I watched a video today titled “I Look Like Money,” which for its humor and message, was entertaining beyond all the posturing usually on the video mix-shows. Filmed on a white sound stage, it almost appears a spoof of “I Get Money” or “Make It Rain.” Young Ralph, however, didn’t mean to be The Roots to Wayne’s and 50’s Biggie. If the satirical part of the video — a series of character who only looked like money but faked their wealth — was unintentional, it was still effective. Young Ralph claims to look like money, smell like money, taste like money, walk like money. It doesn’t count to only look like money, for instance, because all of these factors are covalent. I wrote about hip-hop’s money obsession being a part of the larger attention artists pay to both accumulating and investing cash. But “Look Like Money” demonstrates something more about the changing appearance of rap.

Lil Boosie’s “Wipe Me Down” and Hurricane Chris’s “A Bay Bay” have completely changed the tenor of what is acceptable to celebrate and dance about. In the same way that Little Brother (ironically) named their second album “The Minstrel Show,” it seemed they were trying to make a dual implication. The first of their assertions was that rap had become more Southern and, in that, had returned to the roots of traditional music circulation, namely folk shows and underground sensations selling out of trunks. The second of their statements was that the Minstrel Show had become a tired routine more meant to exploit and expose than to enrich the form. There was that double-edged sword again.

In terms of the money theme and the dancing songs dominating over the head-nod stuff, I am elated about this transition. I got into a heated e-mail debate with a fellow writer about his choice of Rich Boy for Rookie of the Year in 2007. He urged me to listen to Rich Boy album (admittedly, I hadn’t) for its quality. I had no doubt the production would be great but winced at the thought of listening too hard for prize lyrics. I wasn’t necessarily off about his lyrical competence but I was missing the point about what made his album good. Polow da Don (and Mannie Fresh and Jazze Pha before him) made it all right to go big with the sound. Now that production is the order of the day, we remember slowly but surely that hip-hop is dance music. It was made to turn the party out. Songs like “A Bay Bay” have no conceit about doing so. “Wipe Me Down” is also celebratory in this way. The reason why these songs, ringtones and what have you, stand in opposition to songs like “Straight to the Bank” is because they do not drive the listener into a frenzy about the topic of money because the songs themselves are hypnotic. It matters less that the person rapping on the song has money, but that he is actually happy to have it. For all the rhetoric 50 Cent and Swizz Beatz issue about being in a “different space” financially, thus warranting the arrogant money songs every four out of five, they seem miserably rich. They are City Rich, for lack of a better term. Hurricane Chris, Young Ralph, Lil Wayne, and Lil Boosie are Country Rich. By being attuned to the agrarian tradition of the South and infinitely closer to the Chitlin Circuit’s positive history they are liberated from that arriviste attitude that has pained Glam Rappers. Joning, dancing, chanting, stomping and clapping in the name of money and success strikes me much better than condescending in the name of it. Somehow, looking like money has become a convivial idea in rap, worth exploring not just in terms of Bottle Poppin’, but in terms of the improved psyche of a people even in slumping times.

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