Teen slang/hip-hop lingo in the mainstream

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:01 AM -0500 3/31/03, Paul McFedries wrote:
>I'm researching the use of either teen slang or hip-hop lingo in mainstream
>contexts such as ads, marketing materials, political speeches, business
>correspondence, news articles, op-ed pieces, etc. Examples include last
>year's CNN memo requesting that crawl writers use hip-hop slang terms such
>as "ill" and "bling-bling," the Budweiser "whassup" ads, and AOL's "phat
>sounds to fat pipes" promotion.
>
Not to offer a particularly useful response, but could you fill me in
on the meaning of "bling-bling" in hip-hop lingo?  A colleague from
Brown has been sending me their extremely elaborate and eloquent spam
diagnosis headers, and one of them (appearing with the scan of the
spam ads for how to increase one's penile dimensions, if memory
serves) has "bling-bling" as part of the critique.

larry