Flags- Do you understand what they mean?

[Trinidad-Hux]

Yo Blak Lez, i can wear say a fitted Oakland Raiders or Sacramento Kings, cause i lived out there and those are my teams...i got ex high school buddies who played on those teams, know what i mean?.... i  guess if i'm wearing big a** Washington State something,... but i'm sayn though where's the gear.... i might hear someone say Tee's on sale at MR Price. but they Tight!,... i mean they aint tight, i'm being a little metaphoric i gotta watch what i'm saying here, might miss out on a clothing sponsor, nah!

 :lol: No doubt

[TNGlive]

Damn syn, you make a solid argument that almost blows a couple of blows in mine. The point about geographical significance of a flag can't be argued.
But let me just take your own words to help you realise something:

Jigga doesn't rock an NY fitted cos he cares that we know where NYC is, or where the Marcy projects are, he rocks an NY fitted for himself and for his peoples in the Marcy projects.
The NY fitted didn't come about with the advent of hip hop, at some point some rapper DECIDED that an NY fitted represented him, he DECIDED to take on this flag which actually represented a bunch of guys running around a dusty diamond with funny looking gloves, baseball has f***all to do with hip hop but we all rock baseball caps.

My point is, as a hip hop artist, there is an emphasis on something else other than B-Boyin, Emceeing, Writing, Djing...and that's knowledge of self. YOU can DECIDE that whatever symbol is representative of you. As you said different flags will mean different things geographically.
therefore as part of being in a leadership position (coz that's what you are for your fans when you're in the spot light) are you showing the best knowledge of self by rockin something that is known in MORE geographical areas as being a flag for something else unrelated? As you said yourslef, if the rapper were to blow up internationally, are they going to know that CPT is for Cape Town not Compton...not likely coz Compton has got that first. ...That's why CAPE FLATZ is more approporiate.

So many people in this countryrock Man U jerseys and have never set foot in Manchester and couldn't find it on a map, but they love that f***in team, so they cant rock that Man U jersey cos they not from Man

This is the fans now, just following their leaders. I'm arguing about the leaders, not the fans.
You don't see a Man U player rocking other soccer team jerseys even though one may be a fan of that team...maybe at home and around the way chillin, but not when in the spotlight.

[DJ_Nastie_Ed]

I dont see me rocking a 'Camps Bay' hoody with much street cred.

[Original Syn]

Look Tate and TNG there seems to be a part of wher I'm comin from which you not latching onto,.... so let me address..

TATE: Come on guy you taking the smallest part of what I'm saying and ignoring alot.... I'm well aware that NY is the Yankees logo I mention that above.. what I'm saying is that what the f*** does that mean to some1 who doesn't live in NYC or the US... or... What do those baseball players have to do with hip hop... nothing.
Some rapper who was a FAN (he's a leader in hip hop maybe TNG but a fan of something else) of the Yankees, and decided that it represented him.
Just cos sum1 doesn't come from NYC they cant be a fan of a team there?.. refer to my Man U statement
The intrinsic meaning of the NYC fitted has NOTHING to do with hip hop, it has been reappropriated to have a connection to NY-based hip hop, but that means the intrinsic meaning has been changed... if rappers from NYC could change it once... rappers from anywhere else can do the sam when they want... I haven't seen any contract that specifies NYC rappers only.

TNG:  Look again at those words of mine you just highlighted, Jigga rocks the NY fitted without concern for any international audience...... US rappers seem so "real" cos they don't try to be accessible for a global audience the audience changed for them, they use US slang, talk about places in the US and we all made the change, so wouldn't a rapper of any authenticity be making his music for himself 1st and then for his peoples. Why should the rapper care about the globe, The Steeler rocks his flag for his Kewtown mense not for anybody else, the whole point is that he doesn't need to and shouldnt give a f*** about other people, cos then he's pandering to the plebs and not doing him.

If a rapper who isn't from NYC rocks a NY fitted cos wher he's from all his people rock NY fitteds and have been for years while working fields or chilling on a beach or ming for diamonds, then when he rocks it on his album sleeve, he's rocking it for all his fieldworking/beach-chilling/mining peeps and they will know he's down, he's showing intense knowledge of self, he hasn't 4gotten them,
So according to you, he's showing MORE knowledge of self by going:
"Yo guys at home sorry, you not that important to me cos all these international folks who i haven't met or just met a second ago are gonna look at me funny cos I'm not cnforming to their framework of meaning... so sorry for you... I'm allowing all our shred meaning structures fall by the wayside whoops" :?

Now is it adequate representation of yourself & where u come from to embrace another people's cultural symbols so much you make them your own?

