Wednesday morning sometime around 7:30, I sat in the Wilkinson Center Terrace writing a self-loathing email to a much-abler writer than myself. I sullied my compositional capabilities and generally felt sorry for myself that others existed who could turn a phrase with greater ease than I. Pathetic, right?

I feel I could write well (instead of just teaching others what good writing looks like); I just have this crazy fear of putting my writing out where other people can look at it without my constant control of the situation. I’m also pretty sure I’m beginning to bug the person I wrote to. I mean, how much of “you’re wonderful/I suck” can a stomach handle? We actually had the briefest of conversations the next day, but neither of us said anything about writing. Nor have I received any response to that email. I don’t know if that speaks legions or simply not a damn thing. But more importantly, I’m not going to worry about it.

I just need to step up and just start sharing writing. Hence this blog. I will not pretend satisfaction nor articulation with anything I write here. I feel I need to unblock some compositional pathways (I inundate my poor students with this idea early every semester). Again, hence this blog.

Back to Wednesday morning (this all relates, I promise). Two maybe three other people shared the basket-ball court-sized Terrace with me. Some others wended their ways around tables on their way to the neuronal necessities that keep this university running. I finished my email and idled through a few Scrabulous games doing my best to ignore my grad school applications and their impending deadlines. Then as the dim outside grew a bit paler and the lights in some offices around me flickered on, I heard a low voice somewhere behind me engaged in a conversation with someone else.

“I’m B Money. Have you seen me on YouTube?”

I whipped around and saw a bearded, early-thirties bundle of gansta pants and brown corduroy jacket attempting conversation with a backpacked and hoodied coed. The guy held a disc-man, the girl looked like she wanted to run. But nearly two decades of cultural conditioning held firm and she answered politely instead.

“Um. No, I haven’t. Is it good?” She wasn’t really interested. B Money couldn’t tell.

Part of me wanted to enjoy the awkwardness for a moment, but I interrupted right at that point.

“You’re B Money?” I ventured. Both looked at me, she visibly less tense now someone else had entered the conversation and he not at all surprised that someone even knew who or what B Money was. The girl’s eyes darted to me, to B Money, to the door – obviously planning an exit strategy. I’d like to think I interrupted as an act of mercy to the girl, but really I just couldn’t believe that B Money actually stood less than ten feet away from me.

The conversation between B Money and the girl ended quickly. He tried to give her his number, she said she’d look him up on facebook. The first action never happened; somehow I doubt the second will either. She quickly left. B Money stepped over to me.

He looked like he had just gotten off of a graveyard shift at a Kwik-E-Mart. I almost asked him how Apu was doing, but I didn’t. The gray in his short rusty hair disconcerted me a bit. Somehow I had expected B Money to be younger. His eyes had a dim almost Asbergers shield about them. He smelled of sweat and backseat upholstery. I grinned at him. It never occurred to him to smile back.

I have no idea what his real name is, but B Money (sometimes “Bee” Money) has had a few rap videoes on YouTube for a year or so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlGh64-l4IU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abfh206OocQ&feature=related

Some friends in north Orem showed one to me some months ago. Some people laugh at him or laugh with him, some who don’t get the situation with B Money hate his stuff. Others ignore it. He wrote his songs himself (some of my favorites include "It's your fetchin B-day" and "Abso-fetchin-lutely") and some guys in his ward just south of BYU campus helped him film the videos. One of the videos contains clips of him cruisin’ down 700 East, dancing at a local club, kicking an abandoned police barricade, and jumping multiple times over a “No Trespassing” cement barrier – almost the full extent of all gangsta activities in Provo. When you watch his videos, you can’t help but sport a smile. See, it’s pretty evident that B Money has some sort of mild social disorder (maybe some form of low-grade autism, I dunno). He lives in one of the quasi-run-down half-house apartments south of campus. He reminds me a bit of Arthur Killer Kane. B Money’s so damn sincere in his cultivation of a gansta rapper persona that you can’t help but want to support him in his bald-faced attempt to franchise himself.

Franchising himself was exactly what he was doing in the Wilk Terrace sometime before 8AM on a frozen Wednesday morning. I heard from a friend later that day that B Money upon occasion has had some run-ins with campus police because of his attempts to sell his B Money paraphernalia on campus. Even if I had known that, I wouldn’t have cared.

I had him sit down at my table and he put the CD from his disc-man into my laptop. We listened to a few of his new tracks and he informed me about the stuff he sells. His entire product line consists of a t-shirt ($10), a CD ($10), and a DVD ($4). I had a passing student take a picture of me with B Money and I made arrangements to buy a CD and a t-shirt (which I later did).

Here’s the point of this (I think). B Money is not good at rapping. In fact, he’s pretty horrid. I admit I’m already biased. For me, “good” rap songs include mostly Weird Al parodies and a few Beastie Boys tracks. But B Money would not be on anyone’s list of rappers they listen to because of sheer talent. People who actually listen to B Money usually listen to him for one of two reasons.

First, pity. See reasons listed above. I actually believe this is the lesser of the two reasons.

Most important reason I believe people listen to B Money: B Money wears his heart on his sleeve. He puts his whole soul into what he does. Think William Hung, Dwight Shrute, the early Ramones, and others.

True - they generally suck at what they do.

But they suck with such magnificent brio and aplomb.

So here’s to sucking with brio and aplomb. And here’s to wearing hearts on sleeves. May this blog be worthy of such aspiration.