The Mish Mash Man

‘WHEN judge Mr Justice Lewison looked at the court list and saw his next case was The Ant’ill Mob v The Heartless Crew, he probably thought he was caught up in an episode of The Wacky Races.

The Heartless Crew lusted after Penelope Pitstop

That is, of course, if he knew what the Wacky Races was – which it’s a fair bet he didn’t.

But that would certainly have been preferable to the reality, which was a court case between two rival rap bands over whether a remix of an Ant’ill Mob song was derogatory.

Andrew Alcee, who wrote the song Burnin’ (which went on to top the garage charts in 2001), complained that lyrics laid over the top of his original tune by The Heartless Crew referred to drugs and violence.

And thus Mr Justice Lewison was called upon to judge the meaning of such phrases as ”shizzle my nizzle”, ”the mish mash man” and ”string dem up”.

It was, the judge admitted, a ”faintly surreal experience”, ruling that although the lyrics were written in a form of English, they were ”for practical purposes a foreign language”.

The Telegraph was in court to see the judge eventually rule in favour of The Heartless Crew.

He said there was no evidence that any of the phrases referred to drugs.

”Shizzle my nizzle” is, the paper helpfully points out, a bastardisation of ”sheezy mah neezy”, itself a bastardisation of ”for sure mah nigga”, a bastardisation of ”I concur with you wholeheartedly, my African-American brother”.

As for ”string dem up”, there was nothing unrespectable about expressing this as an opinion.

After all, it’s heard every morning at the breakfast table of Telegraph readers…

‘

Posted: 6th, June 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink