Cataloguing the sexual euphemisms of rap music is one of my favorite pastimes. So when a commenter requested that I parse Gucci Mane’s lyrics for hidden sexual undertones, I was happy to attempt to smoke out some hidden naughty bits in the rapper’s contribution to Young Problemz‘ “Boi” (Mane weighs in at the 2:55 mark).

Perhaps I am off my game. Because  for the life of me, I can’t make out any clear sexual imagery in Mane’s lyrical feast of gyros, egg rolls, tacos, and sting rays:

Extra lamb like a gyro / Wrap ‘em like a egg roll
Beat up out the taco / Feed ‘em to the octos
Fully fully auto / Shawty bout that good plate
Fuck around next they be sleepin with a sting ray

While the taco reference inspires an obvious anatomical comparison, that octopus shit is beyond me. So I turned to CP‘’s resident art staff for help:

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The cover of the August 22, 2007 issue of Creative Loafing Tampa was a doozy. Under the guise of a “newbies” guide to Tampa Bay, the alt-weekly fronts a nude photo of editorial interns Ted Scheinman and Brian Reed. The interns stand in the sparkling depths of a man-made waterfall, their hands posed jauntily on their hips. They wear no clothes. Covering their genitals are two triumphantly checked boxes that, to the untrained eye, could appear to be representations of erect penises. Observe:

After finishing their tenure at Creative Loafing Tampa and graduating from Yale, Scheinman and Reed came to work at the Washington City Paper (Scheinman remains as CP’s Online Producer; Reed has since moved on to a Croc Fellowship at NPR). Before my new coworkers even arrived in the District, I heard tell of their cover-boy exploits down South, but I hadn’t actually set my eyes the cover until last week. When the newspaper was unceremoniously dumped in my cubicle, I approached the cover as I would the site of a terrible collision: Not knowing what else to do, I simply stared, wondering why the tears were not coming.

As with any unexplained tragedy, the image piqued my curiosity; I needed to know how and why this had happened. In an interview, Scheinman detailed the genesis of the cover. “It was [Editor-in-Chief] David Warner’s idea. There were a bunch of half-assed ideas being kicked around about the cover, and then [Warner] asked us if we would do this,” says Scheinman. “He clearly was not joking.”

Scheinman and Reed—who had penned an essay for the issue on the “Caliente” nudist resort and community of Land O’Lakes, Fla.—were interested. “We thought about it for a moment, and no one could think of any reason not to,” says Scheinman. Though Reed admits he was nervous the night before the photo shoot—”like the night before the first day of school”—he was comfortable with the idea. According to Scheinman, the pair had become accustomed to lounging together naked while undergrads at Yale. “Oh, yeah, yeah. There’s a seedy subculture In the Ivy leagues of naked, Dionysian revelry,” he says. “There were naked parties.”

Scheinman clearly was not joking.

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