— Shreek of the Week of the Day —

This Generation Rules the Nation

“Pass the Dutchie” by Musical Youth from the album Youth of Today
First Week of November, 1982

This song will never die due to its infectious bass line and simple but digestible lyrics. A song that was essentially a rip-off and rehashing of the previous year’s “Pass the Kutchie” by the Mighty Diamonds, this is the reggae that is O.K. to bring home to meet the parents. Despite it’s user-friendly beat, or perhaps because of, it haunted me in my youth and seemed to be in rotation at every dance, prom, sweet sixteen, bar mitzvah, arraignment, and graduation party I attended. While a search for the word “dutchie” reveals that it is at once a type of donut, a style of dog bed, and also a communicative sort of dog, I had no idea up until college what I was singing when I would chant along like a sheep to the Musical Youth. I was simply passing the Dutchie to the left-hand side, as I was told. “How does it feel when you’ve got no food” was always garbled into BeebopbopBOO in my infantile mind. Upon my freshman year in college when my worldview was in the process of becoming almost entirely transformed by Method Man and his Wu-Tang cronies, I assumed that I had been singing about a Dutchie, Staten Island-style. A gutted Dutch Master cigar re-rolled with the sticky. Rolling a Dutchie was no easy feat as it was infinitely harder than rolling a blunt because a Dutchie had to be unrolled rather than simply cracked. Suffice it to say, I am thoroughly embarrassed to discover that this generation which rules the nation/ with version should actually be inspiring visions of the dreadlocks’ camp passing not a tremendously overstuffed doob around but simply enticing their brethren to share a clay cooking pot with some grub in it in a clockwise rotation. How disappointing! I’m such a maroon. Now I just need to figure out what the hell ruling a nation with version means.

Best Moment: The opening declaration of ruling the nation.

—N.J.