Byron Crawford – Infinite Crab Meats Book Review

Remember when that Stuff White People Like blog got turned into a very popular book? Me neither, but apparently it did. My long-time internets associate Byron Crawford released his first tome, Mindset of a Champion, last year, and it turned out to be a great read. The sequel manages to improve on his print debut (technically it was only an ebook but will be available in paperback soon), on account of being longer, funnier and touching a broader range of targets. Where Champion was most likely written in a week, it seems as though Bol spent at least three weeks on this. No shots, for a professional blogger and America’s “leading black intellectual”, three weeks is a virtual lifetime.

Infinite Crab Meats is the bible to mom’s basement dwellers everywhere. It’s offensive, snarky, petty and cruel, but also completely on point. While many “hip-hop bloggers” like to tweet about how they just got invited over to Jay-Z‘s house for a pool party this weekend, the closest that Bol gets to living the glamorous life is to sink some Miller High Life with Killer Mike at strip club. For those of you unfamiliar with his work, here are a few choice opinions from the one-eyed maniac himself:

On Kanye:

“It’s been rumored that Kanye West has been extorted by gangs in his native Chicago. He got the crap kicked out of him, and he used a relatively minor car wreck as a cover. I’ve known a number of people who have been in car accidents, and they didn’t come out looking like they got repeatedly punched in the face”.

On getting fired from XXLmag.com:

“I could have woken up hung over, not written anything at all that day, and still had a job there. It just goes to show, you’re never drinking as much as you could be.”

On Rap Genius:

“No one who actually gets half the references on Only Built for Cuban Linx spends his free time explaining rap lyrics on the Internets, and no one who spends his/her time explaining rap lyrics on the Internets gets half the references on Only Built for Cuban Linx. Rap Genius is fundamentally flawed.”

On seeing Scarlett Johansson nude pics:

“The pics actually turned out to be underwhelming. You definitely couldn’t call those cans mediocre, but… I don’t know. I was expecting to die or something when I saw them, and my life just went right on like it had been”.

Considering that Bol’s blog was one of the first rap sites I ever read, it’s good to see that he’s made the leap into long-form writing so effectively. Infinite Crab Meats doesn’t outstay it’s welcome as it details the rise and fall of Facebook attention hoo-ers, the Too $hort finger-bang outrage, Rick Rawse, Rap Genius, Chief Keef, Das Racist and various other characters worthy of our scorn. Save those high-brow college professor discussions of rap, race and reality for someone who gives a shit. Armed with only Wikipedia and cheap beers, Bol exposes the posers and embraces his own lack of ambition while giving no fucks about the hurting the feelings the “music industry”, which makes his opinion one of the very few that can be trusted. Byron Crawford is the leading voice of New Rap Journalism.

Infinite Crab Meats is out this Friday. $2.99 for the ebook, or $9.99 for the paperback.