Despite the extravagant diamond pendant around Lil Jon’s neck that reads “Crunk Ain’t Dead,” Crunk is indeed dead. First it was buried beneath a heap of happy snap that drowned out rebellious voices like Pastor Troy’s. Then, the orderly step-dances stomped out the thrashing bodies possessed by sound.

And now this: Like “Bling” before it, Crunk has been officially officialized by Merriam-Webster, thereby granting otherwise serious-minded white folks license to get—gasp!—“Crunk.”
Last night, after announcing the latest additions to the standardized dictionary (Ginormous, and Sudoku were among them), CNN anchor Anderson Cooper tried to keep it together, making an honest grey-haired mistake thinking Crunk was Krump, the dance style explored by David LaChapelle in his documentary about a bunch of dancing clowns. “I thought Crunk was a form of dance in California,” Anderson said. (I give Anderson points for even being up on Chris Brown’s favorite pastime.) But guys like Cooper aren’t the reason why words disappear. Check Cooper’s shucking and jiving partner, who yucks it up alongside him.

“No, no, that’s where you’re wrong,” dude joked. “This morning I had a big bowl of crunk, with a little bit of milk and sugar.”

Anderson, later going in on the joke, asked viewers to send their “crunk ideas” so CNN can put your “best crunk on the air.”
Truth is, I’ve witnessed some pretty bad context usage for the word over the years. Of course, we can all agree that there is a certain dark, high-energy music called crunk that infects those who listen, and causes them to get crunk. But I’ve overheard folks call a pair of sneakers crunk, as in “Those kicks are crunk.” Or the store, which sells said “crunk” footwear, I’ve heard clumsily referred to as crunk. To this I say, Cooper and the new Crunk News Network gang are as good as any to participate in the murder of a word.

But this is how it all begins, or rather, ends. A perfectly good word, which already had a few questionable uses within the hip-hop community, gets booted up to the mainstream and before you know it, MC Karl Rove and crew are getting crunk in The White House.

Now, ain’t no sense in thinking this will be as critical as the “Getting Jiggy With It” abuse of language, or that it will rise to “dude, you got-dissed-hard” proportions. And there will always be the mainstays of crunk that’ll be live (for proof, peep Fresh of crunktastical).

Meanwhile, artists like David Banner, Three 6 Mafia, and Lil Jon will surely fight the good fight, albeit a losing one.

“Crunk is a word that’s been used in the South forever,” Lil Jon told USA Today writer Steve Jones in 2003. “We were the first ones to use it in a hook and tell people to Get crunk, we started calling ourselves a crunk group, so we kind of paved the way.”

And now this.

I guess there’s nothing left to do but have yourself a bowl of Crunk, with a lil milk and sugar, while sending Anderson Cooper and CNN your best “Crunk Ideas,” of which I am suddenly fresh out.