I met the last person in the world who doesn't know there's a recession. While CEOs are afraid to use their corporate jets and sitcom writers aren't ordering sushi, the rapper Plies released a song called "I Got Plenty Money."
I went to Tampa, Fla., to interview Plies for Cinemax during "Plies Week," which included the "Stripper Olympics," a yacht party, "The Goon and Goonette Pink & Black Bash" and a car show. I accompanied Plies to his video shoot at a rented, $2.8-million home, which had three outdoor fire pits, a wine cellar, a pool facing a golf course and six women in lingerie. There was no acknowledgment that the house was in an unfinished suburban housing development where every second home abuts a plot of weeds.
During the shoot, Plies rapped in a room filled with fake cash. But when he threw the money in the air, he used a completely real stack totaling $10,000. You can study economics from books all you want, but unless you've been on a rap video set, you're not going to know that fake money doesn't throw right.
I feared that a man wearing two giant gold diamond-studded medallions might be endangering his career by miscalculating the American zeitgeist. Especially when he rapped, "Just bought another house, the last one was boring / Ten thousand square feet, it feel like you tourin' ... Ran me out the store, I bought too many plasmas / Count so much money, breathe like I got asthma."
It was hard to watch someone cluelessly destroying his career. So when we got to the car show, I was shocked to see 1,000 people gathering to gawk at $100,000 souped-up cars. It was as if Tom Joad had pulled over to check in on the construction of the Hearst castle.
During his car-show concert, Plies whipped out the $10,000 roll of easy-to-throw money and proceeded to hand out stacks of $100 bills. At one point, he waved a few hundreds and yelled, like a politically incorrect Monty Hall, "I'm looking for a white person!"
As much as columnists and commentators want our economic situation to change our values, it hasn't. We haven't gone from wanting giant plasma TVs to wanting to whittle on the porch with our extended family.
Our heroes are still the ones with the most outsized, irrational optimism and materialism. When we finally lose that, it's really time to worry.