Thats glib as a motherf***er Tate come on man, US culture is the most exported in the world and ma** media has been grinding US culture/cultural symbols into our heads for nearly a century, f***in all of us have previously US cultural symbols we've made our own, the fact we wear baseball hats at all is an appropriation of an american cultural symbol.

This is the fans now, just following their leaders. I'm arguing about the leaders, not the fans.
You don't see a Man U player rocking other soccer team jerseys even though one may be a fan of that team...maybe at home and around the way chillin, but not when in the spotlight.

Come on bra, none of these rappers is a player for any of the baseball teams of which they sport the fitteds, they fans too, jigga rocks his NY fitted as a fan of the Yankees, IF he DOESN'T then he's changed the meaning of the symbol and then anybody can do it.
You cant have your cake and eat it guys....
IF rappers rock the flags of the teams of the teams of which they are fans then any fan ANYWHERE in the world can do the same with no worry about authenticity...
IF rappers are rocking the flag of a team in their town as a symbol of their town, then they have changed the meanign of that LOGO by taking it away from the team and making a new meaning, and THERE4 anybody ANYWHERE in the world can change the meaning to what they want....
Just cos they did it 1st doesn't mean they the only ones that get to do it......4 example..
Ruit/ryt is a word in both Afrikaans and Dutch, in Afrikaans its a pane of gla**, in Dutch, its a "ride" as in on a horse, in Afrikaans thats a "rid". Same word two languages different meanings, one comparitively younger, but no less authentic, So I now can never make an afrikaans rap album cos most international folks will think I' m some Dutch rapper? So even if Afrikaans is my 1st language I now cant use it cos of what these other people think?  :?  Come on guys !! Why should I give a f*** about the international people, Afrikaans is me authentically, if they like what I do they'll find out who I am and wher I come from.
So what if to a larger number of people ostensibly Afrikaans and Dutch are the same language, there are myriad differences and Afrikaans speakers know this,
 words are flags too , they represent a certain culture yet, we all take them and change their intrinsic meaning and make them our own and trade and rebrand them... the English language has dominated the planet because it does exactly that.

Don't just comment, read it again, if you missed something, mull it over and then say your peace.

[Original Syn]

another example of flags being misappropriated is the gang in cape town called the 'americans'. when i first got here i used to wonder why there were so many US-loving people on the cape flats...

A cla**ic case... Now the "americans is a collective term used to describe actually two seperate but related gangs in Cape Town. Thes 2 gangs are "The Ugly Americans" and "The Young Americans", now these gangs are also two of the oldest gangs in Cape Town and the country.
Actually they were once a single gang but in the late eighties 4 brothers rose to the top of the "Americans" gang and the dominant 2 split it into 2 factions to control different territories. now they later rebanded to form the core of "The Firm" the supergang which to this day runs 75% of the organised crime in SA, with affiliate gangs through middle SA into the Durban docks and even up in Jozi round Eldos and Weston, they are the linch-pin around which all other organised crime bodies revolve, the russians/bulgarians/moroccans, the chinese/koreans, the japanese, the italians, the nigerians/congolese, all the other major orgaised crime players do business with the Firm, which started in the middle 90's with the tentative unification of 5 (well really 4 cos the two "americans gangs were really one gang) very big CPT gangs each numbering between 5000 and 8000 members. The Junky Funky Kids, The Hard Livings, The Sexy Boyz adn the 2 Americans gangs form the core of the Firm (And all have strong ties to the proto-gangs (26's, 27's & 28's) , and over a period of 2 years brought any and all small gangs of substance into the fold... to this day if it happens in any part of Cape Town outside of the CBD, it needs the Firm's OK, the internationals divide up the CBD or pays for the right to trade in certain areas.
Now All these gangs and the Firm itself, make use of tons of hip hop iconography, amongst other "criminal" imagery popularised by American cinema, But A few of the core gangs started in the 50's based around a team of oppression and governemtn subjugation, a time without television, but still the generally accepted representation was that the US was the land of the free and home of the brave and that bullshit... so these gangsters aspired to that american outlaw freedom ideal.
But all this imagery which they have appropriated has been changed and mean very different things to the rest of the world, but they are very South African and only the extraodinarily idiotic would tell them they not doing them and if you have a connection to any of these gangs you are expected to be proud of that regardless, Now I and many other coloured laaities from the flats spent their life from the age of 6or7 (prime recruiting age) till your 20's (by then they reckon you're a lost cause, except as a victim and/or customer) trying like hell to avoid becoming involved.
BUT if any 1 of these guys ever achienved fame as a rapper, not so far fetched, lots of talented guys in gangs. He would be expected to show his colours so the gang can brag, cos don't get it twisted, just cos they work together as the Firm for big business, they still in-fight like crazy, current spate of shooting deaths in CPT as evidence.
So now this guy will sport a stars and stripes or a steelers cap or some other originally american icon, and he wont explain it cos the people here in cpt who are aware (aweh :lol: ), know he's down, He doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks, he's doing him, its got nothing to do with the rest of the world, likely if he doesn't reprsent for his gang he can't ever come home.
Just like Snoop rocks Crip blue and bigs them up occasionally, he never explained the blue paisley bandanas, we all went out and found out about it.
You CANNOT judge a flag SOMEBODY ELSE is rocking according to YOUR belief system and/or meaning structure, NO MATTER what you OR ANYBODY else knows.
UNLESS you know WHAT that flag means where THEY come from you don't know shit and can't say shit cos FLAGS can and often transcend hip hop.
even if the guy just rocks it as a fan.

