper sticker on a Maybach even more of a sacrilege?

Click here to watch the "Otis" video.