Mexico Gets a Bad Rap

As most of you already know and try to forget, I have a slight addiction to freestyle rapping. Like so many other 40 year-old white married Jews who grew up skiing and playing tennis, rapping is simply in my blood.

The trouble is, here in Mexico it’s very difficult to find anybody who can rapidly rhyme in English off the top of their head, or who can understand me when I do. I feel like Eminem must have back when he worked as a dishwasher.

I so need to express myself through street poetry, but I realize it would be totally preposterous for me to take my boombox to the main square here in Puebla and just start rapping in English in front of a crowd of Mexicans. Again.

I’ve thought about giving rap a go in the local language, but have discovered that, while fluent, I’m not so proficient in Spanish as to dazzle the fair people of Puebla with my verbal dexterity. When rapping in Spanish, my flow is not unlike that of Miranda when she tries to rap in English, which she does only after a bottle of wine and a couple of bowls.

This is my plight. So many lighting-fast lyrics to share, so little opportunity to release them in public.

Which, I’m sorry to say, is where you come in.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the next big musical genre – "blog hop":


Let’s do this thing, feel the sting of a gringo
My life’s so appealing with my wife and a Dingo
In Mexico
I delight as the wind blows
Surprises arise right outside of our window

The life of a king, yo
This land’s full of beauty
You’ll have to excuse me but I feel it’s my duty
It truly behooves me to pander and plug for
a country that’s more than a band full of drug lords
a country that’s more than just sand and green cacti
that stands for much more than fajitas and fat guys

The truth is the stats lie,
They ain’t worth a word
Mexico’s first world but painted as third
It’s tainted as dangerous, crappy, corrupt
Then explain how I came to be happy as fuck?

Yes, it’s cracking me up
How one’s set to go silent
about DC, Detroit but says Mexico’s violent
Yes, no denying it – there are drugs, here you’ll find it
But guess where they’re headed, and just guess who is buyin it?

I’m done with trash-talking and America-smacking
Don’t get hysterical, I wasn’t attacking
I like the U.S., but was happy when packing
America’s snappy, but in fact can be lacking
What is it lacking, you’re asking?
A few things
Americans make cash; Mexicans do things
Even when living on fumes and on shoe strings
They do fiestas, we do school shootings

In Mexico, you can see colors exploding
within inner cities with buildings eroding

You can taste food that elicits reflections
of American farms before testing injections
You’ll see raw religion deflecting repression
No see-saw depression over Wall Street’s recession

No Mexican stressing
They just don’t believe in
stress – it’s a blessing to get to be breathing
For me, who’s obsessive, such talk is outrageous
Though “no pasa nada” is awfully contagious

(Note from Miranda: “Thank god we’re only here for six months.")