Ying Yang Twins

w/ DJ Mays

Friday, March 30 @ University of Georgia

originally published March 28, 2007

Ying Yang Twins

Two years ago, my husband played in a regular softball game at Bishop Park, and the thing I remember most about the experience (much more than the games) was the fact that at least one car a night drove by blasting Ying Yang Twins’ “Wait (The Whisper Song).” You couldn’t hear anything besides the basic beat - they were, after all whispering - but it was ideally suited to Doppler distortion, and, eventually, one came to enjoy the dirtiness of the well-melded lyrics and squeezed melodic toms. Call it the moment in the movies when the girl dressed in white stops being grossed out by the food fight/ mud wrestling and joins in.

Unlike many other rappers, who make at least an attempt at classiness (champagne, fancy suits), the Atlanta duo of Eric "Kaine" Jackson and D'Angelo "D-Roc" Holmes is impressively lowbrow. There’s no attempt at real seduction. They cut straight to the chase with regard to what you’re going to see or what you should do with your ass or what kind of women they like (although, unfortunately, their latest album seems a bit more grown up, making use of Wyclef’s talents and a heavy electric guitar sample on the single “Dangerous”). This kind of gleeful vulgarity could explain why it’s so strange that they’re playing the Georgia Hall on the bottom floor of the Tate Student Center, more often host to prestigious lecturers and blood drives, or - and this is the explanation we’re going with - it could explain why it’s not.

The trashy incongruity of Kaine and D-Roc sharing the same space in which Nadine Strossen and William F. Buckley have debated serious political issues to rap about - let’s face it - pussy is exactly the appeal of the group: a delight in stains. There is an acceptance of the darker and grosser aspects of human nature, not an ascension but a going down in the world, to a carpeted room in a student center that sells no alcohol, doesn’t hold that many people and is about as opposite from sexy as you can get. Odd!

Hillary Brown