Luis Thoroughly Analyzes The Lyrics to Will Smith’s “Miami” (and Relives Painful Memories)

As some of Funny Crave’s long time fans may be aware, I’m from the lovely and sun shining city of Miami. In Florida. Yes, I can hear your groans of displeasure. In response to your groans I say, “Hey, at least we’re not Mississippi/South Carolina/Texas/Arizona.” Those places are the real shit holes.

Anyway, Miami has been a hot bed for modern pop-cultural activity since Don Johnson’s rolled up white sports jacket sleeves depicted my fare city as a cesspool of drugs, crime, murder, and the personal ownership of alligators. Ever since then, Hollywood has developed this bizarre fascination with representing a very two-dimensional version of Miami, a version that only really exists on the small strip near the beaches, and a version that will almost certainly take center stage when those greasy Jersey Shore fucks pollute our local water supply, with their oil slicked hair and douchey pheromones that turn fish in to gay, barnacle fuckers. This crime is no more evident than in Will Smith’s 1998 ode to my city, “Miami.”

I have a very personal relationship with this song for one very specific reason – a reason that I will tell you all about at the end, but as for now, I will thoroughly analyze the lyrics to Will Smith’s “Miami.”

Here I am in the place where I come let go
Miami the base and the sunset glow
Everyday like a mardi gras, everybody party all day
No work all play, okay

So we sip a little something, lay to rest the spill
Me and Charlie at the bar runnin up a high bill
Nothin less than ill, when we dress to kill
Everytime the ladies pass, they be like (Hi Will)

If this statement were in any way true, Miami would be the dead, rotting head on America’s dangling dick. We’d be an economic shit hole with no hope of ever climbing ourselves out of the valley of financial ruin we’ve dug ourselves in to…but thank the stars above that we have an abundance of DJ’s, wannabe rappers, and liquor to sustain ourselves during those trying times.

Can y’all feel me, all ages and races
Real sweet faces
Every different nation, Spanish, Hatian, Indian, Jamaican
Black, White, Cuban, and Asian

I dare you to find a white person in Miami. FUCKING DARE YOU! I thought I saw one once. Turns out it was an antisocial Dominican that rarely saw the browning touch of earth’s yellow sun.

Yo I heard the rainstorms ain’t nothin to mess with
But I can’t feel a drip on the strip, it’s a trip

The only “strip” in Miami is Collins Avenue, where all the fancy hotels are, along with the famous Miami Beach. That shit is right on the beach, so if there’s a rainstorm that one would be inclined to dub “nothin’ to mess with” – which I can only assume is code for “category 5 hurricane” – then, sure; go ahead, Will Smith. By all means, continue to party on the strip. But when you wake up with a Stop sign sliced in to your abdomen and a palm frawn sticking out of our ass, making you look like you’re showing off your plumage to all of the other palm trees, don’t complain to me when you’re dead.

Yo, ain’t no city in the world like this
And if you ask how I know I gots ta plead the fifth

Really? Because I hear Bismarck, North Dakota is almost exactly like Miami.

Miami-ish

Water so clear, you can see to the bottom

Except on nearly all of Miami’s beaches, where the bottom is obscured by this mysterious thick haze that looks like your bathroom sink after you rinse out your foamy toothpaste spit.

Hundred-thousand dollar cars, e’ybody got em

I’m pretty sure this line is Will Smith just straight up mocking me and my cherished 1992 Blue Geo Prizm, with the ripped apart ceiling (exposing the orange foam underneath); the 3 broken door handles; the intense sun damage; the one door that just doesn’t open; and the blood stains in my back seat (not a joke).
And, finally, I end this little number by going all the way back to the beginning of the song, and by telling you a story about its first lyrics:

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah
Miami, uh, uh
Southbeach, bringin the heat, uh
Haha, can y’all feel that
Can y’all feel that
Jig it out, uh

So, about 3 or 4 years ago, I was listening to a local morning radio show here in Miami. On this radio show, the drive time duo will, once a year, hold this long and drawn out quiz show called “You Can’t Win.” The game is simple: they have 5 questions. Whoever gets all 5 right wins a shitton of amazing prizes, like a jet ski, a new car, a vacation to Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and a 6-pack of beer gets added to the winnings for every day that someone doesn’t win the game. So if the game lasts, say, 138 days, then the eventual winner at the end of those 138 days will get 138 6-packs of beer. By my calculations, and assuming the game runs exactly 138 days (which is not unheard of for this game)…138 X 6 = alcohol poisoning. Sweet, delicious alcohol poisoning.

