You'll have to excuse my friend, he has Tourette's

Ever since Pete from Big Brother invented the condition known as Tourette's syndrome in 2006 it’s been everywhere – kids spontaneously shout ‘WANKER!!!’ at me in the streets all the time. Hell, what’s wrong with rocking a Dashiki and a Jeri curl in ’07?

That Pete gay is a bit like Alexander Graham Bell though – neither of them invented the telephone and neither of them invented Tourette’s. No, Tourette’s was actually was actually invented by some Scottish bloke in the Seventies. Little is known of the man, apart from the fact that he could be rather inappropriately rude and embarrassing to be around…

Tourette’s is in fact now so cool that it has become ‘urban’. Hip hop, Grime and RnB artists all over the world seem to have developed their own individual ‘ticks’. RnB seems to have been hit by a rather worrying tick of pandemic levels with almost every artists of the genre yelping the word ‘baby’ involuntarily whenever they open their silly formulaic little mouths (I am not an angry man).

It’s the Tourette’s in the other ‘urban’ (what an awful word used by wankers – maybe those kids had a point) realms that are far more interesting. With this in mind here’s a few of the more notable artists and their ticks –



Flavor Flav (Public Enemy)

Good old Flavor eh? Not only was he a true innovator in the world of hip hop, jeweller and being a crack head, he was also the first hip hop artist to suffer from Tourette’s. Flavor’s tick, ‘Yeeeeaahh Boyeeeee!!’ can be heard all over Public enemy’s records and became a truly synonymous with the PE sound.

One unfortunate outburst of his famous tick got him in quite a sticky situation whilst trekking through Bed Stuy back in the day - Flav bawled passed a couple of thugs sounding out a confused young male for being a homosexual, and asking the question, ‘So, you like girls or boys? Punk ass faggot’, Flav had to 01* rather sharpish when he inadvertently answered for the young puff.

* 01 is short for 0121, which means ‘do one’ for all you none Brum heads



Scratchy (Roll Deep)

Roll Deep’s white boy and possibly best mc is also a prime example of a Tourette’s sufferer. Scratchy’s tick is his trade mark warrior call. This derives from his little known Native American or Original People’s roots. Although he likes to try and keep it under his ponytail, Scratchy is actually a direct descendent of Big Chief Rapid Chat of the Sioux Indians. It is well documented that Rapid Chat had a tick of his very own. Famous American historian Clayton Deathroll said this of him, ‘The first time I met Big Chief Rapid Chat he screamed ‘Eski!!’ and then violently sodomized me’.



Timbaland

All time super producer and unfathomable idiot (why give everybody else actually songs and just fill your album with party and bullshit?) has laced a damn high percentage of his tracks with his gibberish, turntable Tourette’s. His incessant ‘freaky, freaky’ in a mock scratch style becomes quite hilarious when noticed. He seriously drops it all too frequently for it to be a ‘hooky’ part of his production sound – the boy has Tourette’s! Or maybe he just feels freaky all the time. Either way the man is clearly unwell.



Jadakiss

Supposed ‘real’ MC, Jadakiss (get some beats fool), tries hard to disguise his tick but it’s still easy to spot if you know what you’re looking for. Why would a grown ass man do a weird coughy, laughy, choking nose on half of his tracks? Because the bloke clearly has Tourette's. In fact I can’t even be arsed to write about him because it might not actually be Tourette’s – he might just be a nob…



On that not I think I’ll say, ‘Piss Off!’ But do try and spot your own CUNTS! suffering from Tourette’s Syndrome, they’re FUCKING! everywhere…



Samuel

ADIEU