Fans of bizarre rap already know and love hyphy, a micro-genre from the Bay Area which is… well, bizarre. Suffice to say, hyphy is fun music. Think high-pitched noises. The 1990s. Artists like Keak Da Sneak, Mac Dre, E-40 (musically, if not categorically), and New York’s own DJ Eleven of the Rub.

Perhaps a clear introduction to the form is a song created from chopped-up sections of the Ghost Busters theme. Gentle reader, I present via hyperlink and heartily endorse “Ghost Ride The Whip” by Mistah Fab, a song about driving slowly while standing on your car, looking fly, wearing unexpected vestment, maxing/relaxing, &c.

Importantly, hyphy, a word Keak coined, is pronounced “high-fee,” not “hi-fi.” I hope an intrepid etymologist, philologist, or linguist (preferably Language Log’s Geoff Pullum) can one day trace in full the evolution of hyphy’s pronunciation. Until then, I classify it a minor, enjoyably diverting mysterium. Oakland’s version of my own hometown’s crunk.

MEANWHILE: The Sci Fi Channel needed a new look, a new steez, if you will. Some branding genius was banging his head against the wall. How could he ever possibly hope to make sci fi less, well, sci fi?

(Tangent: Fantasy got Peter Jackson, hot elves, lovably queer hobbitses, and a Halo-worthy final bodycount of about 90 million orcs dead, 1 Vigo scuffed. But the genre of speculative or science fiction has had to endure an endless parade of movie or television franchises resurrected in hideous zombie form. In fact, the only growth area in science fiction, at least in terms of massively popular culture, has been that of the zombie—though near-future vampires seem due for a New Orleans-inspired/tween-financed comeback.)

What was Sci Fi (the channel) to do? The answer, according to our hypothetical branding whiz, was to change its name to something unpronounceable and enigmatical: SyFy. I saw this word, this neoloogyism, in brilliant largeness on a poster at a bus stop and read it “sigh-fee,” because of hyphy. I read the copy around the word and found out that it is pronounced “sigh-fi,” as in “sci-fi” the genre, as in “Sci Fi” the channel. I shook my head and thought immediately of Mac Dre (RIP) and the other under-sung exponents of innovation and, yes, speculation in hip hop.

Zombies are all well and good. Sci Fi getting a metaphorical haircut to attract a new demographic is all well and good. But companies seeking to foster innovation in that strange zone between future-reading and art, between astrology and entertainment need to do more than simply repackage old concepts.

What Sci Fi et al need is the sort of willing-to-defy-popular-trends spirit that inspired Firefly, that inspired hyphy, that inspired crunk, that inspired the first rap records, and before that the first jazz jams in some broke dude’s basement in some hood I’ve never heard of, and before that Debussy, and Shelley, and so on, and so forth, back to the first cave-nerd to draw a Cubist bison fucking a waterfall.

At which show one may enjoy five-dollar all-thee-can-imbibe sangria and beer.

This event will be all ~10 kinds of fun (+/- 1 standard margin of error of fun), not to mention the first Heavy Jamal show in a year, featuring songs never before heard by the public.

Sangria Dance Party ft. the Mangoose and Heavy Jamal
Friday, April 24 at 8:30 p.m.
293 Monroe St. #3, Brooklyn

PS - the HJ show starts after the Pomp & Circumstance party, if you are going to that (as I am).

PS2 - The penguins are coming to destroy us. Be warned.

Apparently, T-Pain doesn’t quite understand the economics of strip clubs: Male patrons typically pay female dancers for their time and their nigh-physical/pseudo-amorous attentions.

Likewise, patrons pay too much to drink liquor; the liquor boost confidence, restores a sense of manly dominance in men who could otherwise be described as submissive to the wiles of well-paid, bouncer-protected women.

Granted, perhaps T-Pain has been lucky enough to go home with a stripper every now and again. (Perhaps T-Pain doesn’t always wear the tophat…) But he certainly could’ve written a much sharper/less economically clueless second verse for such a big single.

It’s as if Wu-Tang had dropped a reference in “Protect Ya Neck” to cable-knit scarves: Should I be worried about my neck, I might have wondered, because it’s cold out? Or because some cold-ass motherfucker’s going to swoop down and cut my neck off with a motherfucking Chinese broadsword? Wu-Tang make their case (my second hypothetical) quite clear via any number of rhetorical strategies.

Put another way, via their collective ellusion of the cable-knit scarf (and ruff, and ascot), Wu-Tang provide adequate negative space for their listeners to envision the proper number and tang of broadswords.

T-Pain, on the other hand, confuses me both as to his ability to impress random women at their job-sites (an ability apparently lacking) and as to his understanding of the workings of his “favorite” club(s). He might have gone the absurdist route of R. Kelly and thrown in a dwarfish bouncer, at least—or a huge country belle with a pie.

But my confusion doesn’t end with T-Pain’s relationship to the idee of a strip club; I’m also confused as to why such a baller, such a rich-ass pop start can’t just pay the sixty bucks, continue to charm his sighted quarry, and convince her to go home with him at a later (perhaps not very much later) hour.

T-Pain, thus, comes off as an ineffective rake, a naive buyer in a commonplace (if seedy) flesh-market, and a quitter.

And yet… It’s a damn catchy song.