See Me Squeegee

As I travel around this great big world of ours, the same two questions follow me:

1) “What the hell were you guys thinking re-electing George W Bush?” (serious question that I’ve been asked several times now this week in Dubai, and that I was asked at least once in London this summer)

2) “What the hell does your blog name mean?”  (Note – I talk to a lot of people who begin questions with “what the hell…”)

As the first question is inexplicable, let’s tackle the second.  Why is this blog entitled “See Me Squeegee”?  It all dates back to my rap career… (which probably begs another “what the hell” line of questioning).

The year was 2005 and George W had just begun that aforementioned 2nd term.  I was attending graduate school and getting to know my classmates. The result?  My buddy Rory and I dropped a rap album.

It mainly started out of boredom from those group events during which everyone asks and answers the same questions the first few weeks of school.  “Where are you from / what did you major in / etc.”  Rory had grown up in Flint and therefore liked to rap battle and since there were mostly white people there someone had to step up.  I’d battle and lose, but then I realized something about the man they called “MC Nonsense” – he had a pattern…whenever he was out of ideas he’d go back to the same handful of bars while he thought of something new: “I shake it, I bake it, I make it, I take it, I rake it like a leaf, where you at chief?” or “They call me Nonsense, I don’t make sense, I don’t have to make sense, that ain’t my conscience”.  And since he had that stock couple seconds to think of something new, he’s always win.  With that as my knowledge, I could battle back with a similar game.  And so we rapped at every gathering of classmates over beers and people loved it.

We even rapped a group project while everyone else was doing dumb skits.  Our black professor for that “Teaching With Diversity” class – man, that was risky to rap that now that I think about it – loved it and so did our classmates.  A couple popular girls – yep…grad school and there were “popular girls” – developed crushes on us because we entertained.  It was a weird alternate universe but it worked somehow.  And so we decided…we should drop an album.

The theme of that album was this – most rappers rap about either how good they have it (“ball so hard…that shit cray”) or how bad they had it growing up.  No rappers rap about being middle class grad students getting by on student loans.  We’d be the first.  Some of the highlights from our first track, “Manifesto” in which we laid out our mantra, included:

Ever hear an MC brag about a one-room pad?

Ever heard a rapper speak highly of his dad?

Pay attention you might just learn from this lad

and

I tell you ladies and gents

My next paycheck is spent

Trying to keep myself in school with the basic essentials

So don’t think I’m rich just because I’m white

I didn’t vote for Bush, man, I drink Busch Light

So, yep, middle class student loan rap.  It’s a wonder we’re not on the cover of Vibe right now posing in front of our Ford Fusion Hybrids with rims…

But I digress.  Arguably the best lyric of that track was Nonsense’s first, after I had passed him the mic.  It went:

MC

BG

See me

Squeegee

the brains of other MCs off the windows of my Intrigue

And so from that point on I was MCBG and those who have heard the track pretty much always refer to me as such (including my boss, Chad, and any of my students who meet him and hear the story).  And they love that lyric, but few remember it in its entirety.  My buddy Adam would often come bounding into the office, look directly at me and say “MC BG – Hit ’em with the squeegee” or “MC BG why you holding that squeegee?”.  He loved the lyric but for the life of him couldn’t remember it.  That lyric holds particular sentiment in my heart.  So when I needed to title this blog, which some 6 years later would be another medium from spilling my thoughts on the world, the old rap album and particularly that lyric came to mind, and the blog was born.  I’m MCBG and as you read this blog you’ll see me squeegee, spreading clarity on the windshield of society.  Or something.

Postscript:  We never did film the video for our single “Cubicle Ho” (about that girl at work that dresses provocatively, flits incessantly with no real intent of actually dating you, and ruins your productivity while squeezing you for free drinks or picked-up lunch tabs) but Rory did play “Manifesto” at his wedding reception to rave reviews.  And every Christmas Nonsense and I get together with two other friends (my brother and my business partner) and record a track after a few dozen beers at Buffalo Wild Wings.

So that’s it.  See me squeegee. 2005 and forever.