Snaps Comes Out In Album Form

Your father’s so stupid, when the judge said “order in the court” he said, ‘I’ll have fried chicken wings and some biscuits.’ “

Snap!

It’s a tradition in the black community that is as old as dirt.

Snapping, a high-stakes game of verbal warfare, is usually learned on playgrounds, honed in locker rooms and unleashed on the front lawns of homes where cookouts have drawn family and friends.

Now Two Brothers & A White Guy production company has released “Snaps: The Album Vol. 1.” The white guy explains how they have raised insults to a marketable art form:

“We are a television production company,” says James Percelay. “Our intent was to get a television deal. We wrote the first book in hopes of getting a deal. As a result, we got a series of HBO specials called ‘Snaps.”’

So when he wandered innocently into a Harlem comedy club one night, he wasn’t expecting the one-on-one “love” he received from the “brothers.”“You so white, I’ll bet you thought Malcolm X stood for Malcolm the 10th,” blared the comic on stage. Percelay, the only white in the room, quickly understood he had become a part of the show.”You so white,” comic Monteria Ivey continued, “I’ll bet you think the Black Panthers were an animal rights group.”“This is something that was foreign to me,” Percelay says. But he wasn’t offended by the taunts. Not when he saw the raucous response of the audience. “They loved it,” he says.Snapping dates back to slavery.

Since slaves could not express their frustrations physically, they sparred verbally.

The game is also known as playing the dozens. That name, according to Percelay, comic Monteria Ivey and attorney Stephen Dweck, also dates to slave times. Slaves who didn’t fare well during the middle passage because they were either sick or injured were sold in lots of 12 and were referred to as the dirty dozen. “So to be part of that was the ultimate insult,” Percelay says.

Snaps was first published in 1993. Percelay says it was so well received, volume two came the following year. “Triple Snaps” (William Morrow, $9.95), should be released at Christmas time.

The cassette is raw. It is not for the thin-skinned and features snappers from around the country who come together to fight fire with biting sarcasm.

“Your outfit is so old it looks like

you’re doing a history assignment. You look like an extra on ‘MASH,”’ says one rapper.

Later, another rapper responds, “Your breath is so bad, you need a breath mint with a battery.”

Still, nothing can replace the standard, dear old mom:

“Your mother so country, she baked cornbread for a birthday cake.” Snap!