SHORT BRIDGE, New Jersey. The Rolling Hills Country Club in this leafy green suburb nestled between affluent Ridgewood and Ho-Ho-Kus appears an unlikely setting for the sometimes obscene and misogynistic lyrics common to the genre known as “hip-hop,” but not according to golf pro Ty Warner. “You should have heard Biff Clendenen when he shanked his tee shot into the water on the sixth hole,” he says with a sly smile. “And what Amy Vilbeck said about Joan Normandy’s knock-off Lily Pulitzer shorts the other day, I can’t repeat without blushing.”
But all that changed, changed utterly as W.B. Yeats might put it, when rapper Kanye West emerged from a self-imposed social media exile of nearly a year and made common cause with President Donald Trump last month. “You don’t have to agree with trump but the mob can’t make me not love him,” West tweeted to his 23,846,934,212 followers, touching off a fire storm of criticism from other black entertainers and politicians.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Our next number is a ‘bitches choice’ . . .”
The controversy caught the social committee here short-handed just as the golf course opened for the season, causing them to scramble for entertainment for the first member-guest dinner-dance of the year. “I always told my kids to turn that stuff down when they play it at home,” says Mindy Miller, who is co-chair of the event. “I guess now that rap has been co-opted, we’d better get ‘hip.’”
It took half a day of frenzied phone calls to find a rap duo–“Backwurdz n Sound E-FEX”–that wasn’t busy with a brutal gang initiation ceremony for “An Evening of Hip-Hop,” a buffet dinner overlooking the 18th green followed by dancing from 8 to 11. “As much as we’d like to accommodate the young gentlemen’s willingness to ‘party all night,’” Miller says, “club By-Laws stipulate that musical entertainment must end at 11 p.m. except on New Year’s Eve.”
“You used a nine-iron outta that bunker? Man, thass nasty!”
The first set is relatively quiet, the rap equivalent of what Telemann called “tafelmusik,” subdued entertainment designed to permit conversation during the dinner hour. “I’m a let you know just how I feel/’bout the choices you got for this evening’s meal,” Sound E-FEX calls out at a moderated volume, “I don’t mind seafood, but here’s the deal/skip the salmon, stick to the veal.” The crowd is too busy eating to pay much attention to the rappers, who are hoping to develop a new audience among up-scale fans more accustomed to bland light classical music issuing from the country club’s piped-in stereo system. “Cain’t nobody afford $20 for a CD anymore,” BackWurdz says to this reporter. “We need to follow the money out to the exurbs.”
“That new combo has quite a catchy beat!”
“Is this what people in the ghetto listen to?” Gabby Grealey asks her husband Jim, who won a golf shirt for a “closest-to-the-pin” shot in his group during the day’s competition.
“I don’t know,” he replies, “but I’m too tired to dance.”
By the third set things have livened up a bit after the rap duo organized a series of fun games to get people out on the dance floor. “Alright y’all,” BackWurdz said to the slowly-warming crowd. “I want you out here bustin’ a move, and to get things started, we gonna have a multiplication dance.”
“Get your derriere out of that chair-e-air!”
The women murmur in anticipation, hoping to get their sluggish husbands away from the lounge where they are regaling each other with patent falsehoods about their golf prowess. “I sit at home all day with no one to talk to,” Gabby Grealey says with an uncharacteristic trace of bitterness in her voice. “As soon as Jim finishes dinner, he falls asleep in his Barcalounger watching Sean Hannity.”
“Natalie and Rich Loud, start things off for us!” Sound E-FEX announces as he draws the couple’s name out of his Chicago Bulls cap.
The chosen couple responds cheerfully, twerking to a number the rap duo has worked up for the occasion, “Shake Yo Chintz.” After a half a minute or so of simulated monogamistic sex, the couple break apart at the call of “Multiply!” and grab the first available partners of the opposite sex who catch their eyes from the crowd that rings the dance floor.
“THASS what I’m talkin’ bout!”
The time-honored trick works its magic, and by the 10:59 the joint is jumping as the bar empties out and even septuagenerians on walkers have joined in the excitement. It’s time for Mindy Miller to play the unhappy role of classroom monitor, but as she approaches the microphone to bring the festivities to an end she is met with a chorus of boos.
“Oh, come on, Mindy,” says Rod Furst, a local zoning attorney who is an amateur guitarist. “We usually have lame bands with snoozy playlists–can’t we make an exception just this once?”
His view is echoed by the rest of the crowd, and Miller seems ready to relent before she remembers one vitally important consideration the revelers have overlooked; like any good conservative, she needs to know how much an extra set is going to cost, as her budget is tight due to rising shellfish prices that caused an unpleasant surprise when she got the bill for the shrimp cocktail.
“How much would you fellows charge for another set?” she asks timidly.
BackWurdz looks at his rap sidekick, and the two confer for a moment. Once they have priced their services using a 150% multiplier for overtime, they reconvene with the hostess.
“It’s gonna be $150 for another fifty minutes,” “Wurdz” says with the steely-eyed glare of case-hardened businessman. “It’s another Benjamin if you want us to bust a cap in somebody’s goofy ass.”
Con, I just want to inform you that Ridgewood and Ho-Ho-Kus are my childhood stomping grounds.