Culture

Financial Times Blings Out Column with 10-Year-Old Hip-Hop Metaphors

"G-Dawg splashes out tax cuts like P Diddy with Dom Pérignon in his Blingiest giveaway," reads the headline of Jonathan Guthrie's column today regarding the British economy. Seriously. (We think?)

By Alexander Abad-Santos
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"G-Dawg splashes out tax cuts like P Diddy with Dom Pérignon in his Blingiest giveaway," reads the headline of Jonathan Guthrie's column today regarding the British economy. Seriously. (We think?) "Mr. Osborne also talked up the soljaz on Wall Street," Guthrie's column continues—yes, folks, this is Mr. Guthrie assaulting your brain. We're not going to try read too much into this (Is Guthrie doing his best impression of Steve Martin in Bringing Down the House? Is Guthrie pretending to be my dad? Is Guthrie pretending to be David Brooks?), so let's just take Guthrie in his own words—he's trying to equate rap and the British budget crisis. "As an art form, rap is loud, gestural but lacking substance. That was the problem with Mr. Osbourne's Autumn Statement too," Guthrie writes in one of the rare (if slightly ignorant) moments in the column where he suppresses his urge to use 10-year-old hip-hop slang. And because of that connection he makes between rap and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne (who he doesn't quite like), Guthrie was then moved to pepper his column with phrases and words "business 'hood" and "beef":

Having laid claim to the business ‘hood, G-Dawg, as one is tempted to call him, was free to pursue his beef with its most disrespected inhabitants: the banks. He fractionally raised the percentage levy on balance sheets first imposed in 2011. This was no drive-by tax hike.

The big problem for all of us in reading this is figuring out whether to laugh or feel bad, because we can't tell if Guthrie's use of antiquated, style-guide-approved hip-hop slang style is a genuine attempt (here are two different calls).

The best part of all of this? Guthrie is now taking feedback and eagerly awaiting mixtapes — and still possibly trolling all of us:

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.