Heard on The Judges: "tight like that"

[Wilson Gray]

Since early childhood, I've been familiar with the phrasal template,
_BE ADJ like that_, particularly as the title of a
considered-salacious-at-the-time song, "It's Tight Like That." But
then, dekkids passed without my hearing the phrase used in any
permutation, combination, or probability. If it hadn't been for
continually coming across mention of the song-title here and there in
print, I'd probably have completely forgotten the existence of this
particular template. Recently - within the past dekkid or so - I've
started to hear the template again, most commonly in the phrase, "NP
BE cool like that."

Today, a twenty-ish, black male defendant from Saint Louis (but not a
speaker of the urr-dialect) is explaining to Judge Jeanine Pirro that
he's a budding fashion-designer and mentions that he saw the judge at
the Emmies.

D."I was really transfixed behind those shoes that you had on, with
the jewels on the soles."

J."How'd you happen to notice that I had jewels on the soles of my shoes?!"

D."Well, your honor, I'm just _tight like that_."


It doesn't appear that the speaker meant any kind of double-entendre.
He's saying that, fashion being his thing, of course his attention
would be drawn to something like shoes with jewel-encrusted soles. In
fact, IMO, there's nothing that I can see in the words to the original
song that would be a problem. OTOH, it's very possible that people who
were around when "tight like that" was new and hip understood
perfectly well wherein the double-entendres lay.

--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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