Slim Jesus got time today, cuz
Internets,
Just because Slim Jesus is neither a criminal nor from the ghetto doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous. He’s not the last rapper in the world I’d want to fuck with, but I’d still put him on the lower half of the list, ahead of many of his black counterparts.
If you’re not familiar with Slim Jesus, either you’ve been living in a cave for the past week and a half, or you’ve got shit else better to do (and yet you subscribe to this email newsletter).
Slim Jesus is the first genuinely kinda amusing Internets meme since Charles Ramsey rescued those white chicks from his hispanic neighbor’s basement sex dungeon, and not for a lack of trying, e.g. “Why the Fuck You Lying?” or whatever it’s called, and a million other things that are already long since forgotten.
(Speaking of which, I hear there’s a new Migos mixtape.)
I first encountered Slim Jesus via a Facebook video that may have been a Vine that someone downloaded and posted to their own Facebook as part of some scam in which it’s necessary to appear to have a lot of likes on Facebook. It was only about seven seconds long, but it was more vulgar than some songs that run four and a half minutes. Clearly, this kid meant business!
Slim Jesus is pasty and scrawny in a way that seems anachronistic. With that buzz cut, he looks like a picture of some poor kid who enlisted in the Army in the 1950s, when food wasn’t as abundant as it is now. You’ve seen that article on Buzzfeed or whatever about what the food at McDonald’s looked like back then. The only burger they had was the one that comes with a Happy Meal. An order of fries only came with roughly the number of fries necessary to create the bread layer of a Ghetto Big Mac.
I happen to know, from having attended college out near the Missouri-Iowa border, that rural areas are filled with scrawny white guys. I don’t know if it’s because they’re behind the times out there or what. Many of them date extremely large women. (Think the mother from Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.) I read somewhere once that men from impoverished backgrounds prefer fat women because, on a subconscious level, fat women remind them of food.
We don’t know enough about Slim Jesus yet to know what kind of girls he bangs. We know, from “Drill Time,” that he fucked your girlfriend, who’s a thot (clearly), but we don’t know if he has a race or size preference. It would be weird if, like many white rappers, he fuxwit suburbanite white chicks who don’t know from rap music. (Never date a girl who likes rap music.) Though I’m not sure what a man of his stature — and his disposition — could even do for a black chick.
Slim Jesus hails from Hamilton, Ohio, which is about 20 miles outside of Cincinnati. I hear locals refer to it as Hamiltucky. They may lack a certain sense of self awareness with regard to how Ohio is generally viewed. For what it’s worth, I do have fond memories of an all-you-can-eat prime rib riverboat cruise I took on the river that runs alongside Cincinnati, about 20 years ago. There was a wedding band that played a lot of joints from the ‘80s, but this was about three years before there was such a thing as ‘80s nostalgia.
My family reunion this year was somewhere north of Cincinnati. My parents went. I couldn’t go, because it was probably like $300. There’s always a few random white people at any black family reunion, so it’s possible I’m related to Slim Jesus. I figure, if you’re related to at least one white person from Hamilton, OH, there’s a pretty good chance you’re related to at least half of them.
In an interview with Vlad TV, the very first Slim Jesus interview there ever was (respek), Slim Jesus was asked where he actually lived in Hamilton, OH. He said he used to live on the east side, then later he lived on the west side, and he’s also lived elsewhere — as if anyone would have an idea of what he was talking about. I found myself reminded of when Dick Cheney was asked where he was looking for WMDs in Iraq.
Of course what DJ Vlad was getting at was whether or not Slim Jesus is from the ghetto. If Slim Jesus sensed that, he wasn’t about to play along with it. It might be necessary for Complex to send whoever it was who located Earl Sweatshirt to Hamilton to find out if either of those places is the hood. Though it could be the case that both sides of town are fucked the fuck up, and it’s just split by race.
Wherever he was, Slim Jesus wasn’t actually committing any crime, which he freely admits to in the video. Vlad asks him if he’s ever been arrested, and he responds as if it’s an absurd suggestion, which for a white kid, regardless of where he’s from, it is. This is neither hyperbole nor sour grapes. It’s backed up by statistics. The Ferguson report from the DOJ revealed that white people were much more likely to be riding dirty, but black people were much more likely to be pulled over.
There’s a very telling moment when Slim Jesus attempts to qualify his lack of street cred. He says that he’s not out there catching bodies, because he’s smart… with the implication being that the black kids who make music like he makes, in Chicago, really are out there catching bodies, because they’re dumb. It’s a blink-and-you-missed-it moment in a video in which there’s so many other things to poke fun at, and it’s true anyway, but it betrays the crypto-hipster racist nature of his interest in child gangbanger rap.
Slim Jesus is the classic white guy who attempts to join a black gang. He’s the least tough guy there, but he’s the one you gotta worry most about, because he’s got the most to prove. The fact that he’s never been arrested is neither here nor there, in that why would he be arrested? The police probably never looked twice at him, even in his child gangbanger outfit. The black kids in his video look like a buncha cornball brothers.
Slim Jesus’ willingness to admit that he doesn’t live the life he sings about in his songs suggests to me that he’s under the impression that the rest of the world — including legit child gangbanger rappers in Chicago — will accept him despite his lack of criminality. Those cornball brothers must be all he knows of black people. He’s in for a rude awakening, and it’ll be interesting to see how he responds.
Take it easy on yourself,
Bol
Originally published at tinyletter.com.
