‘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.

Jasonandhannah

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”

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Andrew

Andrew Jones launched his first internet space in 1997 and has been teaching on related issues for the past 20 years. He travels all the time but lives between Wellington, San Francisco and a hobbit home in Prague.

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