The Long Island Regional Poison Control Council's "Dangerous,"
performed by Busta Rhymes

Busta Rhymes’ “Dangerous” claims an unusual source — a Long Island Regional Poison Control Council PSA from 1983 warning children not to take prescription medicine they may find around the house. Rhymes himself cannot recall having heard the ad or how the tune came to him, but the evidence pretty much speaks (in a falsetto) for itself. The barbershop quartet of little green pills sings:

This is serious
We could make you delirious
You should have a healthy fear of us
Too much of us is dangerous

and Rhymes sings:

This is serious
We could make you delirious
You should have a healthy fear of us
’Cause too much of us is dangerous
So dangerous, we so dangerous
My Flipmode Squad is dangerous
So dangerous, we so dangerous
My whole entire unit is dangerous

What’s interesting about the dichotomy is that Rhymes’ “Dangerous” is at its heart a sort of urban fantasia about how unlikely the speaker finds it that he, as a black man, could be living a life considered out of his reach when he was a child. As black culture becomes more fully assimilated into mainstream America, black megastars of the arts are rising even more quickly than their peers did 20 and 30 years ago. To wit:

Buckwild to all of my niggas who don’t care
Floss like a bunch of young black millionaires
Makin’ you run
Me and my Dunn
Stackin’ my ones
Floss a little, invest up in a mutual fund
Blowin’ the horn
A sense of every day I was born
Never dream I see a nigga landscaping my lawn

and

Back in the days, a nigga used to be ass out
Now a nigga holdin’ several money market accounts
Blaze the street, and then I would just like to announce
Feelin’ my groove, my jigga jigga makin’ you bounce

But the inherent danger — the crouching tiger, if you will — is poised right beneath the surface. After all, the tune is called “Dangerous” for a reason (from the album tellingly titled When Disaster Strikes), and what is “prescribed” more often for the struggling lower- or middle-class black youth than to dream about and strive toward high living? The rub is that the threat of overdose is just as real and just as serious; Henry Louis Gates Jr. famously wrote that —

Oh, hell. It’s just a booty romp like only Busta lays it down. “My jigga jigga makin’ you bounce” indeed.

— Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)