From Flavor to Swag.

About an hour ago, I read an essay for my English Comp class (Jeffery Campbell isn't the only educated rapper.) It had to do with how humankind consumes more than it should, which nowadays even a fourth grader could tell you to be true. (They show "An Inconvenient Truth" in Grade School, right?) The funny thing was that the part of this essay that really got me going, and that I promise I'll connect to rap in a second, was the idea of shopping as a form of consumption.

Americans love to shop. I'm not a statistics guy, but my gut feeling is that not a lot of countries compare to us on the Scale of Buying Things (Wow, I should quit rap and get a job naming different types of scales.) It seems to me that a big contributor to all this, at least at the young male level, are rappers, aspiring rappers, and rap enthusiasts obsessed with their "swag".

I have tons of clothes. I'd like to stress that. I'd also like to say that I don't do it to upgrade my "swag" points (Which is partly due to my learning that you can't redeem them for prizes. a stuffed swagasaurus rex would've been cute.) I think there's two distinct groups of fashion enthusiasts. There's those who do it to please themselves, and there's those who do it so others think they're cool. I'm glad to say that, after 6 years of teenage awkwardness, I've nuzzled my way into category (a).

I love clothes. I have somewhere around 80 t-shirts, each of which I wear eventually. Most importantly, I don't wear them to be a carbon copy of the guy next to me. I wear hats with Deadpool on them. I don't give a fuck if that's not what's popular. You like the Orieles? Well guess what? I don't even know what city they play for (Or sport for that matter... I wanna say croquet.) My interest in fashion comes from wanting someone to know what I like without me ever saying a word to them (Those t-shirts? All comic book or sci-fi related.)

On the flip side, you've got people who follow hip hop fashion like a job (Only, it's a job where you lose money every time you need to switch to a different style) five years ago, every rap fan I knew was wearing pants that looked like they'd be more efficient as a small house. A couple rappers with a passion for skating was all it took to throw that baggy shit in the dumpster (Though, a lot of their clothes would have acted better as their own dumpsters) They were following a trend, and following it to impress those around them.

Often times, it's not just the clothes. People will copy these rappers' entire set of interests for no apparent reason. YES, this rapper is dope, but you don't have to be him.

I guess I'm just hopeful that those people will grow out of that mindset. For hip hop's sake, fashion's sake, and the sake of the people themselves. Life's so much easier when you're not trying to be a part of it. I know. I finished my "baggy pants" chapter 5 years ago, only I didn't flip to the next page.