Ellemental: A hip-hop fairy tale

A hip-hop fairy tale. Kind of.

Written exclusively for WAH by

One time a boy and a girl were at a university DJ battle. They met when he nudged her arm and asked what she thought of the guy on the decks.
She said, "His mixing is weak."
He said, "Do you even know what a mix is?"
She said, "Grrrrr."
Ten minutes later she showed him exactly what a mix was when she got behind the turntables to seamlessly beat-match and crab-scratch like her fingers were on fire. She won. He fell in lust.

The following day, instead of getting his head down in the library to figure out why the unexamined life is not worth living, he walked from bookcase to bookcase looking for inspiration on how to make her want him too. The Gender section was no help; the books there told him that women weren't sexual objects who could be acquired like some cheap goat at the marketplace. Not what he wanted to hear.

He moved on to the Music section. All girls liked to shake their booties for the guys, right? He saw it on MTV all the time; they loved that shit. But as he was about to pick up the 50 Cent biography, an unusual object on the bottom shelf caught his eye. Stooping down to investigate, he saw that there, tucked way underneath, lay an ancient book bound together with Maxell cassette tape and gold dookie rope chains. Blowing away the dust and cobwebs, he revealed its title:

HIP-HOP: THE FOUR ELEMENTS (1st Edition)

When he opened it up and saw that the whole of the first chapter had been dedicated to the art of deejaying he knew that he was on to a winner. So she'd already mastered that. Big deal. There were three whole other elements that he could use to blow her mind. She'd be his in no time.

Element 2: Graffiti

He wanted to look the part so he went into a Soho shop where the staff had severe haircuts, chewed gum loudly and wore really tight neon jeans and paid seventy-five pounds for a T-shirt that had a picture of a wall spray-painted with the words 'OLD SKOOL!' and 'URBAN!'.

When she saw him, she took one look at it and laughed. Hard.

"Are you a writer?" she asked."Yeah, I've written a few poems and shit," he replied, nonchalantly.She laughed again. "Check out the wall behind the library," she said. When he did he saw her name emblazoned on the brickwork six foot high in neon pink and blue. She hadn't bothered to ask him if he even knew what being a writer was.

Element 3: B-Boying/B-Girling

He then learnt how to top-rock from some kid in Japan on a YouTube video thinking his b-boy skills would impress her at the next Hip-Hop Society night.

'Put the left foot across the right leg and wave your arms right back behind you like this!' the boy said. He didn't look like he had a girl either.

Nonetheless his instructions were obeyed and repeated from left to right over and over until 2am when the nerd downstairs started banging on the ceiling with a broom handle demanding to know what the hell he was doing up there. It was a good point. Because when he walked into the student union on Thursday night and saw her top-rocking into drop into six-step into freeze, he knew he'd been doing nothing at all. He only had one chance left.

Element 4: Emceeing

Friday night at the SU. He slipped the DJ twenty quid in the toilets and asked if he could pass the microphone across when the secret 'Westside' finger signal was given. The DJ agreed and when she arrived, he grabbed the mic and got ready to unleash the fury:

Let's trace the hints and check the file
Let's see who bit to detect the style
Check out the message in a rough stylee
The real criminals are the C-O-P
Let me turn the page and continue to verbally burn the page
With fire flows that are capable of burning down the stage
Now what you hear is not a test, I'm rapping to the beat
And in the urban ghettos of London town you're gonna feel my heat
Yes, yes y'all, you don't stop!
And I'm out.

"So, what did you think?" he ran over and asked when he was done. If he'd been a dog he would have been panting and wagging his tail and shit.
She shook her head slowly and smiled.
"You wrote those lyrics?"
"Yep. Sure did."
"You mean, you really wrote those lyrics? You thought of them yourself and then wrote them down?"
"Yeah."
"It's just that…well, I just feel that I've heard them before somewhere."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I mean, don't quote me or anything, but it kind of sounds like a mix of Eric B and Rakim and KRS-One and Rappers Delight and that brer from So Solid crew. With some other weak shit thrown in on top. But, like I said, don't quote me on that."

He didn't respond. He just stared at her like a deer caught in the headlights before it was about to get flattened by a hummer. Since when did girls know about music on that level? And Romeo's track too! That was some deep underground shit!

"Damn, I'm losing it," he thought as she laughed hysterically in his face.

But no, it was okay! To everyone else it looked like she was laughing at him, but she was laughing with him dammit and later on they laughed about it some more and after she got over it, she just went with her basic instincts (she was a woman after all) and fell head over heels in love with him and they lived happily ever after and had loads of babies and shit.

The End

* * *

"HUH?" she said.
"They lived happily ever after," he said.
"But I don't want to live happily ever after with you. You're a fucking chief," she said.
"Well it's my story, so what I say goes," he said.
"What do you mean this is your story? You haven't even done anything! I did all the work. I did the deejaying and b-girling and writing. All you did was try to get with me and make a damn fool out of yourself in front of everyone," she said.

And with that she tore up the script and top-rocked off into the sunset alone, living happily ever after with her friends and family in...



By Josephine (camouflagegirl@hotmail.com) xxx