Light This Bitch Up

P-Lo feat. G-Eazy, Jay Anthony

By Natalie Silver

Like all of us who are in the Bay, of the Bay and rep the Bay, The HBK Gang is self-righteous, indignant and most of all: not subtle.

The HBK Gang is a Bay Area native hip hop collective and was founded in 2008 by Iamsu!, Chief and P-Lo. P-Lo, featuring HBK Gang member Jay Ant and some other guy named G-Eazy, released “Light this Bitch Up” in 2016 and it happens to be the most East Bay thing of all time—from its funny lyrical cocktail of performative indifference and sanctimonious hometown pride to its music video, which is completely inundated with local propaganda.

Let’s start with the video’s main shot locations. There’s one at BART (if you haven’t seen someone shooting a music video at BART—or at least dancing and singing as if they WERE shooting one, you haven’t been in the Bay long enough) and another with the foggy Bay Bridge in the background. And then there’s intermittent b-roll of Oracle Arena, AT&T Park, Oakland Coliseum and a mural of Steph Curry, as well as appearances of an A’s hat,  a Giants hat, a Raiders sign, Dubs graffiti and the SFPD. There is even an AC transit cameo...holllaaaa!

Every other shot is one of the guys smoking a blunt—a behavior, that let’s be real, was essentially legalized in the Bay 15 years ago and is something we proudly flaunt—as well as subtle flashes of a Bulleit bourbon bottle, AKA the local beverage of young scenes in The Bay. And then there’s more dug-up A’s gametape, more Bay Bridge shots, more BART,  more blunts and more iconic Oakland graffitied art pieces, including a mural of The Jacka, who is a true hero of the underground Bay Area rap scene.

All of this b-roll is loud and in your face, helping convey the elements in this son’s makeup that reflect the very East Bay, self-righteous conditions of its creators and its creation:

1)    Feigned apathy

2)    Rejection of superficiality

3)    Rejection of gentrification

Living in the Bay is to live within an undeniably paradoxical space. It is to self-identify as “part snob” (see Verse 2) while also often living a rough urban existence. It is to occupy the dual identify of being both a hater and a consumer of gentrification; recognizing that it’s an unavoidable cancer and only something called out with bourbon in one hand and Cookies Kush in the other. It is awareness of one’s own privilege, while often choking at the hands of those with more.

“Light This Bitch Up” is, at its most superficial level, a party anthem, but read at a deeper level it truly is Bay Area Gospel—preaching the importances of staying true to yourself and your roots despite the plastic, fake, gentrified bullshit around you—even if you have to Uber to that pregame or hoverboard down Telegraph. 

The Bay, particularly the East Bay, is a weird space that is both inclusive but also contradictory, where the good and the bad intermingle and coexisting binaries define our existence. Stoners and students, black and white, skaters and ballers, extreme poverty and gross wealth, East Oakland and Piedmont all exist in this one confined space that has a history of social activism and an always loud presence, but still hosts acts of racism, fear, microaggression, aggression, prejudice and violence on a daily basis. Just ask Barbecue Becky.

And no one understands it besides those who have been bred in it; that’s why we listen to each other, and that’s why will will stand by each other, ride by each other, play each other at our parties, and promote each other as our job. The Bay is bigger than all of us. It’s up to us to rep it—to make art of it, within it, for it.

June 3, 2019