Pimp C died 11 years ago, in the fall of 2007. He was one half of UGK, along with Bun B. You still hear him rapping all the time on Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin.’”
His job in life was pimping and his and if he wasn’t rappin’ baby he would still be ridin’ Mercedes. He’d dead now but when he was alive he made a lot of rhetoric about how he assuredly had women to whom he wasn’t emotionally attached, as well as being in ownership of various expensive material possessions.
None of this is verified. But it is all asserted in musical document, which was enough to qualify said music as “product.” This product was shipped and streamed to a wide bevy of parties around the world who wanted to indulge in the product. Their desire to indulge in the product is suggested by their widespread, rabid consumption of said product. The primary message of the product was that products are great. Cars are products. Women are products. Everything is to be used and thrown away. American society is a veritable orgy of consumption now given artistic arms and we take rhapsodic pride in our vapidity and gluttony. Life is a continuous escapade of gaining products and using them and this exact activity is what gives life its meaning.
But Pimp C died 11 years ago. That heart in him stopped beating. And now we’re left with a world forced to pick up the pieces, to decide what we will pursue, whether it’s product, or something that doesn’t exist in space or in mind. Immortality seems like pretty much a lost cause at this point.