Word: patters
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...resilience, digital-watch timing, an amplitude of self-confidence that never spills over into arrogance, and Eddie Murphy has it all. But for people to like you is something else, something more difficult to define: a gift, a charm, a comedic sex appeal. Murphy's bad-boy street patter, with four-letter words used less to shock or threaten than to salt his jokes with the rhythm of machismo, carries with it an inner-city demand for respect. Then suddenly his handsome face flashes a good-boy dimple, and out of his mouth comes the laugh that sounds like...
...convict lionized by radical chic for his vengeful poetry ("Cill My Lanlord") and moving with the mean swagger of a ghetto goon pulling off his toughest scam. A few commercials later, he is Tyrone's spiritual cousin, Film Critic Raheem Abdul Muhammad, fashioning a variation on local-news patter-"Angry Talk"-as he accuses Jerry Falwell's followers of having a sneaking fondness for dirty movies ("The next time I see one of them in a movie line I'm gonna put the majority of my foot up his moral butt"). Murphy can do creepily precise parodies...
Amid his endless patter of "Howya-dooin's," the giggling of three teen-age girls catches Hope's attention. Chirping and darting looks at one another, the youngsters ask him the way to a local nightspot. Hope savors the moment, then points the direction. As he watches them wiggle off into the night, he nudges his visitor and whispers out of the side of his mouth, "What do you think? You want to go dancing?" - By E. Graydon Carter
...stands for maximum cool, part of the patter of a complex, sometimes convoluted, urban street culture that includes rap music, graffiti art and dancing that goes by a couple of generic styles and several specific names. Like spray-painted murals down the side of a New York City subway, or a ghetto blaster carried on a shoulder broadcasting 130 beats a minute all over a Bronx street, this subculture, nicknamed hip hop, is about assertiveness, display, pride, status and competition, particularly among males. Clothes are not only a part of this offhand cultural statement; they are a kind of uniform...
...hopes the neighbors will take it as a sign of her modern outlook. Sabrina, 20, has a small part in a regional production of Oklahoma! Edwin, the man she lives with, is 43 and drives a bus for retarded adults whom he entertains with music tapes and disc-jockey patter...