Everyone’s off to the style wars.

Lis­ten: Spank Rock - Lind­say Lohan’s Revenge [via Goril­la vs. Bear]

It was dur­ing the trag­ic third act of this doc­u­men­tary about Vil­lanova’s nation­al bas­ket­ball title that it I was remind­ed of anoth­er of 2006 short-lived neol­o­gisms: gallery rap. Ear­ly this year, Spank Rock’s YoY­oY­oY­oYo revived the mid-eight­ies hiphop poly­glot. A com­bi­na­tion of old school fash­ion and sen­si­bil­i­ties, they embody the fren­zied social and polit­i­cal con­fu­sion of the Rea­gan years, a time of coke-fueled toast­ing, soundsys­tem blar­ing in the street.

Even the majors tried to get a piece. Some­time Kanye col­lab­o­ra­tor and Phar­rell protégé Lupe Fias­co entered the pic­ture with his skater rap anthem “Kick, Push.” But like Phar­rel­l’s solo debut, In My Mind, noth­ing real­ly stuck, and “Kick, Push” fell short of becom­ing the sum­mer’s rap anthem.

Some­how Spank Rock “suc­ceed­ed” where oth­ers failed, yet anoth­er exam­ple of cachet out­do­ing cash. YoY­oY­oY­oYo was well-received, but not crit­i­cal­ly overblown — mak­ing it one of 2006’s cult hits and a par­ty album that rivals Paul’s Bou­tique for quirky, kinky fun — and yet anoth­er rea­son to keep an eye on Bal­ti­more’s bur­geon­ing music scene.