[TATEguru v.2K9]

Look Tate and TNG there seems to be a part of wher I'm comin from which you not latching onto,.... so let me address..

TATE: Come on guy you taking the smallest part of what I'm saying and ignoring alot.... I'm well aware that NY is the Yankees logo I mention that above.. what I'm saying is that what the f*** does that mean to some1 who doesn't live in NYC or the US... or... What do those baseball players have to do with hip hop... nothing.
Some rapper who was a FAN (he's a leader in hip hop maybe TNG but a fan of something else) of the Yankees, and decided that it represented him.
Just cos sum1 doesn't come from NYC they cant be a fan of a team there?.. refer to my Man U statement
The intrinsic meaning of the NYC fitted has NOTHING to do with hip hop, it has been reappropriated to have a connection to NY-based hip hop, but that means the intrinsic meaning has been changed... if rappers from NYC could change it once... rappers from anywhere else can do the sam when they want... I haven't seen any contract that specifies NYC rappers only.
.

Look I think now YOU missing my point. I didnt say if you were a fan of the team you couldnt rock the fitted. Its fine for ManU/ Yankees/ Braves etc fans to rock their fitteds.
I would not do so personally since I believe whatever you put across as public representation of yourself should reflect your background.
Its not about the fans of the team who actually know what it is (see the title of the thread- "Do you know what they mean?").

Its about kids from the Eastern Cape rocking NY baseball hats having NO idea what they stand for. Not able to name a single Yankees player (or even ANY baseball player). Perpertrating like they 'Real' to the "hip hop image".

On the point about baseball hats having nothing to do with hip hop:
Understand that a city's baseball team represents that city even. A baseball team's logo is (literary) the city's flag so the logo's have taken a bigger significance than just baseball.
The Yankee fitted is the (un)official symbol of New York City.
This is why even though Nas and 50Cent are from Queens NY they rock Yankee fitteds instead of NY Mets (the baseball team from Queens) hats.

Its about public image.
Think bigger than your local community. What happens when that rapper from Mowbraay Kaap blows up & has international interviews & photoshoots etc wearing what appears to the rest of the world to be a Compton hoodie?
Potential fans in Ny will walk right past the mag on some "oh another compton rapper nothing to see here" instead of stopping & going: "Mow-braay-Cap?...let me check for that"

[Original Syn]

Yes Tate, Do you know what that flag means to them? IDidn't see your post till after but my response is covered in my edit of my post above yours. Ive said all i feel like on this, lets just agree to disagree, like so much else.

[TNGlive]

Just cos sum1 doesn't come from NYC they cant be a fan of a team there?.. refer to my Man U statement
The intrinsic meaning of the NYC fitted has NOTHING to do with hip hop, it has been reappropriated to have a connection to NY-based hip hop, but that means the intrinsic meaning has been changed... if rappers from NYC could change it once... rappers from anywhere else can do the sam when they want... I haven't seen any contract that specifies NYC rappers only.

Side note : Please remember this whole thread is about the flags waved in hip hop. Hence the whole thing about being a fan of Yankees, whilst born and raised in S.A. and never having set foot in NY, that does'nt get under my skin. It's when you become a "leader" as I have defined, you're now competing on a platform with other "leaders". The intrinsic meaning of that cap in this context is taken to mean you have some affiliation with NY (reppin NY, born in NY, livin in NY, or raised in NY) It's not about baseball anymore.

