Friday, April 20, 2007

If You Can Ignore The Music That Makes Everyone In the Club Want To Hit the Floor Together...

Then, here's just some of the "dangerous" messages in the Rap Top 10 Today...

Top Ten Rap Songs at Billboard This Week

1) This is Why I’m Hot, Mims

(unity?)

I represent New York…
I got it on ma back…
I love the Dirty, Dirty
Cause niggas show me love
The ladies start to bounce
As soon as I hit the club
But in the Midwest
They love to take it slow
So when I hit the HI
watch you get it on the floor
And if you needed it hyphy
I take it to the Bay
Frisco to Sac-town
They do it everyday
Compton to Hollywood
As soon as I hit L.A.

2) I’m a Flirt, R Kelly or Bow Wow

(playfulness?)

A dog on the prawl when im walkin through the mall
If I could man I would probably flirt wit all of yall

3) Outa My System, Bow Wow featuring T-Pain

(a yearning for monogamy?)

I still got a lot of pain
I ain't dealt wit it all
I been running round with other chicks,
I'm single and they loving it,
I'm liking it
but I just want
the one that I was in love with.


4) Two Step, Unk

(the fun of dancing?)

See We Goin Form A Line
And We Goin Step It Right
Now Step It To The Left Girl
You Know You Dynomite
Now Have Some Good Times
I See You Got It Right

5) Rock Yo Hips, Crime Mob

(female rappers Diamond and Princess saying it's fun to feel sexy?)

Seductively, moving my body
Now watch me rock my hips
Take a sip of that goose
I'm looking good and living lavish

6) Pop, Lock and Drop It, Huey

(really good dancers are fun to watch?)

At first i thought i was trippin
But my vision gettin clearer
You moving that thang around
as if you practice in da mirra
She doin a new dance
What the next man said
I'm like naw
she just pop locking on a headstand

7) Throw some Ds, Rich Boy

(I take pride in my car?)

Up in your hood I'm the one that you wanna be
Haters wish they could feel the wood in my '83
Ridin' with no tint so the motherfuckers know it's me

8) Go Getta, Young Jeezy

(relativity?)

We Live Life On Da Edge Like There's No Tomorrow
They Grind Hard Like There's No Today

9) I Tried, Bone Thugs-and-Harmony featuring Akon

(struggle and frustration?)

I just don't know but I be out here fightin demons
and It's like the curse that I can't shake this part of Cleveland
and Lord, would you help me?
And stop this pain I keep inflictin on my family (family)
Hustlin and gamblin, drinkin' and scramblin'
And losin sight of what I supposed to be handlin'
It's hard to manage cause every days a challenge
and man I'm slippin
can't lose my balance
and tryin not to panic


10) Party Like A Rock Star, Shop Boyz

(hmm....black/white unity, playfulness, a sense of humor?)

party like a rockstar
do it wit da black and da white
like a cop car
whoop, whoop,whoop,wha,whoop
me and my band,
man on the yacht relaxin
gettin a tan man

5 comments:

FaxMeBeer said...

This is why I'm hot -- "I call ma homie black meet on the ave
I hit Wash Heights with the money in the bag" -- sounds like a dope deal to me.

"See my pimping never dragged
Find me wit different women that you niggas never had" -- objectification of women, glorifaction of pimps. Yeah, unity.


I'm a flirt -- "When It Comes To Hoes I Be Pimpin Like I Supposed To" -- yes, respect.

Two Step -- "Where The Gangstas At
And You Can Still Post The Wall Nigga Holla Back
Grey Goose And Yak
Blunt Filled Wit Kush
Im Getting Jiggy Wit It
Smokin On That George Bush
Step" -- glorification of criminals, drug use.

Rock yo hips -- "Got me hard in the pants
Because she all in her stash,
Doing her motherfucking dance man
Look, lil' buddy cute in the face
She rock her hips to the bass
She take a sip when she wave
And wanna get wit Lil'J
After she dance on that pole
I pull my cash so quick and fast
When that ass hit the floor" -- Firstly..."got me hard in my pants", that's just disgusting. Secondly, the song's about strippers -- more objectification of females.

