Passing for Italian

Abstract

thenticity. Malone's OG, interestingly, is not one of the usual suspects-not Ice-T, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, or Schoolly D; not Suge Knight; not even Snoop Doggy Dogg. No, the dopest, phattest, most uncompromising voice of hip-hop masculinity turns out to be ... Frank Sinatra. Way before [gangsta rap] there was already king on the hill, Malone effuses, a G with the kind of class that makes person untouchable. ... No matter where he showed up throughout the country, [he] would do anything to blow up the spot-always looking for lamppost so his big band could G off. In Malone's hagiography, Sinatra's music is inseparable from his image, both setting the standard for stylish virility. His tough Jersey accent redefined the American language, Malone writes, plus he used his voice-not gun-and made the girlies stick out them tits like it was holdup! Mind you, this was in the '40s when girls wasn't giving up the coochie. So keen is Malone's infatuation, so awed is he by The Chairman of the Board's magisterial bearing, that he is overcome by racial envy. I've always wanted to be Italian, he rues, ... [I'll have to settle] for being black and cool. Malone is being playfully hyperbolic, but his sentiment is actually in accord with distinct tradition of interethnic identification. One finds the