Diamonds & Wood: Here’s How You Get A Girl To Like You, MTV Makes Everyone Mad, Fat Tony, Trying To Figure Out What To Say In Lieu Of “Nigga” And More

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Complex Original

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"Diamonds & Wood" is an ongoing series in which music critic Shea Serrano breaks down the 5 hip-hop tracks you need to hear this week.

Recently, my wife and I were looking up my old girlfriends on Facebook. I felt confident doing this for two reasons:

1. I grew up in San Antonio and girls in San Antonio age at a hyper-accelerated rate. It’s something in the air or water or Big Red, I think. They age like Robin Williams in Jack. I remember this one time I was at a bar in 1998 hitting on a girl for, like, at least ten minutes before I realized I wasn’t actually talking to a girl. I was actually talking to an old leather chair. That’s San Antonio.

2. None of the girls I dated prior to Wife could be considered “attractive,” thus eliminating the chance of her being intimidated any way whatsoever. There was a risk though, which I didn’t consider until the third or fourth catcher’s mitt with shoulders we’d looked at, inadvertently nudging Wife toward the realization that I am, in fact, nowhere near her aesthetic equal. She has beautiful skin and beautiful eyes and has the legs of a track runner. I look like if a girl that looked like Gilbert Gottfried slept with a guy that looked like Adam Sandler.

At any rate, the point: There were quite a few names we searched for. I hadn’t ever really thought about all of them en masse before. Like, I mean, we’re talking, like, a gross. Sure, it’s a gross gross, but still. Not all of Barry Bonds’ homers were gargantuan, you know. So, but the point of the point: I’m pretty awesome at picking up women. (Pretty not great at not making them hate me though.) Which means I’m going to tell you how now since I’m longtime married and not in need of these sorts of tools anymore.  So, the moves, yes? Let’s say you see an attractive woman that you’d like to try to convince to touch your ding-dong. Here's how you do it, step-by-step:

1. Stroll up to a girl at a bookstore or something. Make sure you're staring at her HARD the whole time you're walking towards her because girls like when you make them uncomfortable. Make sure you walk slowly—it makes you look sexy, like a music video in slow motion. If she starts to walk away then you should sprint as fast as you can to get in front of her. Girls think athletes are sexy too and athletes sprint all the time. That's not a coincidence, chillbro.

2. Stand real close to her face, like, maybe 10-12 inches away. I remember reading somewhere that babies can only focus their eyeballs on things that are 10-12 inches from their faces. And, I mean, you’re after a beautiful baby right? Malibooyah. Transitive logic.

3. Just stare right in her eyes for, like, 45 seconds without saying a word. Women like a man who's focused.

4. Now she's ripe. Throw one of these killer lines at her:

- "I want to make love to your heart. But not literally, of course. Emotionally. I want to stick my emotional penis right inside your emotional heart." Girls like all that emotional stuff. It’ll definitely help if, with your hands, you do that thing where you make an 0 with your left index finger and thumb and a 1 with your right index finger and then insert the 1 in and out of the 0 repeatedly.

- "If I was your boyfriend I'd appreciate you. I'd appreciate you all over your face." At first a girl will get mad when you say this, but then she will realize it's a metaphor and then she'll get impressed and think you're super smart.

- "Oooh, honey. If I had a baby with you I'd try to at least make half of the child support payments." Because duh, responsible dad.

- "Damn, baby, you're beautiful. You could be my partner on Beauty and the Geek. Geeks have 9 inch wangs, right *wink at her*" Girls like to be called to "baby" and they like 9 inch wangs so this is a double-decker of attraction. This is like one of those fishing lures that has more than one hook on it. Don't be surprised if a different girl overhears you say this and then both girls take you home and give you blow Js.

I believe the words you’re looking for are “Thank you.”

1. Ace Hood, “Bugatti,” featuring Future and Rick Ross

There’s this writer named Rob Harvilla. He’s really great, and definitely one of my favorites. I read, maybe, a million whatevers about Future as he’s become a superstar. Nobody’s written about him as well as Harvilla, and that’s all because Harvilla described Future as being “subaquatic.” That’s it. That’s all it took for me to understand EVERYTHING about Future. One word perfect. Fuckin’ Rob Harvilla, man. He does in one what I can’t do in 1,000.

2. The Outfit, TX, “Private Dancer”

These guys are TOUGH. I’ve listened to their album about 30 times. It just FEELS like my everything. It is completely authentic and just unstoppably emotive. An example: The last song on the tape is called “Alchemy”. It is seven minutes and 21 seconds long. There are, maybe, 30 seconds of dead silence near the end, then, right when it’s about to be all the way over, you hear just a dying glimpse of a song from earlier in the album (“Matter Of Time,” also > seven minutes). Infinity happy faces.

3. MTV

Rappers were kind of losing their mind over MTV’s Hottest MCs In The Game list. It was fun to watch.

4. Fat Tony, “Hood Party”

It’s beginning to feel like Fat Tony, long an underground love, is making his move towards more fertile soils. This new track, all angsty video gamey nonsense, has been everywhere. Know him. Love him. Soon we’ll be capitalizing the “h” in “him”.

5. Audio Push, “Them Niggas,” featuring Hit-Boy

An older song, yes, but also still a fun song, yes. Fingers crossed it doesn’t gain too much momentum because the worst thing in the world is hearing people try to figure out what to say instead of “nigga” when they’re rapping along with a song. THE WORST.

Shea Serrano is a writer living in Houston, TX. His work has appeared in the Houston Press, LA Weekly, Village Voice, XXL, The Source, Grantland and more. You can follow him on Twitter here.

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