Uche Ogbuji at Copia tries to knock some of the rust off of my appreciation of urban slang. In particular, he takes me to school on the contemporary proliferation of back-end abbreviations. From Rasheed Wallace's rendition of championships as "ships", I learned that back-ending, which I thought was over, is stronger than ever in some circles. Surprised that I didn't know this, Uche offers a list of examples:
His conclusion: "My personal theory is that hip-hop slang is far too rich and fast-moving for linguists to easily keep up".
Well, I'll defend my profession by claiming that a linguist who tried to keep up with it -- and there probably are some in that category -- could do as well as anyone else. But apparently it's even a challenge for the folks who transcribe lyrics for the web. Googling a little through Uche's list, I was intrigued by the many variants of Kanye West's Through the Wire:
I drink a boost for breakfast, and ensure for dizzert
Somebody ordered pancakes I just sip the sizzurp
That right there could drive a sane man bizzerk
Not to worry y'll Mr. H 2 the Izzo's back to wizzerkI drink a boost for breakfast, an intro for dizzert
Somebody ordered pancakes I just sip the sizzurp
That right there could drive a sane man bizzurp
Not to worry the Mr. H says that the izzles back wizzerkI drink a boost for breakfast, an Ensure for dizzert
Somebody ordered pancakes I just sip the sizzurp
That right there could drive a sane man bizerk
Not to worry the Mr. H-to-the-Izzo's back wizzorkI drink a boost for breakfast, and ensure for dizzert
Somebody ordered pancakes I just sip the sizzurp
That right there could drive a sane man bizzerk
Not to worry the Mr. H to the izzles back to wizzerk
Exercise for the reader: in the the last line, what did Kanye actually say, and what did he mean? (3 MB .wav file of the quatrain here.)
[And the winner is...
Joseph Burke:
After listening to that Kanye quatrain a couple of times, I think the line is "Not to worry, Mr. H-to-the-Izzo's back to wizz-ork" or something close to that.
And what does he mean? Well, Mr. H-to-the-Izzo is he, Kanye West. Kanye produced the song Jay Z song "IZZO (H.O.V.A.)". It was a pretty significant hit and put Kanye on the map as a mainstream hip-hop producer. If you recall, Jay Z raps "H to the IZZO" in the chorus of "IZZO (H.O.V.A.)." And "back to wizzork" is of course a way of saying "back to work."
Interesting enough, the hook from the song ("H to the IZZO/V to the IZZAY") is itself a form of back-ending abbreviation. One of Jay-Z's self-declared nicknames is Jay-Hova. Leave out the obligatory IZZes in the hook, and it's clear he's spelling out "Hova."
Got it. (And Kyle Benefiel wrote in with essentially the same information a short time later, along with a link to a ad-free transcription of Izzo (H.O.V.A).)
But hard as I listen to the clip, I can't hear the "to the", or any space for it either -- I think that what he says is just "mister H-IZZO's back to wizzerk", even if the classical allusion says that it should be "H-to-the-IZZO".
[ Matt T. emailed to tell me that my version of the audio is corrupted by some sort of digital skip, and that "you can hear [the 'to the'] fine on [his] CD version" ]
And now I have another question: what's with "to the" as a connective? Jay Z uses it to turn "H O V A" into "H to the O, V to the A" (and then you stick in the IZZes, of course). But I've heard something like this a lot: J-Kwon's Tipsy has
1, here comes the 2 to the 3 to the 4
everybody drunk out on the dance floor
then later "4 here comes the 3 to the 2 to the 1". And of course the lyrics to Rapper's Delight from 1979 have more than 50 repetitions of "to the", though mostly in collocationally expected places like "to the beat", "to the rhythm", "hello to the black to the white", as well as plausible quasi-nonsense like "up jump the boogie to the bang bang boogie" or "baby bubbah to the boogie da bang bang da boogie". ]
Posted by Mark Liberman at June 27, 2005 11:33 AM