Go ahead, listen to it: a word or phrase
drops in clearly here and there, most notably the snottily delivered
"tricks are for kids" that concludes the verse. But what
you get, mainly, is mood. A bad mood. A desire to kick over
trash cans and do donuts in front of the mayor’s house at two
in the morning on a weeknight. And then, while the few phrases you’ve
picked out are doing their signifying dance inside your brain, the
chorus comes. "Whoa-whoa," say the guys, somehow finding
a way to make it sound menacing. "Come on and kick me,"
Cuomo sings, three times, his articulate adolescent self-loathing
magnifying itself enough to warrant a devastating, unaccompanied "whoa-whoa"
of his own. "You’ve got your problems," he continues,
mist-spraying the faintest whiff of a whine over his voice, which
in its non-falsetto choral incarnation plays tug-of-war between swagger
and self-flagellation. "I got my asswipe." (Maybe it’s
"I got my ass wiped," but again, who cares? The train has
left the station and is carrying us along too quickly for us to ask
questions.) "You’ve got your big cheese," he says,
contempt spattering from his lips like oil leaping from a hot griddle.
"I got my hash pipe."
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