Pop lock and drop it -- "we ain't got to talk again i'm jus tryna have a time if you a balla pulla stack out and smack her on da ass" -- interestingly, some people wouldn't find it to be very respectful for a balla to slap a woman on the ass with his stack of cash.

I mean...I could obviously go on -- and I could find much worse examples of rap music than you did here. The music is disgusting, it has no redeeming values.

Danny Alexander said...

Of course you could find worse examples, but that wasn't my point. My point was that there is more going on here than what you and everyone else who hates the music wants to emphasize. Don't you love any music that is morally complex and doesn't hit you over the head with a reminder of what's right and what's wrong? Do you also deconstruct movies about such issues in the same ways? Or do all movies you see have to fit your own personal Hayes Code?

FaxMeBeer said...

You call that drivel complex? You actually think it needed to be deconstructed? That is racist, sexist, morally corrupt crap.

I couldn't find any redeeming value at stormfront.com either, does that make me simple as well? Maybe if I only gave their message of hate a chance, I'd learn to agree with them, too. Perhaps some Swedish Death Metal bands have something constructive to say between talking about raping nuns?

Just because you could find something good in the middle of a turd, doesn't mean that you should pay with crap.

Oh, and, given your defense of this misogynistic, anti-social, crap I'd guess that you hate music way more than you say I do.

Danny Alexander said...

I didn't say (or mean to imply) that you hate music.

The lyrics I chose were not something good in the middle of a turd. They were lyrics in a generally wonderful collage of sounds and beats and voices and emotions that captured what I feel is a significant part of the spirit of the record. We can disagree about that. Obviously, you don't hear that AND you didn't notice that that was my opening line--if you can ignore the music that makes everyone want to hit the dance floor together....

I don't agree with how you've summed up death metal either, neither would anyone who listens to it. I've listened to a lot of it. The full range of human emotions are expressed in most art forms. I refuse to assume the stupidity of the artist and the audience out of hand the way you are so willing to do.

There's a little movie that won Best Picture this year. I'm not saying that makes it good, but I would imply a lot of people must have thought so and must have given it some credit for its moral complexity. It was called the Departed, and it dealt with gangsters.

There's plenty of racism, directed at blacks, misogyny, and moral corruption in that movie. I could pull lines from all over that script to make some case about Martin Scorcese being morally indefensible.

I could also do that with a lot of women artists. In the tradition we're talking about, I could go back to the very roots of the blues and pull lyrics by women like Memphis Minnie, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, whoever, in which they sing very explicitly about having sex, hooking and all manner of violence, and then I could dismiss it as crap. But that would not only be wrong, it would be missing the point of the blues--dealing explicitly with the messy realities of life in order to struggle through it. That's what this rap you admit to hating is about too, and if you don't hear the contradiction, the playfulness, the roundness of the characters, the mix of women's voices amplifying, responding, going toe to toe with the men and transcending, then I can't do anything about that.

The fact that you don't think a whole genre of artists--both male and female, mostly black, most of the greatest "offenders" from places like the 9th Ward in New Orleans who have suffered plenty of obscenities, none to measure what they've suffered and continue to suffer because of the neglect of people who wish they would just shut up and go away so people didn't have to have the ugliness of poverty and the underbelly of dog-eat-dog capitalism touch their precious idealogically pure lives, the fact that you don't think any of these people have the right to talk about those realities, AND you don't think that any of them or their fans have the ability to use and recognize the value of metaphor, that to me is far more disgusting than the line about an erection that bothers you so much.

Lauren said...

Fax Me Beer. Hmmm.. Wouldn't it be nice if we never heard of any bad things like drug deals or pimping or sex (which is bad, yes?)Or at least if you are being dirty...clean sex is OK right? Or are people just not supposed to talk about the dirty things they do in the bedroom or think in their head? That would be ever so nice and sweet.

No redeeming values? That is almost hilarious.