Fo' Shizzle

Mandy might be one of the whitest white girls you'll ever meet. Not only does she have flaming red, Irish hair and the palest porcelain skin to match, she's also extremely... white. She's from Mechanic Falls, Maine. She'd never had rice until age 21. She listens to Black Music that Black People Don't Listen to Anymore, and wears scarves and drives a Jetta. Which makes the story I'm about to tell so. much. funnier.

Snoop Dogg, legend of hip-hop, played at the Gray Cage at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, my hometown last week. ("Seriously? Snoop is playing in LEWISTON? They hate black people there." Well, kind of.) Snoop Dogg is kind of a big deal and he's had a pretty huge impact on my life. The week leading up to the show, I kept getting this one song stuck in my head everytime someone said his name... the one where in the background someone sings, "Snoop-dogg-y dooo-ooo-awg."  When I decided to try drinking alcohol for the first time, I went with gin and juice, because that's the first thing that came to mind. When "Drop It Like It's Hot," came on the radio in my car, I'd crank it and try and click my tongue along to that part. You know the part. See? I'm really white, too.

Anyway, Mandy talked to Snoop Dogg on the phone once.

Last week wasn't the first trip to Maine for Snoop. Back in 2004 (I Googled it), Snoop played at now-defunct the State Theater. That night, Mandy, age 19, was working at the Bull Moose warehouse in Scarborough. It was 10pm, there were, possibly, two customers in the store, and she was working with a girl she describes as a beautiful, voluptuous, lesbian named Jamie. They're getting ready to close the store, when a giant limo speeds into the parking lot, almost crashing into the front windows, tires squealing. Mandy assumes that it's a fancy date, prom or something, until two black dudes covered in bling step out of the car.What the fuck? There are hardly any black people in Maine, and none of them ride in limos and have bling. It's just not how we do.

These two guys walk in, one is older, with a bulldog face, droopy red eyes, and the other is a little bit younger and slightly overweight. He says to Mandy when he walks in, "Yo, girl! Yo, girl, where's your soul section?" So she walks him over to the section, and as she's about to walk away he's like, "I need some babymaking music, I need some BABY-making music. You know anything about soul music?" Which is a little bit ironic, because at the time, Mandy was a virgin. Technically, she didn't know anything about babymaking music (disclosure: neither did I.)

She's not really sure what he's looking for- like, if he wants the best one she has, or an assortment, so she starts grabbing whatever and throwing it in his arms, running back and forth to the used section. Compilations, Al Green, Otis Redding, and before she knows it, there are like, 20 cds in his hands. At some point, the bizareness of the whole situation just gets to her and she asks, "So you mind if I ask, what's going on here, who are you?"

"Oh, yo girl, I'm Snoop Dogg's cousin!" WHAT?? And that's when it dawned on her, holy fucking shit these cds are for Snoop Dogg, because he's playing tonight, in Portland. "Yo girl, Snoop told me to come down here and get some BABY makin' music for after the show. Yo girl, you gotta help me out."

Now, maybe I'm being stereotypical here, but this guy was 30ish, and the other guy was probably closer to 45. How is it that they had no idea about any soul music at all? "Yo girl, you think this one would be good, you think this one'd be sexy?" This guy probably said babymaking music like fifty times... to Mandy, the 19 year old virgin. He's probably got like hundreds of dollars worth of cds in his hands at this point when he's like, "Yo girl, I like what you got for me here. But hold on, hold on just one second. We gotta make sure, we gotta make sure just one second." He pulls out his cell phone, which back then was probably a Motorola Razor, and makes a phone call. Mandy, again, is thinking, what the fuck.

"Yo Snoop, yeah, yeah, I'm here. I'm lookin at the soul music right now- I got this girl, she's helping me out. Let me read off to you what I got," and he names a few things and pauses after each one then stops. "Hold on- hold on Snoop, Hold on." And hands the phone to Mandy. "Yo girl, Snoops on the phone. You gotta tell him what we got, he's gotta approve."

She stands there for a second, with the cell phone extended to her, and she knows that on the other end of the line is Snoop Doggy Dogg, waiting to talk to her.

"Hello?" She's like, terrified.

"Yo girl, I hear you're picking out some babymaking music for me tonight." So she starts explaining all the different gospel soul, southern soul, modern soul, and even though this sounds completely ridiculous, after every single thing she said, he responds, "Fo' shizzle."

Mandy: I've got D'Angelo, Untitled.
Snoop: Fo' Shizzle.
Mandy: Sade, self titled.
Snoop: Fo' Shizzle.

She finishes reading off everything and asks what he thinks, is that good, is that enough.  "Yo girl, that's great girl, I can't wait." She hands the phone back, ending the coversation. He called her girl like five times, and said fo' shizzle like 50 times. While she's ringing them in, the older guy speaks up for the first time and says to Jamie, the lesbian, that he think she's pretty attractive, and the young guy disagrees and says that Mandy is more attractive. Then they give the girls the room number at the Eastland, where Snoop is staying, so they can come party after the show. Mandy doesn't go.

This is an excerpt from the article I found in the Press Herald about the 2004 show:

"If you're wondering what the kids mean when they say "fo' shizzle" after you ask them if they want takeout for dinner, you can thank Snoop Dogg for the linguistic confusion. Meaning "for sure," the phrase is part of a slang vocabulary created by Snoop Dogg, aka Snoop Doggy Dogg, Snoop Dizzle, the …"