IS MY
MOM A GANGSTA?

Illustration by Chris Morris

The New York Times Sunday Magazine ran a profile a few weeks back of Suge Knight, CEO of Death Row Records, for whom Tupac Shakur and Snoop Doggy Dogg record their state-of-the-art gangsta rap. Tha Dogg Pound and Dr. Dre (formerly of N.W.A.) are also part of Death Row, with whom Time Warner lately had a distribution deal.

(This deal, you'll recall, was the bane of Bob Dole and William Bennett. Thanks in part to their efforts, Death Row was dropped by Time Warner. And the nation probably sleeps better tonight, knowing that these rappers' CDs are now being placed in record stores by an entirely different corporation. Thank God for Republicans!)

Mr. Knight, bearlike and known as Suge to his friends, comes across in the article as every inch the Scary Black Person we've come to know and love from white media. He neither confirmed nor denied having threatened rivals with baseball bats, but didn't seem displeased by the accusation. One of his employees was shot to death last year, allegedly by a rival East Coast producer. Like the mobsters of yore, Mr. Knight travels everywhere (even by charter jet to Vegas) with a vast crowd of bodyguards, who have names like Neckbone, Trey, Rock, Hen Dogg, and Bountry.

Bountry, when first encountered in the profile, was removing lint from his black fedora with masking tape. Bountry described this as "an old ghetto trick."

Well, this gave me pause.

You see, though she never had a posse, never traveled anywhere by stretch limo, and never bludgeoned anyone to death at a music awards ceremony, my mother did in fact teach me how to remove lint from clothing with masking tape. Did she have a secret past I knew nothing about? Among her friends was she known as Soup Mommy Momm?

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