Diet Soda by COMMANDO
The lyrics for Diet Soda were written following conversations Juba Kalamka had with Lynnee Breedlove around issues of aging as punk and hip hop musicians in a context where dialogues on long term queer and/or POC health imperatives are often waylaid by simple day-to-day survival concerns.
Juba was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes in 2011 after exhibiting symptoms that overlapped his other chronic health conditions. As an invisibly disabled person he thought it would be cool to contextualize some of the dark humor of his elder family members around this common condition ( referred to as “The Sugar” or “The ‘Bētēs” in African American Vernacular English [AAVE]) in a cheeky ‘rage against the dying light’. The song also represents a confrontation of the very real fears of his future and seemingly inevitable consequences of the disease despite the harm reductive measures he is engaging in the present.
Tracklist
| 1. | Diet Soda | 3:39 |
Lyrics
DIET SODA
(Kalamka/Meyerson/Andrews/Jackson-Weaver)
Skeebo Johnson ad lib intro
Chorus 4x:
I got the bêtes baby
I got the bêtes baby
I got the bêtes baby
Drank some diet soda maybe
(Drankin' diet soda daily)
Verse 1:
Don’t want them chopping my nose
Or any fingers or toes
And no neuropathy stopping me
Dropped a size in my clothes
Metabolism in schism
Forgetting prose and my rhythm
I spend my evening in scheming
Hell no, you’re not gonna get him
Pre-Chorus 1x:
So what’s it gonna be?
I have to pee
Why can’t you see
My ‘betes, my ‘betes?
Chorus 4x
Verse 2:
They keep on saying you losing weight
And you’ve never looked better
My pants once gripped now slip they my hips
And I’m swimming in sweaters
Better a prick with a fingerstick
Just a beater with meter readings
Completed a journal logging
The slog of the meat i’m eating
Forboding the carbo loading
And sweets omnipresent
It’s messing, stressing ‘bout dressing
And less of cornbread and crescents
You see my sugar is snookered
His mouth is dryer than cotton
I’m stocking Wyler’s and Zero
Before I’m gone and forgotten
2nd Pre-chorus:
So what’s it gonna be?
I have to pee
Why can’t you see
My ‘betes, my ‘betes?
I place a lemon slice
Makes colas taste nice
Broke Zero’s my life
That black can be manly
(guitar solo)
3rd Pre-chorus/outro:
What’s it gonna be?
I have to pee
Why can’t you see
My ‘betes, my ‘betes?
I place a lemon slice
Makes colas taste nice
Broke Zero’s my life
That black can be manly
D-I-E-T! P-I-B-B!
D-I-E-T! P-I-B-B!
D-I-E-T! P-I-B-B!
D-I-E-T! P-I-B-B!
Skeebo Johnson ad lib outro
Credits
License
All rights reserved.
COMMANDO is a collective led by some of the most important queer artists of the past several decades. The group presents recordings and live events that celebrate and revel in queerness and give women, trans, and gender nonconforming kids a place to rock out—in effect, embodying the band we all wished existed when we were 12 years old.