The way you answer questions is also very simple: they start off with question one, and then if someone gets it right, that person then attempts to answer number-two. If they get it wrong, then everyone that was listening at that time now knows the answer for number-one, and they also know the second question and can start doing the research. The game requires some heavy research to find the answers.

I would wake up every day and listen in. Someone answers question one. Then, sometime later, someone answers number-two, then so on and so forth until question number-five is reached some months later.  This was question number-five: There are 11 of these in Miami. What are they?

From the moment the question was given, every one of the thousands of listeners started to wonder just what that could mean. I, myself, didn’t really give it much thought. You Can’t Win is cool, and the prizes are kind of amazing, but I just had no interest in participating…until I figured out the answer.

I started to think about it: There are 11 of these in Miami. What are they?

Well, knowing that the answer couldn’t be as easy as simply figuring out if there are 11 something-or-others in Miami, I started to immediately think outside of the box. “What is ‘Miami’?”, “What other things are Miami that aren’t Miami Miami”, “Oh, Will Smith’s ‘Miami’!”

Once I came to that conclusion, I downloaded the song and listened to it intensely. Every day I would listen and listen and listen. I would watch, re-watch, and watch again, the cheesy video of Will Smith hopping and skipping his way through the city. I would listen in the car, I would listen on the shitter, I would listen on my computer, I would hum the damn tune over and over again, and all in an attempt to figure out just what those 11 something’s were.

I must have heard that damn song well over 200 times over the course of a week and a half, and I say that without a hint of exaggeration. Shit, that may even be a conservative estimate. But, luckily, I had results to show for it. I had a near definitive answer.

My theory: In his song “Miami,” Will Smith says “uh” and “yeah” a total of 11 times. After I settled on this as my answer, all I had to do was call in and make it on the air. So, I tried. For the next week I would wake up just in time for You Can’t Win and I would dial the radio station with the house phone in one hand and my cell phone in the other – the Two Phone Attack, a patented Luis Prada move.

After many failed attempts, I finally made it on the air. I had the answers to the previous four questions written down so I wouldn’t fuck those up and waste all my damn time (once you compete in one You Can’t Win, you can’t compete again for 30 days). Thankfully, I make it straight through all of those answers with ease and simplicity. But next up is number-five. The one that everyone for the past month and a half has gotten wrong, everyday; not one person has even been remotely close to correct. So, I get to question number-five. I’m pacing around my bedroom, a nervous wreck, arms shaking, knowing I’m about to win a bunch of prizes that I will sell to buy whores and blow.

I say it: “In his song “Miami,” Will Smith says “uh” and “yeah” a total of 11 times.”

There’s a long, long pregnant pause. I’m expecting the silence to be instantly sliced by sirens, celebration, and applause. Instead, it was sliced by the sound of four grown men in a studio all reacting like they had just seen a sniper’s bullet miss Bin Laden’s head by a fraction of a inch – that horrid teeth sucking sound; the cringing hiss of failure.

I was frozen. My heart felt like it had literally dropped in my chest and it was now resting on top of my spleen. They said that I was so close that the long pause was them wondering if they should just give it to me, seeing as they were sure no one was ever going to get this question. Alas, they didn’t give it to me. Soon thereafter, they hung up and I was a bit depressed. I listened to that fucking song well over 200 times and I didn’t win shit. What a kick in the dick, huh?

This feeling lasted me a few more days, up until some random dude called in and, using my answer as a jumping off point, said, “In his song “Miami,” Will Smith says “uh” a total of 11 times.” He was right. He got the sirens. The celebration. The applause. The fucker won.

I could have sworn I was robbed. I wasn’t. It turns out that including the four or so Uh’s Will Smith rattles off in the beginning of the song, he rattles off a good 7 or 8 somewhere in the background of the 2^nd verse. In my over 200 listenings, I never once heard one of those damn Uhs.

I was defeated. Crushed. More so than I had been in a long, long time. And it’s all Will Smith’s fault. Or, at least, that’s the way I’ve chosen to pass the blame on to someone else other than me.

So every time you’re listening to the radio and Miami comes on and you think, “ugh, I hate this song,” just know that there are people in this world (me) that hate it on a whole ‘nother level. On a deeper level. On level so profound that Buddhist monks meditating on their hatred for that song for a century couldn’t even begin to comprehend my hatred for it.

Me had I won You Can't Win...or, more realistically, me post-losing You Can't Win