The laundry/rap issue

In college, I find myself listening to a disturbing amount of rap music. I don’t know why. I don’t even like rap music. But my iTunes tells me that I’ve listened to the song “Hip Hop is Dead” by Nas (a popular rapper who doesn’t actually think that Hip Hop is dead) a disturbing 24 times, which is impressive, given my other most-listened-to songs are “Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones, and “My Mood Swings” by Elvis Costello. So as you can see, I don’t really have very rappy tastes. So what gives?

Laundry. Every Wednesday, I wash my clothes. I don’t enjoy it, but I pretty much have to or else I’d have to go naked. While college is, I’ll admit, a pretty liberal place, I don’t think that the general population of the University of North Carolina would think that it was particularly groovy if I walked around in, um, nothing. I mean, it’s okay when it’s Woodstock, and heck, Bonnaroo got so hot that people had to walk around naked, but people won’t accept public nudity if the naked guy in question just doesn’t want to do his laundry. Sorry to put that picture in your heads, folks.

But I digress. Whenever I do laundry, it seriously takes, like, a week. I can grow a beard in a shorter span of time than it takes for my laundry to get done, and that’s saying a lot, for someone who just emerging from puberty. I mean, even Russell Kooistra could grow a beard in the time it takes to do my laundry.

And doing laundry isn’t fun. Allow me to illustrate: if you were to personify fun, you would probably get David Lee Roth. And if David Lee Roth is fun, then doing laundry is John Kerry. Even walking into the laundry room is a hostile experience. The first time I went in there, I toted my bag of clothes, only to find that all of the washing machines were in use. I probably could have figured that out by just looking at the faces of the people in the room. I didn’t see one friendly face in the crowd. It seemed like everybody’s face had a look that said, “What in the world are you doing here? Why are you so presumptuous as to assume that you could do your laundry in the laundry room? Get out before we call the cops!”

So while I wait for my laundry to get done, I listen to the song “Hip Hop is Dead” by Nas on repeat. When I run, I listen to “Hip Hop is Dead.” I’m even listening to the thing right now. There are two songs whose words I know by heart, and this is one of them.

But why do I listen to rap music when I do my laundry? I don’t know. I guess I enjoy the juxtaposition of the inexplicable pull that rap offers — of stylized violence, misogyny, and money — against, well, putting your dirty clothes in a washer and waiting.

If Hip Hop is dead, then its ghost is haunting me.