The Genius of Calvin Broadus
(or “How to Short-Circuit the Game”)

Be careful what you wish for, like the old folks say. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Count no man lucky until he is dead.

Hip-hop today, now that Jay’s jumped up to the boardroom, has boiled down to a whole bunch of pretenders, Kanye (rightfully) ruling the universe, Em detoxing in Detroit, and a lurid office pool--who’s going to die first, Ja Rule or 50? Lots are thrown, dates argued, and the ground rules are laid. I’ve got 50 going first, sometime in late November, with Ja following on his heels in February.

Yeah, sure, ole Louie Farrakhan stepped in and brokered some kind of truce, and yeah, Murder Inc’s gone all cuddly and now they’re just calling themselves “The Inc”, but come on. Does anyone really think they’re breaking bread and swapping mixtapes with Dre and 50? That there won’t be some run-in at say, The Source Awards, some catastrophic, eight-posse throwdown that won’t start this whole thing up again?

And it’s not even like these guys are mortal enemies. The personal stuff aside, the bigger issue’s just about maintaining an image, one that backs up the rufftuff lyrics. Coming off like the biggest, baddest, alpha-est motherfucker in the game. Because if you turn into an Ashanti-duetting, bandana-rocking teddy bear, the streets’ll make you a punchline faster than you can say “Ladies Love Cool James”.

Except that when you start playing this game, there’s no room for error, not really any way out. No one needs mention the bi-coastal back and forth, the terror that came out of that, and it seems like things are headed there again. It’s either soft and cuddly laughingstock or big-time, badass, post-mortem hitmaker. Either or. Neither nor.

And then there was Snoop.

He was a hardass at the beginning, stone-cold and sneering in the videos, representing the LBC. He was the dude at The Source Awards screaming violence at the East Coast crowd, taunting, “Ya’ll ain’t got no love for Snoop Dogg and Doctor Dre? Ya’ll ain’t got love for Death Row? Fuck ya’ll!” Hell, he was the guy at the VMA’s who got pushed onstage in a wheelchair, who rapped at his own funeral. Murder was the case that they gave him, remember?

That’s the same guy who’s now doing AOL commercials with Jerry Fucking Stiller! He’s invented this godawful lingo that even the most suburban white kids won’t use anymore, was an honorary spokesman for Girls Gone Wild, played a pimp in an Owen Wilson movie, and had a show that was honestly called “Doggy Fizzle Televizzle”.

Dude turned himself into a cartoon character, and I think it’s brilliant.

Of course some might be quick to smirk at Snoop, to look down on him for his AOL shilling or the Izzle debacle. They’d be quick to call him a sell-out, a joke. They wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but that’s not really the point with Snoop anymore.

Because while poor old Ja lets himself get punchlined by the public, Snoop beat them to the joke. He looked at the game, found it distasteful (at least possibly fatal), and then side-stepped it. He’s still in the spotlight, still making all the money he could want, and yet his safety’s no longer an issue. Neither is his credibility or his alphaness--who can hate a cartoon character? Snoop took the game, hit a blunt, looked back at the game, smirked, exhaled, ordered takeout, and then short-circuited the game like he was Johnny Five. He doesn’t need to strut and preen and bump chests with all of the other cowboys—he just has to maintain the Looney Tunes image and cash his considerable checks.

Bravo, Calvin, bravo, young Snoop. A pasty-faced white kid salutes you.