Syn, I'm glad you've brought that important point up: "the intrinsic meaning has been changed".
My point is that I have a problem with "leaders" making the mistake of not being original with their changing of the intrinsic meanings of other flags that have already been adopted from another 'world'. Simply just adopting what another rapper has already done. .e.g as Tate has pointed out that the symbols become symbols for the city....You can't ignore the international community. If you want to take the stance of why care should you care what others outside the people you've grown up with think/it's bigger than hiphop? Well let's roll with that same attitute and we'll see realistically, a country's flag has meanings behind it that matter most to the people of that country. Yes, like you said, if you want to find out you go find out yourself. But, CPT (read: white flag with red X  across) will and cannot be adopted by another country as it's official flag, simply because that flag already exists. There's no 2 country's with the same flag on the basis of "the people of the country have changed the meanings of the same colour layout and patterns."  :?  Why must this common basic sense be kicked out the window because now we're talking about hip hop.

Its about public image.
Think bigger than your local community. What happens when that rapper from Mowbraay Kaap blows up & has international interviews & photoshoots etc wearing what appears to the rest of the world to be a Compton hoodie?
Potential fans in Ny will walk right past the mag on some "oh another compton rapper nothing to see here" instead of stopping & going: "Mow-braay-Cap?...let me check for that"

My whole point of bringing this up. For example...I was'nt raised in Cape Town let alone S.A. If I see a hip hop magazine with a dude on the cover I've never heard of (who happens to be from Cape Town), and he is rockin CPT. As much as you want to make that your own, I'm from a place where CPT is Compton. No question, finished and klar. Say this is a XXL. I'm moving on. Now as a hip hop fan (quick fan mentality thinking "his face is not familiar have'nt seen him roll with anyone big from L.A...pssh some underground rapper from L.A., what else is in this shop") , I've missed out on an important piece of news, there's a dude from Cape Town on the cover of XXL. A first. As a D.J. from anywhere else in the world, I'm missing out on checking for this dude's music because i just a**umed it's another L.A. rapper. As a programmer, it's flown past me the first time too. As a Media Buyer who has some limited knowledge of hip hop, looking for a place to place my client's media spend...I've also just slipped this coz I'm looking for something new...and I'm tired of another L.A. rapper. The rabbit whole can run deep.
Now, back to as a fan, as much as you want to make it your own, it will always be Compton to me. The Letters L.A. will never mean city of Lagos, it's L.A. Now are you saying I'm just stupid to not know the you've changed it to mean Lagos? Are you saying another cat from Zim can call you stupid for not knowing the ATL on his head is not for Atlanta it's for Avondale's Terrorist Leveragers?  :? The fan is never stupid.That's the number one rule, you're the one as an artist that has mis-represented yourself.

Syn, to put this all to rest: When you point out that the meaning has been changed, that's a very good point. You seem to be dodgin the most obvious point though the region represented by the teams, is still  the same region represented by the rappers rocking their fitteds. And that goes hand in hand with every point your're sayin about why Jigga is rockin that. And why they all don't care about what the rest of the world thinks. Hence the title of the thread.

[triplelife]

Like the dudes from around here say..."Rep your endz blud". Dudes here are serious about which endz you rep. If they feel you not reppin your proper endz you could get shot...brrup!






_________________________________

[TATEguru v.2K9]

Flags?..

[A pimp named Sarkozy]

Flags?..

I DONT UNDERSTAND TATE'S POINT. :x

@CASH
I see u in those LA FITTED.

Does anyone have a pic or design or someshit of the NU-SA fitted caps

[TATEguru v.2K9]

Flags?...

[cash]

this is hilarious!
we workin on newsA fitteds MAN!!!!!!!!! EC,UMTATA,QueensTown,PE,CASH!!!!

look out!
bottom line is! fitted caps are the shit! im a collector man!
I got LA,NY,Philly,SOX,DC,.....all them f***ers! ima keep rockin all o them!!!!!! i got a GUCCi fitted, Rocawear fitteds,G units, all them bitches! i got em!

in retrospect it wud be f***ing COOLER if we was rockin EC,GP fitteds in the videos! i dig the thread! its REAL TALK! i might one day ONLY ROCK a EC fitted and jus keep the LA's n NY's in the CRIB as MY COLLECTION of fitteds!!!!!! like a museum!!!!!
 its a matter of MAKIN IT HAPPEN NOW!lets cut the TALK!
big ups to READY D! that CAPE FLATS fitted is HOT!

for now picture me rollin! :wink:

[TATEguru v.2K9]

Flags?:

[syc]

also rocked my arsenal jersey in the 'go against us' video Cool

dplanet, thats just coz u have awesome taste...
arsenal transends borders;D
but i agree wit the original poster man... we dont rep our countries enuf.. how often u hear PTA stun up, Cape Town holla back and the nicca wearing a Yankie cap...