“But I can’t teach you my swag/You can pay the school, but you can’t buy class.” - JAY-Z, “Swagger Like Us”

During last week’s Grammy Awards, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Lil Wayne and T.I., dressed in classic formal attire like a modern-day Rat Pack, performed their song “Swagger Like Us,” with a very pregnant M.I.A. singing the chorus she originated on her own hit “Paper Planes.” In any other year, this swagger-fest would have been a defining moment for hip-hop’s most celebrated artists. But not this time.

President Barack Obama has, in his first month in office, put the copyright on swagger. He’s already won his first major battle with Congress and will sign his $787 billion dollar stimulus package into law this week. He’s criss-crossed America on his own pimped-out plane, otherwise known as Air Force One; managed to take his girls, including Michelle, out on the town; read to dazzled children at a D.C. elementary school, met with 9/11 and Cole bombing families, signed the orders to close Guantanamo Bay, signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay act, and even managed to squeeze in a V-day date in Chicago with the First Lady during the President’s Day holiday weekend.

How’s that for multi-tasking, John McCain? 

Of course, we haven’t yet seen him come to grips with a domestic crisis like Hurricane Katrina or stare down the face of an immediate terrorist threat, but one month in, it’s easy to see that President Obama has one thing absolutely down – and that’s how to roll like a president. He may be pinching himself internally every time he walks into the Oval Office, but outwardly, you haven't seen the brother break a hard sweat yet.

Swagger is defined as by Merriam-Webster dictionary as such: “to conduct oneself in an arrogant or superciliously pompous manner; especially to walk with an air of overbearing self-confidence.” While there are some who may see the new president as arrogant – and we can believe they were on the wrong side of the vote on the stimulus package – the air of self-confidence, while not necessarily overbearing, is evident. If you watched Obama’s first nationally televised press conference last week, you saw the walk. You saw President Obama confidently stride to the White House podium microphone as confidently as Jay-Z, the now deposed King of Swagger, walks to one onstage. You saw the president handle the barrage of questions with thoughtful, measured responses. You saw him say, in response to the Republicans who were throwing him to the media lions, that he wasn’t all “ginned up” to spend money, but that he inherited the economic problem the country is now facing. Hell-O.

Translation: “You white guys have jacked up the economy and now a brother gotta write a check for almost a trillion bucks to fix it.” (And no, people, “ginned up” is not a slang term invented by black people, but just for the record, it does appear in the online urban dictionary.)

Now, let’s just think about this for a minute, while we contemplate what real swagger is. I once wrote a piece about Jay-Z, where I basically said his baller status wasn’t as large as some others - like Kenneth Chenault, the black CEO of American Express, for example - that is, if we’re defining baller status not just by the size the diamonds around your neck or the cost of the Bentley you drive, but by your ability to impact millions of people with a single pen stroke. Jay-Z’s certainly a success, and up until, oh, about Nov. 4th of last year, he was one of black America’s true swagger .....

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