what are ribs for?

i received a second hand wife beater a few days ago. it was given to me by my sister. it belonged to her boyfriend. he planned to throw it away, i presume, because they were headed to the airport and he didn't have room for it in his luggage/bags. it's a small item and could've easily been stuffed somewhere so maybe there's another reason. anyway, i looked at it and it wasn't "ribbed" like most wife beaters i've seen. it looked girlish and smooth. i washed it and tried it on. wow. nice. soft. cumfy. it's lack of "ribs" made it smooth and i then i wondered why all wife beaters weren't like this and questioned the purpose of "ribs". i realized my preconception that all wife beaters had to be ribbed and was disappointed at my lack of open-mindedness and in-the-box thinking. why did i think it was girly at first glance? are "ribs" inherently masculine? if anyone knows the actual purpose of those "ribs" i would love to know.

and if anyone is wondering why on earth i'd wear another mans undergarment... it makes me feel close to him.

rick ross vs murs

let me just say that i'm not a huge fan of over-the-top gangsta rap. hip-hop is inherently braggadocious (sp?) which i understand, but some dudes take it so far it becomes unintentionally funny. for instance, rick ross. my first encounter with ricky was while i was in hilo, at my dad's house, in the wee hours of the morning, on mtv or mtv2. i guess mtv has a show where an artist gets an hour or so to play whatever videos they want (usually they're favorites) and they explain the video, why they like it etc. anyway mr. ross was on and what i noticed first was his pendant - it was a golden rick ross head dangling from his neck, right below his actual head. absurd! it was like a bearded buddha. so he plays his faves, which all feature him of course, and i just could not believe it. money, girls, guns to the extreme... it was total fantasy to the point where if someone told me that this was a parody on gangsta rap, i would've bought it. rap skills? well below average. some of these videos looked real expensive and i wondered who was funding it and why would a person buy this music. if you're wondering why i kept watching the show it's because i couldn't stop watching... like the way people watch faces of death. part disbelief, part disgust, part funny.

so anyway, about murs. he's a LA rapper (livin legends crew) who is pretty much the complete opposite of ross. he has a song called "can it be" which is pretty good. rick ross bites the beat then pulls a gayball move and disses murs on the track! this led to a murs comeback song/video, but that's off topic.

now i was on contrastmagazine.com's blog the other day and someone posted a rick ross video where one of ross' "friends," the guy who spits the third verse, is a murs look-a-like! he's a gangsterized version... with the crazy dreadlocks and everything! needless to say, the song is classically and predictably crappy, but i couldn't believe it and i'm still not sure what to make of it. sadness? yes. i feel sad for hip-hop.