I read an astute cultural observation the other day on the “Stuff White People Like” Blog. If you haven’t checked out this site yet I think you may be in the minority. The Canadian genius behind it has so many people reading his astute cultural observations that he was able to leverage a book deal out of it. That would be pretty sweet right?
Right?
(sound of internet-crickets chirping)
Right. So anyway, this guy makes a nice living pointing out racial differences, and I thought this one from several months ago was especially fine: White People like Black Music that Black People don’t listen to anymore. You can read his detailed and well-phrased analysis here, but the basic gist is that what’s chic in African American culture right now won’t become popular with White Hipsters for several years. You can extend this argument through the histories of jazz, blues and rock n’ rock, but it’s most applicable to my life in terms of hip hop. I will be the first to admit that I love “old school hip hop” (i.e. anything that black people were listening to in the mid-nineties), but much of the music being released today that is wildly popular with African Americans is completely lost on me.
This is most true in terms of R&B.
It seems to me that R&B lyrics have gotten pretty ridiculous in recent years. I think the tipping point was R. Kelly’s epic “Trapped in the Closet” video series. With this seminal work, Kelly took the standard R&B template (passionately speak-singing over two chords and a stuttering drum machine) and wrote lyrics so beautifully banal and conversational that he created a work of comic genius.
In case you are the one person on the planet who hasn’t seen it (hi Mom!), Kelly narrates a series of ludicrous events as if he were barreling through the libretto of an urban opera. And much like opera, the inherent style of R&B drips with passion and sincerity, so that the topics he’s singing about (infidelity, murder, midgets, etc.) are in hilarious contrast to the way he’s singing about them.
Here’s an example:
“Hurry up and get in the closet”
She said, “Don’t you make a sound
Or some shit is going down”
I said, “Why don’t I just go out the window?”
“Yes, except for one thing, we on the 5th floor”
“Shit, think, shit, think, quick, put me in the closet”
And now I’m in this dark ass closet, tryin’ to figure out
Just how I’m gonna get my crazy ass up out this house
Kelly bravely shattered the stigma that lyrics should be composed rather than simply transcribed from everyday conversations, and was innovative in establishing that just because the musicality of R&B is akin to an aural roofie, you don’t necessarily have to sing about love, or seduction, or really make any kind of sense at all. And if you DO sing about love, Kelly teaches us that it’s okay to focus on the practical rather than the poetic, to speak-sing about the logistical realities and complications of modern love. His message is warmly embraced in this new song from Soulja Boy, a very successful artist whose current popularity baffles me (but I’m sure in ten years I’ll love him):
Baby you know that I miss you
I wanna get with you tonight but I cannot babygirl
And that’s the issue
Girl you know I miss you
I just wanna kiss you
But I can’t right now so baby kiss me thru the phone
(kiss me thru the phone)
See you later on..
Kiss me thru the phone
(kiss me thru the phone)
See you when I get home
I mean that’s kind of romantic. It’s just hilarious to me the way he crams these awkward run-on sentences in between the thumps of the 808 drum machine. I also like to imagine the rampant high-fiving in the studio when he realized he could rhyme “miss you” and “kiss you” with “issue.”
It gets weirder. I saw Raheem Devaughn’s video “Text Messages” the other day at Radioshack. By this point artists are actually making the banal romantic. I can’t think of many things less romantic then text messaging (maybe kissing through the phone) but this guy pulls it off. An excerpt:
I’m sending you some text messages
But you can call em sex messages
And IDK when I’ll be there
But I’ll TTY later & we’ll be loving ASAP
And we can X-O-X-O
Do it all night long
Soon as I get home
You’ll be making smiley faces
Switch positions, trading places
Girl you gonna get it
As soon as I send my sex message
Just to clarify Raheem’s updated definitions of texting terms, X-Oing is intercourse, smiley faces are orgasms, and “IDK when I’ll be there” means “Bitch stop calling me. You wanna kiss someone through the phone try Soulja Boy.”
The winner of course in the ridiculous R&B lyrics contest that I am apparently having is last year’s groundbreaking, “Let Me Smell Yo Dick.” If for some reason you haven’t heard about this yet (Mom, you’re still reading this?) then you should probably click the link so you can see for yourself that this song is all too real and deadly serious. It’s the first release from up-and-coming artist and prime girlfriend material Riskay (pictured here preparing to smell your dick) and it takes Kelly’s conversational crooning to a new level: she’s not singing about love, or even the trivialities associated with it like sex texts and phone kissing. She’s gone to the other end of the spectrum. While it’s still an R&B song with sugary synthesizers and drum machines dripping seduction, the subject matter is actually a brutal argument about infidelity and dick-smelling as a reliable means of discouraging it. The lyrics in R&B songs have officially become polar opposites of their romantic style. It’ll still be a decade before the white hipsters catch on, but I think the following excerpt should make one thing perfectly clear to everybody: If you X-O with Riskay, be sure to kiss her through the phone, or IDK what she could be capable of.
Nigga this is the 15th muthafuckin time
That I called and left yo ass messages
I done text yo bitch ass,
And u ain’t respondin to nothin
What the fuck is you doing
Who the fuck is you out there with
You think I’m stupid,
My gurlz already done put me up on your ass tonight
When u get home I got some news for yo bitch ass
[Chorus]
Why you comin home 5 in the mornnn
Somethins goin on, can I smell yo dick
Don’t play me like a fool, cause that ain’t cool
So wat u need to do is lemme smell yo dick