New York’s always been a big advertising target for Roach Motel.  On the subway they used to run them in every car: Roaches Check In…But They Don’t Check Out. In Spanish it always seemed extra ominous to me: Las Cucarachas Entran…Pero No Pueden Salir. (That’s probably the only complete sentence in Spanish I know that doesn’t start ‘Tu madre’.)

And what is a subway car but a moving Roach Motel.  What is New York but a big stack of roach motels.  ”All American cockroaches were immigrants,” notes Roach Facts.  According to the Observer in 2008, New York’s roach population has fallen as a side effect of gentrification.  Four years further into the recession, I bet that’s not true anymore.

I don’t need to draw you a map.  Dehumanization is always the first step in exterminating people.  And reclaiming epithets is what hip-hop has always done best.