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:

Arts editor Sarah Godfrey was similarly tripped up by the taco:

After listening a few times, I’m thinking Gucci has mixed his metaphors a bit here. Although the taco thing and the sleeping with a sting ray thing seem like sex euphemisms, I’m pretty sure the extra lamb thing is about money, and the wrap ‘em like an egg roll and feed ‘em to the octos lines are about hurting people. But maybe I just have a hard time understanding his country ass.

Arts editor Ted Scheinman suspects that “extra lamb” refers to the size of Mane’s dick:

Line 1: possible Christ ref. Also, isn’t this, like, the weirdest endowment boast ever? Shoulda made it a half-smoke!

Line 3: I prefer to read this line as “meat up out the taco.” Slightly racier. Though, let’s be frank, the mixed-food metaphors are starting to make me nauseous

Line 4: Do octopi go for ethnic food?

Line 7: OK, Mr. Mane has now officially jumped the shark into full-on erotic-aquatic imagery. Or I guess this is a threat, like sleeping with the fishes. Either way, Shawty better not fuck around.

Listings czar Mike Riggs thinks it’s ALL about the taco. And don’t call it a taco!

1.) Lamb meat is an imaginative substitute for “roast beef,” which was likely the most popular slice-meat parallel to vagina pre-Gucci. It would be worldly, perhaps even sophisticated, if comparisons to deli stuffs weren’t pejorative.

2.) I hate taco references, thanks to the scene in “Me, Myself, and Irene” in which Jim Carrey commandeers the PA at a grocery store to harangue a woman who’s buying Vagisil for her “cheesy taco.”

3.) Then again, the “good plate” sounds, well, good! Like it’s all tasty down there! And let’s face it, the vagina is a tasty place, so it might as well be a tasty plate.

4.) I don’t know about that whole stingray/egg roll/octo thing, except that octopus reminds me of Octopussy, the female lead from the same-titled 1983 James Bond movie, starring seafood connoisseur Roger Moore.

In closing, rappers can and should do better by the vagina. It’s what they seem to live for, and yet they talk about it in terms befitting a so-so food cart. Jesus.

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.

On the day of the shoot, Scheinman and Reed, both 23, disrobed at Caliente in front of another Creative Loafing reporter, who took their photograph, and an advertising rep, who simply “wanted to come along,” says Reed. After posing for about 100 shots, the Creative Loafing editorial team narrowed the selection down to a few possibilities, which were sent to the newspaper’s Atlanta office to be finalized for the cover. “We knew, obviously, that the key areas were to be covered up,” says Reed. “That was implied.” After the digital insertion of the check marks, Reed and Scheinman were told that all copies of the nude photos would be destroyed, save for one CD of the photographs which remains in Reed’s possession.

But while Scheinman and Reed were comfortable with their nude photo experience, I am not particularly comfortable with it. I generally am not opposed to the display of nude art in the workplace, but I do find saucy nude photographs of my co-workers moderately disturbing. I am not alone: In the aftermath of the issue, Warner wrote in a blog post, “the manager of a sports bar told us it was ‘inappropriate for a paper featuring naked boys on the cover to appear at a family establishment.’”

Or, you know, in your office environment. Scheinman and Reed’s essay, admittedly, is soaring:

They took a moment to look at us, lounging decadently in big, reclined patio chairs, sipping our drinks, smiling, feet up on the table, naked and spoiled as the day we were born, our cranberries dangling papally.

So soaring, in fact, that the image of papally dangling cranberries will forever be seared into my brain each time I approach our Online Producer with a modest question concerning our Web stats.

Even more unsettling is the inside photo. The second shot shows Reed and Scheinman, again naked, this time embracing an unidentified woman (also naked):

I may have just lost my naked lunch.

Am I right to be disturbed by this? Or is the nearly-naked coworker a sight we all must endure in the Internet age?