By shelz.

So folks have their faces all in a crinkled mess over T-Pain and his BIG. ASS. CHAIN.  Buffoonery at its highest level is what I think I read somewhere, and most opinions run in that same direction.  It’s a recession.  Folks are losing everything.  Parents can’t afford to put food on the table for their progeny and in the midst of all of this economic turmoil; dude released a picture of a pendant big enough to park a ‘76 Buick on. Oh, and it set him back over 400 large. Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but let’s consider some devil’s advocacy for a moment.

First and foremost, T-Pain is a grown man and gainfully employed adults have the right to do whatever they want with their money. Secondly, if you ignore that eye-popping price tag and see it more from a percentage perspective, that type of over the top spending isn’t uncommon for the average salary masses. It’s just smaller scale because we have smaller quantities of cash at our disposal. Now, 400 G’s is not an acceptable amount to hand over to some salesman in my massively pragmatic world for anything short of a house.  However, we all know people who will fork over a week’s salary for something they want to the detriment of things they need.  Considering that this spending behavior is repetitive for many people, few of us have any room to be judgmental.

The Hip-Hop community is known for its considerable consumption. Come hell or high water (or recession) we still spend. You have friends who have rims but no savings.  You have cousins who spend more a month for their car note than they do for their rent.  You work with folks who say a prayer before they head home asking God to provide them with one more day of electric because they spent their light money in the club.  Hell, it might even be you spending all willy nilly like that.  But as you (or they) work through that pile of receipts for every depreciative item you (or they) have purchased in the last 30 days so you (or they) can balance your checkbook into negativity, you now want to hold T-Pain up in effigy for his “coonerific” spending habits?

Now, I will acquiesce enough to admit Mr. Pain has opened himself up to poster child status for absurd wastefulness.  I, like you, was mortified when I saw that gawd awful squandering of money he calls a chain wearing down the muscles in his neck to nubs. However, according to him, his house is paid for and he has millions in savings.  Some of us don’t own anything of value, including a savings account, because the entirety of our discretionary income is on our backs or in some stripper’s IRA.  Think about it before you cast your stones. I did. And while I can say that my spend-thrift ways allow me a bit of leeway to hurl a few aspersions in Mr. Pain’s general direction, it’s not my place.  I just hope when we finally get the memo that the last nail has been driven into auto-tunes coffin, he’s made provisions for his unemployment.  Lord knows we all should.

So while you are busy judging Mr. Pain and his fiscal malfunction, remember how irritated you got when people shook their heads at that expensive ass [insert crazy purchase here] that you really had to have.  You work 40 hours a week and aren’t interested in a single raised eyebrow at what you do with your pennies, so pay that favor forward.  Besides, if you turn that mirror around and really consider your momentary lapses of good monetary judgment and add all those bad decisions up, you might just have T-Pain beat.  In a proportional sense of course.

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