In tomorrow's "On Language" column (not yet online), the linguist William Safire concludes that "In borrowing, as speakers of Standard English do, cool words and phrases from hip-hop and rap ('You the man!' 'You go, girl!'), we should recognize the savvy sociopolitical methods behind its dialectical formulations." Which is to say, those people/rappers are not just making random sounds after all. What brought about this revelation? An e-mail from an English professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, who thought it was pretty funny that her students were using phrases like "back in the day" and "old school" in reference to things like the first-generation iPod. Intrigued, Safire took the ball and ran it all the way down, tapping not one, not two, but three "serious students of hip-hopese" to explain the phenomenon.