Ever Seen a Chevy with Butterfly Doors? Ever Seen So Many Privileged White People at a Rap Show?

Get like him.

Were Wash U not rightfully named for Kermit Washington, a fitting title would probably be Country Club University. I'm not sure which of the following is most telling: that the most diverse place on campus (aside from my law-school class) is the parking lot--not only Lexuses, but Benzes, Beamers, Ranges, Infinitis, even transfers from the UK (Jaguars); that the school has re-created Melrose Place, with a pool set among these quaint dorm buildings and just outside of a dining facility that offers make-your-own anything (stir fry, salad, grilled food) and carries all kinds of sushi; that everything, even the faux-gothic curtainwall on most buildings, looks like it's from a planned-community model; that the newly opened student center boasts a dumpling bar; that it's so effing expensive. Really, it's all those things--in sum, few places I've been have ever felt as privileged.

To be fair, since starting high school, I've been in fairly egalitarian places: a massive public high school with countless first-generation Americans, and a massive public university that, despite more that a fair share of well-off kids, still serves a huge, mixed population among which those with less outnumber those with more. I was last enrolled in a private school more than half a lifetime ago, and things done changed. (I spent my elementary years at a private school that pretended to be public except for when bills were sent home.)

I am not really used to being in this kind of a place. And I am not trying to denigrate CCU. Generally, I get what my money my government cheese pays for (nice to have secured a loan before the world fell apart). It's a very good school, the education is strong, there is a welcomed intellectual atmosphere, and the other law students are largely awesome. Nonetheless, it is appreciably different than what I have known, and the country club comparison seems apt because the undergraduate community looks and feels like a lot of rich white kids. Further, they do the things that rich white kids do: throw pimps and hoes parties; cultivate a manicured casualness that can project an air of self-satisfaction; expect skim milk as a default setting; play ultimate frisbee; eschew working (I've yet to meet a Wash U undergrad with a job, and my friends who went here for undergrad didn't work and didn't have friends who worked). It feels like going to school at a Dave Matthews concert. I think. (I've never actually been to one of them.) It's a fine place with fine people, but it's different.

Nothing is more appropriate than W.I.L.D, the once-a-semester Wash U celebration of bacchanalia during which all of the rich white kids gather on a lawn, get drunk, smoke weed, make out with their boyfriends and girlfriends, and half-assedly listen to music. In the fall they bring in hip-hop acts; in the spring it's music for the white man (think Guster).

Last Saturday, W.I.L.D. went down, bringing with it Little Brother, David Banner, and Talib Kweli. Obviously, I had to attend, not least of all because one of the things I miss most about New York is the vibrant hip-hop scene. Two months with few concert opportunities and a set of radio stations that can't get enough Lil' Wayne, T-Pain, Murphy Lee, Young Jeezy, and Yung Berg had begun to take its toll. (Though, that is kind of what Hot 97 has become anyway, only with more Maino or whatever. *sigh*) Ever the kosher lawyer, I was in a suit all day (the product of some mock lawyering), having come to campus without a change of clothes and then having stayed to do homework until concert time. Given how surreally stereotypical W.I.L.D. was, dressing the part of a person removed from the community was only appropriate.

Upon walking into the quad that was hosting W.I.L.D., I was immediately struck by two things: the white out and the number of people on the grass. Everywhere I looked, there were drunk, high white kids laying around, usually on top of other people. Toward the stage, there was a crowd standing around bobbing their heads indifferently, but it didn't seem like an audience that had heard The Listening or really cared about Little Brother. To be fair, I should point out that I only saw one Little Brother song, having outsmarted myself. Rappers are nothing if not reliably late, so I got to the venue a half hour after the scheduled LB start time, assuming I'd game the system and be there to boo Joe Scudda just as he carried Phonte and Pooh's weed onto the stage with them. I was sadly mistaken, so perhaps the crowd had been more enthused earlier on. (I got to hear "Good Clothes." I'm not really sure what it means for LB's career if they're closing shows with a song that is mediocre and comes from an album that only the dedicated fans took time to consider.)

LB vacated the stage, and the crowd did what crowds do in between acts: walked around, got higher, got drunker. I started dancing to the house DJ's music. You'll never believe it, but he played "Award Tour" among other standards from the House DJ's Guide to Filling Time Between Acts.

Symbolic of the well-run event put on by the efficient private school, there was little time until David Banner came on. I am fairly agnostic when it comes to Mr. Banner. When in a club, I happily get down to "Like a Pimp," "Get Like Me," and "Play" (my personal favorite). (Naturally, I was dancing my ass off when he performed these on Saturday. Stuntin' is a habit, after all.) When at home, though, I don't love his records. I think he's smart and can be perceptive, but the production on his albums usually is nondescript, and his rhyming is not especially engaging by itself. (No Dwayne Carter fan, I will still readily concede that his verses and wordplay carry intentions and ideas with which Banner is not concerned.) That can be said about a lot of rap music, and one's capacity to enjoy certain hip-hop is ultimately a function of subjective taste. Skyzoo, for example, raps over a seemingly endless torrent of beats that are undistinguished from the hip-hop sub-genre on which he draws, yet I am far more apt to throw that on than to reach back for Certified or anything else.

Banner was fun in concert, though. It goes without saying that his shirt came off rather quickly, and over the course of his 40 minutes, he ran around, climbed up on the speakers, and channeled the energy that comes through on his more focused verses. An academic, he did not pass up the opportunity to condescend toward his white university audience. Nor did he neglect to stump for Barack Obama while lecturing the largely white crowd about Missouri's racial history. To use an obnoxious term, it was very "meta," as he was clearly amused by his setting and his audience. He even performed an edited version of "Play" in what felt like a concession to the country club atmosphere and what he may have presumed was the crowd's deficient hip-hop fluency and lesser tolerance for something so wanton.

And that, really, was the highlight of the day because Talib came on to close the show and performed the functional equivalent of the yule log. It was among the most boring hours of hip-hop I've ever seen live. But this is nothing new. I've long lamented that Talib's time has past. That's just how it goes. He's now something of a sympathetic figure. His recent albums have been solid if unspectacular, and his peak fades further into the horizon of the rearview mirror as time marches forward. He did "Move Something," "The Blast," "Definition," his verse from "Get 'Em High." He closed with "Get By." And in the interim, he did a bunch of boring shit from Eardrum and Beautiful Struggle. It's not so much that his music is bad; to the contrary, his catalogue is strong. But most of what he's made in recent years is not concernt music, and that seems to only reinforce how much more fun it was to see him back when he wasn't spinning his wheels.

Luckily for Talib, no one really seemed to care--alright, "Get By"--because by the end of the night, all the kids had passed out or lost their verve. It was time to retire to the comfort of another night at CCU.