"Ridin'" By Chamillionaire & Krayzie Bone is an All Time Classic Song, Here's Why
“RIDIN’”
BY
CHAMILLIONAIRE & KRAYZIE BONE IS AN ALL TIME CLASSIC SONG, HERE’S WHY.
By.
Nick Zablocki
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| Video |
Lost in the malaise that was the
mid-2000s in hip-hop, Chamillionaire’s breakthrough single “Ridin’,”
is an
under-appreciated hip-hop classic. I mean, where do we even begin with this
legendary track?
First of all, the beat is still a
slapper to this day. This is a RARE accomplishment for mid-2000s hip-hop, which
I consider to have some of the weakest overall production of any era. Secondly,
Chamillionaire is talking about REAL FUCKING ISSUES on this cut. He talks about
racial profiling, about how crooked police officers, so most police officers,
would just love to
catch him ridin’ dirty.
(This means to be driving around with illegal paraphernalia in the car. Whether
that be alcohol, other drugs such as marijuana, codeine cough syrup, pills, or
even what is most likely an unregistered handgun, is up to the individual.
Generally speaking, more than one of these objects is probably involved.)
Chamillionaire comes at it from the angle that he isn’t
ridin’
dirty,
but that he’s simply being profiled cause of the color of his skin, or
the image that he presents. These are grown up issues that we’re
still dealing with today, in 2017, almost 2018, over a decade since this song’s
release in 2005.
To be fair to the roughly 7 decent
cops splattered across U.S. history, this isn’t the
only message Chamillionare presents. He does contradict himself a few times. In
the first verse he talks about having a full clip in his “pistola”, his
gun, right next to the Playstation controller.[1] He
closes his first verse with one of the most remarkably untrue claims I’ve
ever heard in hip-hop history, which for the record, enhances the record, it
doesn’t
diminish it in the slightest. He says, “Got warrants in every city except
Houston/But I still ain't losin’” I mean…..WOW.
Every city huh? So Des Moines, Iowa? Check. Dover, Deleware? Check. Every
FUCKING city except Houston, his home-fucking-town, the city he probably spend
the majority of his time in, just, remarkable.
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| Krayzie Bone |
The moment that propels this song to
GOAT level status, though, has to be Krayzie Bone’s
stand out feature verse. First of all, this man is so crazy that he spells
crazy as “Krayzie.” What
more do you want from the man? His fast paced flow is FILLED with relatable
quotables. For instance, “I've been drinkin' and smokin’/Holy
shit, ‘cause
I really can't focus.” As
someone who has delivered numerous pizza orders stoned out of his fucking gourd,
I can definitely appreciate what Bone is talking about here. I can’t tell
you the amount of times I’ve returned from a deliverino and had
to question where I just came from, glad the auto-pilot features in my brain
handled it I guess. Another example is “Doin' a hundred while I puff on a
blunt/And roll another one up, we livin' like we ain't givin' a fuck.”
Sheesh
man, like I said, what more do you want from the man? Have you ever gone over
50 miles per hour in the car while stoned? It feels like you’re on
the fucking Millennium Falcon.
Krayzie Bone is going twice that speed, smoking a blunt, and rolling another
one up. Is he a fucking octopus? How many limbs does this man have? Fuck.
Finally, Bone continues to muddy up the song’s message by saying, “Keep a
gun in car and a blunt to spark.” I
mean, he’s
really ridin’ dirty. This man loves blunts.
I’m telling you this a GOAT level song.
My unthreatening white ass loves to bump it heavy while passing Macomb County
officers. Just listen to it. We so often credit Lil Wayne for keeping hip-hop
alive in the mid-2000s, as we should, but, we don’t give
nearly enough credit to Chamillionaire and Krayzie Bone for helping keep it
alive with their monster song, “Ridin’.”
Twitter - @NickZablocki Instagram - @NickZablocki Soundcloud - Nick Zablocki
[1] It’s
so mid-2000s to brag about having a Playstation 2 controller in your vehicle.
Fun Fact: in the music video, it’s actually an Xbox controller. Weird.
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