Exquisite Corpses And Such

Photo by Glynnis McDaris

Although his logo is an adorable drawing of an iced-out snowman, Young Jeezy is more crafty than artsy. While coming up in the trap, he didn't have much time to devote to sketching, decoupage, crocheting, or gouache—let alone pottery. He did, however, have a penchant for the pen. But he doesn't write down rhymes. Rather, Jeezy's Def Jam debut, Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101, will be accompanied by a poignant tell-all autobiography. Leading up to his groundbreaking release, you can catch this Georgia po' boy sittin' sideways, riding the airwaves alongside Gucci Mane (great name) on his hit "So Icy" (even though the two hate each other now), or fellow dirties Boyz N Da Hood (horrible name), Diddy's newly orchestrated supergroup. With that in mind, we really wanted to explore the inner mechanisms of Jeezy's writing habit. That's why we figured we'd have him play a little game of exquisite corpse. When the Surrealists were doing it, it allowed them to bypass the superego's censoring powers, giving way to an unadulterated subconscious scriptural flow. So why not see what results the exquisite corpse yields with this Southern realist? You know the drill: You gather a bunch of homies, have one write a sentence on a piece of paper, hide everything except the last word, pass the paper on to the next guy, who then writes starting from that one word he sees, passes the paper along, etc. When you finally unfold the sheet and read the whole text you're supposed to get freeform creation at its finest. But in our case, Young Jeezy, Coach K and stylist Mario were so focused that we got the exact same answers we would if we were interviewing them. Oh well. SMUTTY RUFF