Boosie’s “Fresh Cut” Raises More Questions Than Answers

Rapper Boosie Badazz (born Torence Ivy Hatch, 1982) makes a bold statement in his 2007 track, “Fresh Cut” (a.k.a. “They Be On a N*gga”). As the hook declares,

Fresh cut, shined up gold,
Throwbacks and Girbauds
New whips On 24s
And I’m about to hop on them hoes

With the following refrain repeated no less than 4 times:

They be on a n*gga, yeah they want a n*gga
They be on a n*gga, yeah they want a n*gga
They be on a n*gga, yeah they want a n*gga
They be on a n*gga, yeah they want a n*gga

One thing is clear: They be on a n*gga.

But this indisputable fact raises more questions than it answers. To understand why, let’s take a closer look at Boosie’s past and present — as well as the past and present of philosophy.

Torence Hatch began rapping in the 1990s.

Though highly reputed as a member of the Concentration Camp collective, he ultimately pursued a solo career in 2000, with the release of his debut album Youngest of da Camp, under the name “Lil Boosie.” One of the most prominent figures in Southern hip-hop, Hatch has gone on to release 7 solo studio albums, as well as 6 collaborative albums and 42 mixtapes.

So when he says, “They be on a n*gga,” we believe him. However:

To what degree do they be on a n*gga?

It was Heidegger who said, “If a man does not understand a thing, he does not exist,” but I think Heidegger’s definition would be to look at a lot of things with a broad definition. “It may be not a human being, but a human being or a person” is kind of a broad definition because it’s not like if a human being is a human being and if there are other things that are different from what they were originally or if it’s a group of human beings.

And that may be a matter of pragmatism or something, but in order to understand human beings as separate from our own, we must be able to understand people who are different, what they’re attracted to and what they have to do to understand what they are. That will obviously be in conflict with what you’re trying to teach and in the end he’s saying “We have got to take care of the human condition. We don’t come back here if it’s not working out.”

It should be one thing to find a place for those who understand the condition or those who want to understand it. It’s different if you don’t treat things in a way that is human. If it is not human, it is a part of human things. The question he’s really asking is, “Where should we look when it comes to being on a n*gga?”

In what way(s) do they be on a n*gga?

As Kant might well ask, we can imagine the state of the universe and, while we might have thought that the state was at least as free as we thought, is it, on my view, not at all? Let’s try this out for ourselves. The main objection I have is that, under the generalization of Kantian “experience and reason,” if you are actually interested in the universe, you could avoid seeing it.

A. What we want to know by asking question A, then, is this state (which we might well ask the question about), if we are interested in the things that are known (“under the general rule” of “experience and reason,” it’s not, because there is no such thing here). If we are interested in what is known, then our first question is, which are the things that are known, and where can we find a representation?

B. Suppose this is the answer, of course. All that we know is that the thing (the universe) contains, if any, any information about it. However, that information has to be in some other medium, in order that we can obtain an answer that is of information in that medium, and that is of knowledge in the medium.

But that is a question we don’t know.

To what extent do they be on a n*gga?

Kierkegaard once posed the problem this way: We can imagine two different kinds of kleptobias. The first kind involves a person who was brought up on the basis of their belief that their mind can make an image of itself. The second kind of kleptobias involves a person who doesn’t identify with this belief that such images can generate, and who thinks that one must know only of the “right” images in order to determine the truth of the belief (or lack thereof).

Kierkegaard is not arguing for whether they should be allowed to say that one’s mind can make an image of itself — it’s just that it isn’t clear to them that it can do. He’s proposing instead that a person could choose whether to believe in a higher knowledge or believe in a lower knowledge (such as something that’s right but not certain, or something that’s not right but has very strong opinions.

The person with the higher knowledge would be able to perceive this knowledge, and the person with the lower knowledge would be able to recognize their own beliefs. This is one of the infinite possibilities, and one that seems unlikely to be on a n*gga.

For what cause(s) do they be on a n*gga?

Teleology has vexed philosophers since the days of Thales of Miletus. A long time ago he took a hard line against the idea of neoclassical philosophy. He tried the classical model. He suggested that all ideas are connected by a series of subroutines, as if some thing had different properties or attributes because of which one attribute in any subroutine is shared with another.

This method resembled and changed a lot of the classical philosophy. The synthetic syndrome evoked no more of a reaction than the old pseudo-logician. His main opposition to synthetic philosophy (in particular, his attempt to build his idea without reassembling the “true” logicalism) was motivated by a belief in a general unity which had been denied and thus distinct from the real thing.

The naturalists were his enemy, and they were trying to build a theory which could explain and counter-question and deny the existence of a universe. The syndromics were a rejection of the idea of universal syntics, who be on a n*gga.

For how long will they continue to be on a n*gga?

Indeed, who among us can predict the future? Bertrand Russell commented, “I doubt I would have predicted that when, in the nineteenth century, one of the first English words, had already become an English noun, one of the first such ones would have appeared in the English version of the 19th century.” These days, we have a vocabulary that includes both the nouns, and the verbs. Both, it seems, be on a n*gga.