Ya Heard: Why Shawty just can’t win

Dennis Winn/Columnist
Published: July 17, 2008

"Life is like riding a bicycle. You don't fall off unless you stop pedaling."

-- Claude Pepper

Weeks have passed and it's beginning to seem the quarrel between two of Atlanta's biggest stars, T.I. and Shawty Lo, will not be going away anytime soon. While T.I. has chosen to make his point on wax, Lo spent most of his time in the streets and YouTube.com expressing his side of the story.

The feud is centered around Shawty Lo's claims he hasn't been acknowledged by artists from Bankhead, Atlanta, and that T.I. is actually not from Bankhead, a section of Atlanta's west side. Bankhead is a neighborhood that T.I. has claimed to be from throughout his career, thus making Shawty's accusations a challenge to T.I.s integrity and more impor-tantly, his street credibility.

Shawty Lo first made his assertion on a track titled "Dunn Dunn,"which said if T.I. were from the west side of Atlanta, then "there must be two sides" because he had never heard of the platinum-selling emcee while growing up there.

T.I. first responded to the claims in an interview where he denied Lo's claim, stating, "Who else is from Bankhead that he is wanting to acknowledge him? If it had not been for me, wouldn't nobody know where Bankhead was."

Fans have since expressed their uneasiness with Shawty Lo, as a newcomer to the game, taking shots at T.I., the self-proclaimed King of the South. Unfortunately for Lo, he chose the medium of hip hop—an arena in which he is obviously inferior—to confront T.I. Lo initiated a battle, on record, in an attempt to promote his career by putting his name in the same breath as T.I.'s. How many times have we seen this approach? Yet, his course of action may have been success-ful if he could actually, ummm ... rap! Now Shawty Lo has enjoyed the success of a few hits recently, most notably "Dey Know," but nowhere near the success T.I. has obtained, both, commercially and from hip-hop purists.

After watching the Internet interviews and footage of Shawty Lo attempting to plead his case, you would think he at least has something worth listening to. He even went as far as to dig up an embarrassing high school picture of T.I., allegedly from a high school 20-plus miles outside Atlanta. Lo also spends time walking through a Bankhead housing project asking people if they've ever seen T.I. in the area, to which everyone on film "surprisingly" answers "no." He even puts up money to find out more about T.I.'s past. All of this seems to be a convincing argument except for the fact this isn't high school, and the only way to prove your case in hip hop is through quality, respectable music.

In hip hop you have some artists deemed worthy of lyrical battles and you have a lot that are not. The problem is too many artists mistakenly believe fans are ready to listen to them and their personal views about another artist. Some artists are quietly making a living by staying in their lane and making descent music that fans love to dance and party to. Now, if that is their M-O, then they shouldn't step out of their lane and go at a battle-tested emcee. It's career suicide. Remember Canibus going at LL, or Nelly briefly beefing with KRS One, or Cam'ron taking shots at Jay Z? All these situations turned out to be disastrous for the former because believe it or not, there is order in hip-hop culture. Furthermore, like anything else, when order is upset people tend to tune out the offender. To all the artists who haven't yet grasped that, keep doing your thing and maybe, just maybe, one day fans will care to spend the time listening to who you like or dislike for whatever reason.

Instead of people looking to T.I. with questions in response to Shawty's allegations, people are looking at Shawty like an idiot for thinking he could wage a verbal war with one of hip hop's more authentic stars. This is a thorough example of how not to wage a hip-hop battle. Shawty has come out of this looking more foolish than he did before it began.

In the end, is T.I. from Bankhead? I don't know and don't really care, but to my knowledge he is. Does it matter if Lo is right or not? No, because at the end of the day it still seems T.I. is more of a solidified hip-hop artist than Mr. Laffy Taffy. In this month's issue of XXL, T.I. stated the following of the situation:

"I've always represented Bankhead. Bankhead is a long strip, and on that strip there' s only two projects on Bankhead: Bankhead Court and Boeing Homes. [Lo] is from Boeing Homes. I'm from the other end of the strip—not even the other end, probably about 10 blocks down on side streets. … So just because he's saying that he's from those projects, which are on Bankhead, but I'm not from those projects, so I'm not from Bankhead? That's preposterous. Those projects are not the maker of the Bankhead community."

No matter what Shawty … there he go!

THE SMOKEN WORD

On July 26, come experience some of the best talent in hip hop and R&B from the Northern Virginia area. It's going down at Cork'ed Wine & Cigars, 17934 Main St., Dumfries, across from the post office. The show is from 3 to 9 p.m., and is sure to be incredible.

Yours truly will be hosting the event, so you already know it's going to be nothing but entertainment. Females must be 18 to attend and fellas 21.

There is a $10 cover charge. This is a great opportunity to network for those involved in the local music scene, and a chilled out relaxing evening for those who just want to experience the atmosphere. Hopefully, I will see you all attendance. For more information, contact Karen of Cork'ed at 703-221-2440 or .

HIP-HOP TRIVIA

What song on Jay-Z's "The Black Album" did Eminem produce?

Be the 15th person to send me an e-mail with the correct answer and receive two free AMC movie tickets courtesy of the Potomac News and Manassas Journal Messenger. … Until next week, peace!

Dennis Winn can be reached at 703-200-4928 or .