‘Swang’ and Producer Jason Rey

Here is one of video producer Jason Rey’s videos called Swang, which has achieved almost legendary status in the Houston hip-hop scene and is now a standard for other short hip-hop videos. One of the hip-hop artists, Hawk, died tragically from gunshot wounds shortly after this video was taken. Check it out and watch the cars SWANGING down the street. [Did i say that right, Jason?]

Jason Rey [de Leon] has been one of our Christmas guests. His favorite food at our feast, in case you were wondering, was the goose and chestnut/apple stuffing. Despite having his ass kicked by my 7 year old daughter Hannah in last night’s karaoke competition, Jason managed to find his groove in one of the hip-hop songs and used his advantage to beat Abigail, who is a few years older than Hannah.

This is Hannah licking a lollipop after humiliating Jason (right) in the Jones’s Christmas Karaoke competition, while Jessica plays with our kitten Charlie Chaplin.

I asked Jason about his video “Swang” and what that word means. I have nailed him down to a quasi definition:

Swang is a word given to the sync’d swerving down the street of a groups of “slabs” ie, late 70’s/early 80’s American big bodied cars. Think 1950’s low-rider cruising making it into todays world.

– Rapper Z-Ro from Rap-A-Lot Records uses “swang” in at least one of his songs on Z-Ro vs the World.

– Swang on Wikipedia is not very helpful here, referring to a folk dance from Malwa but the ending sentence alludes to this new word:

“More recently elongated to “Swanging” in the verbal form for a more “hip” and “youthfull” use. For example “I was swanging allnight baby!””

– Swang on Urban Dictionary offers some helpful sentences that will help you talk like a native:

“look hear comes some hot whips they’r swang’n”

Technorati Tags: hip hop, video