Rather see the above links in your inbox or feed reader?
Subscribe to our Links for hand-picked items from around the web
New Jeruz (Mis)Represent · by R.H.S.
So you thought “New Jeruz” was an abbreviated and phoneticized version of “New Jerusalem,” the name the 5%ers gave to New Jersey?
NOW CIPHER, GAWD.
Vivian Nix-Early has her own revelation of what New jeruz can mean, and in the language of seminary student she outlines a psycho-social-spritual artistic plan to raise hell until it’s heaven. (PDF file) If you’d rather skip the entire flim-flam, this footnote should get the point across:
2. The term “NU JERUZ” comes from the hip-hop world of rappers and gang bangers. The New Jerusalem is referred to by Lauryn Hill in “Every Ghetto, Every City,” [in The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 1999)] describing her childhood in New Jersey. In searching the Web,we came across several pages that used the term “NU Jeruz.” When talking to many about the term “NU JERUZ” most said the term meant New Jersey. We infer from Lauren Hill’s music that it is a nostalgic term of a wonderful childhood when things were safe and life was full for a child. To others, it was a “shout out” at parties, a term in raps, or a reference to the future world when African American broth-ers and sisters will live in a new world. While it has limitations from a particular ethnic enclave who may not see or believe in Dr. Martin Luther King’s the beloved community that reaches across class, race,and religion, the term, as we use it, offers at least an urban hope for a new heaven and a new earth, with new systems—the kingdom of God on earth.
This makes the barely literate music reviews and profoundly slipshod lyric transcriptions on websites owned by Steve “Flash” Juon look spot-on accurate. Ok, maybe not. But regardless of whether or not Nix-Early has randomly misappropriated a hip-hop slang term, it’s pretty cot-damn interesting that she so fervently yet partly unknowingly transformed a 5%er slang borrowed from the New testament into some kind of Christian plan for urban renewal.
I guess her vision of a utopian cityscape is somewhat more comforting than the sight of hellish smokestacks over Elizabeth or vacant lots in Plainfield or the toxic cloud that hovers over Paulsboro.
Unless of course this is just some bizarre propaganda piece designed to get the riff-raff to tacitly accept gentrificiation of the center city as progress.
Comments for "New Jeruz (Mis)Represent"
haha, why does she insist of making it full-caps? “The NU JERUZ”
Her appropriation, “appropriate” or not, is actually kind of hip-hop, as you suggest. In a weird an inside-out kind of way. Very odd.
— David Jan 10, 01:17 AM
37TH CHAMBER IS A BUNCH OF BULLSHIT BORN NUJERUZ NEW JERSEY STUPID BITCH PROBABLEY AIN’ EVEN FROM NU JERSEY PROBABLEY A DIRTY ASS JEW BENT ON CONQUER’N IN THE WORLD FUCK WIT MY PEOPLEZ AND WATCH ME TURN INTO A PUERTO RICAN NAZI HZA THE GRAND WIZARD
BODICUA KILLERBEEZ
— HZA Jun 6, 05:18 PM
WARRIORZ WU
— HZA Jun 6, 05:21 PM
Taking potshots in a blogpost is much easier than actually pointing out which reviews you think are “barely literate” to me in person, but thanks for the exposure anyway RHS.
PS: New OHHLA coming soon designed BY THIS SITE’S WEBMASTER.
— Flash Jun 7, 02:52 PM