Street Talk: Da Official Guide to Hip-Hop & Urban Slanguage (Dictionary)

Street talk is an excellent reference book for street slang and "urban speak" The one fault I have the way the book was put together is the lack of a glossary of everyday words with a page number to find the slang.
The slang is arranged A-Z with example sentences. Which is useful but if you wanted a slang word for a specific term, say "Jail" you have to search the entire book to find it. I do recomend the book. It is useful, funny in places, and quite unusual.

On the shelf below my Microsoft's MFC Library Reference Volumes I and II, various Resource Kits, and such, right between my Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language and my Roget's International Thesaurus now resides Street Talk. Considering linguistics, we've all been victims of our own ignorance. A parent or guardian, a teacher, a trusted friend, might point out that the weather has no bearing on whether or not you should go clean your room, that while you can go out and play, this does not guarantee that you may go out and play. As we grow, we sometimes discover we've derived the wrong definition by context. So early on we learn, when in doubt, to look it up.

Yet one day we find ourselves disembarking the number seven train at Grand Army Plaza and reading that "Crack is Whack", or we hear in a song on the radio that "The club is full of ballers with their pockets full grown", or our child returns from school pleased with himself because the general consensus is that his rapping skills are "crackin'" and that some of his friends did try to "bite" him and failed horribly. We ask ourselves if the author of this social commentary was in favor of or opposed to crack? Is the club full of baseball, basketball, or football players? Are they laughing at our child? In a good way or in a bad way? And has physical violence come in to play? Has our child been fighting, albeit in self-defense? We find we have some questions.

Along comes Randy Kearse, filling the reference void. We read on page 607 that when something is whack it is poor in performance or not cool, thus the message sprawled over the century old mosaic tile work is in fact a heartfelt endorsement of social reform. On page 36 we learn that a baller is one who makes and spends large amounts of money; we may then conclude that one with pockets full grown has this large amount of money on hand and that our singers should have a splendid time this evening. On page 128, to our parental relief, dismissing our errant assumption that his friends are cracking up laughing at him, we understand crackin' - an event or place filled with excitement and energy, or is hip or happening. It is, after all, important to a young teen to be held in high regard by his peers. Further, on page 53 we read byte - to copy or imitate. It is a widely accepted fact that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. We conclude that our child is navigating the road to adulthood with at least some measure of social success.

If you wish to better understand your local graffiti artist, or the little bit of music they squeeze in there between all the talk and the commercials, or your child who is enduring every growing pain you've ever experienced, yet, somehow differently, then I recommend Street Talk by Randy Kearse.

I, and dozens of teens in the community with whom I volunteer, love this book. It makes a great ice-breaker, and a great resource for folks who work in communities where slanguage is frequently used. It is almost 700 pages in length, with what appears to be perhaps a 1000 entries. The entries not only provide a definition of each word or term, but also it's history (old school vs. new school, etc.) and examples of how the words might be used. Just leave it sitting around where teens hangout, and see what happens (they may read together, laugh together, critique and analyze the entries together). The book has a scholarly yet humorous appeal to it. I am a college professor myself, and my college students also seem to like this book. I think it has widespread potential for a broad range of audiences. It has turned out to be a treasure. It would make a nice gift for mature teens, parents, educators, social workers, nurses, business people, clergy, and politicians. Caution: it may not be suitable for pre-adolescent children because of some of the mature themes. I would love to see Randy "Moe Deezy" also author a Thesaurus along this line. I'm done. Now let me translate what I just said using entries from the book: Okay, here's da scoop (p. 485). Good googily moogily, this book is off the chain! (pp. 240 & 396). I'm really clickin' with this book, and da shorties in my hood love this book too (pp. 115, 499, & 275). It's worth da cheese (p. 107). It handles business on the one hand, and makes you crack up at times as well (pp. 251 & 128). I also have to school shorties in college, and they dig the book too (pp. 484, 499, & 143). It's a tightly done book, and will interest everyone from the homies to the new jacks (pp. 578, 274 & 387). It's a wrap, peace out! (pp. 311& 418).

STREET TALK:
Da Official Guide To Hip-Hop & Urban Slanguage` - Randy Kearse (Author House)

At the best of times good reviews can sometimes seem hard to come by. When Randy Kearse (AKA `Moe Deezy`) wrote to me personally asking that I comment on his new book, I was equally surprised and moved. While there has never been a statue erected in memory of a critic, we're obviously doing something right when the creative types contact us directly to help them out on the PR front. But what has Moe D. actually written that he could possibly need my POV? Was it a biography? Was it a gritty urban novel? Was it a book of Tupac-esque poetry? When the second email came back, I discovered that I'd been asked to review a dictionary (as I said, good reviews can sometimes seem hard to come by)

But, as you can see from the title, this isn't any kind of dictionary. This book (weighing in at an impressive 700 pages) is the most definitive collection of hip-hop/urban slang terms, colloquialisms and turns of phrase that you could ever `buck up on`. Even though I can't personally envision Kid Rock getting hold of this book to keep on his desk next to his legal notepad, thesaurus and rhyming dictionary - it should be required reading for anyone who has even a passing interest in the genre. I know that many longtime fans might be disappointed that their music is going so mainstream, but if colleges in New Jersey are throwing symposiums on the music of Bruce Springsteen, then the celebration of the words and dialects of the hip-hop and urban cultures deserves to have its day.

All cynicism aside, Kearse has been able to pull the book together in a systematic, even scholarly fashion. Instead of it just being a one-dimensional dictionary, the book distinguishes between East Coast and West Coast, southern and general slang. It also throws in the old and new school turns of phrases that many of the readers will likely be very familiar with. That being said, Kearse unfortunately did pass on the opportunity to start another East Coast vs. West Coast rap war (he didn't want to suggest or imply that one geographical area slang is better than another) but it's probably for the best, regardless of how funny it would have been for the press to try and stir the hip-hop regions against each other based on slang. Also I'm still amazed by just how many ways you can refer to the derriere of the fairer sex, but now is neither the time nor place to start expounding on that particular topic.

At the end of the day, an idea as unique and well researched as this book suggests to me that Moe Deezy is not going to become a one-hit wonder (for those of you who get the book, there are a couple of `trailers` nearer the end regarding some of the books he has in the pipeline) Here's to the first of many... I'm planning on getting myself a plate of 'barnyard pimp' for lunch and using the time to review how one can use the `izz` sound in conversation. Thanks man.