Old School Language

A NOTE FROM ZACH: Hi and thanks for being here! I am proud of many things about this video, but the lyrical content, about how outdated slang terms like YOLO and swag and cray and twerk and ratchet are, is an on-the-nose specimen of the problematic thing this Guardian op-ed is about: https://www.theguardian.com/commentis.... "Cultural appropriation at its best, steals, reduces, overuses and then disposes of words like so much bathwater." I don't want to take this video down and pretend it never happened, nor can I leave it up without acknowledging the cultural appropriation at its core. Feel free to let me know your thoughts! -Zach, 8.29.22

Download the song: http://bit.ly/oldschoollanguage
Tweet about it: http://ctt.ec/x2Wl3

Written & performed by Zach Sherwin.
Produced & engineered by DJ Huggy.
(  / djhuggy412  )

Director of Photography: Alan Gwizdowski
Graphics: Jon Berkas
Special thanks: Ian Brownell, Izzy Maxwell, Myq Kaplan, Aaron Kagan (& DJ), and W. Kamau Bell & Kevin Avery.

The full article:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/201...

LYRICS:
Every time I kick a verse, every single word of it
Is timeless, ageless, evergreen, permanent
I don't mess with any new-fangled slang
But I do make that old-school language bang

"Yolo" was a flash in the pan
"Swag?" It's already trash in the can
But man, my flow is so hot
When I pull that mike from the stand
It gets scorched black in my hand
And turns to ashes like a match lit
Burnt from the fire that Zach spit
Every word is a classic
More than I can say for "cray," "twerk" or "ratchet"
But look, I'm no hater who wants to dis
That is not what I wish to do with this
Give me your attention. Hark to the plan
Hear and obey as I bark a command
You're coming with me through a wormhole
On a journey through time to reach the eternal
Word to your mother, here we go
Back to fifteen thousand years ago

So this study came out with a list of words
That are "ultraconserved" - read down the page
These are words that "have been retained
In related forms since the end of the last Ice Age"
Their sounds and meanings have remained
Remarkably similar for fifteen thousand years
And all of them appeared in that verse that you heard
And that you're going to hear again right here
Double time:

"Yolo" was a flash in the pan
"Swag?" It's already trash in the can
But man, my flow is so hot
When I pull that mike from the stand
It gets scorched black in my hand
And turns to ashes like a match lit
Burnt from the fire that Zach spit
Every word is a classic -
More than I can say for "cray," "twerk" or "ratchet"
But look, I'm no hater who wants to dis
That is not what I wish to do with this
Give me your attention. Hark to the plan
Hear and obey as I bark a command
You're coming with me through a wormhole
On a journey through time to reach the eternal
Word to your mother, here we go
Back to fifteen thousand years ago

(Old!)
Vocab words that go backwards in time?
I got plenty, chum
(Old!)
Specifically these twenty-some
Stretching across many a milleni, um
(Old!)
No new-fangled slang, but dang
I can sure make that old-school language bang
And how great is that "old"
Is one of the words that's incredibly old?
It's perfect.