The Raunchiest of Them All

02 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, music, New York City, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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BWP (Bytches With Problems), Cardi B, Donna Summer, Explicit Lyrics, Hip-Hop Culture, Megan Thee Stallion, No Face, Pitt, Rap, Raunchy Music, Self-Awareness, Social Media, Too Short, Willful Ignorance

BWP’s only fully released album *The Bytches* (1991) album cover (cropped and with reduced clarity), August 1, 2022. (https://www.rapmusicguide.com).

A few months ago, I watched part of my Twitter feed blow up over the raunchiest songs of all time. It was between Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” and some newfangled hit in the middle of the first Omicron surge. I shook my head and decided not to reply. Any thread on raunchy music that excludes Donna Summer’s “Love To Love You Baby” is pretty inexcusable.

This theme pops up every few months on Twitter and other social media circles, unfortunately. I saw one tweet near the end of July talking about how there weren’t any nasty lyrics prior to 2010! As an eclectic music consumer and as a trained historian, I find all hot trash declarations arrogant and offensive. I mean, how much research did these people do before they decided that their tiny window into lyrics, videos, and sounds led them to these ludicrous conclusions? None, apparently. It would be like trying to fight COVID-19 or monkeypox with Raid roach spray and Grape Kool-Aid, I suppose.

Because I like to keep track of what’s out in the world, I dabble into the raunchy, almost always by accident, occasionally on purpose, because I am a curious person. And if anyone is willing to look and listen, the sexually obvious and guttural isn’t hard to find, and much of it is in the twentieth century. Robert Johnson, Elvis, The Beatles, John Lee Hooker, Bessie Smith, Prince, The Ohio Players, Donna Summer, and that’s off the top of my head. Pick a genre in any cultural medium, and there’s the equivalent of a closet full of stag films for anyone to discover.

With hip-hop, rap, and the music video age, the idea of what is and isn’t nasty or raunchy has been stretched like taffy, almost to the level of subatomics. 2 Live Crew’s 1989 album “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” would be relatively tame when compared to Too Short’s 1990s hit “Top Down” (“don’t swallow don’t spit”) or Nelly or Ludacris’ rap videos in the early ‘00s. And those dudes would be about on par with Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B, but not quite as lyrically raunchy as LL Cool J’s 1996 hit “Doin’ It.”

As for my own deep dives into music with “explicit lyrics,” MC Lyte’s voice and Salt-n-Pepa’s first two albums probably made my toes curl up multiple times after first listening to their words and work. Even Salt-n-Pepa’s silly cover version of The Beatles’ “Twist And Shout” I found downright sexy. Honestly, it wasn’t just reading Audre Lorde or Toni Morrison that introduced me to the idea that Black women need to be free for all of us to be free. So it would be ridiculous to think my interests in music were purely intellectual. It was spiritual, it was sexual, it was emotional, it was imaginational, it was my need to take up roles and to take up spaces, and all at once.

Then again, I was between 18 and 25 years old, at my music-buying peak, constantly getting tapes and CDs and trying out artists because of one song or another. Everything from Arlo Guthrie to ZZ Top had been something to listen to at least once in the years between 1984 and 2003, especially when I was in undergrad at Pitt and going into grad school there.

Pitt’s radio station was and remains WPTS-FM 92.1, and for most of my 12 years living in Pittsburgh, it was only listenable on Friday and Saturday nights. (When I moved out of Oakland to East Liberty in 1990, just two-and-a-half-miles away from campus, sometimes I had trouble locating the station on my Aiwa tape decade and CD player — but I digress.) Saturday night was jazz and smooth jazz, and that occasionally was fine when I was in a Coltrane or Grover Washington, Jr. mood. But Friday nights were ones for rap, and mostly underground rap (or at least, underappreciated yet successful rap). KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions, PE, Chubb Rock, Queen Latifah, Tribe Called Quest, Pharcyde, Geto Boys, N.W.A., H.W.A., among so many others.

One night toward the end of 1991, I heard the rap group BWP (Bytches With Problems) for the first time. The brothas at WPTS played their big hit “Two Minute Brother” from their debut LP The Bytches. (I will forever find it funny that Lyndah McCaskill and Tanisha Michele Morgan put out a five-minute song about a guy who couldn’t last two minutes in bed.) My mind was blown. I had seen tons of explicit lyrics labels on tapes, vinyl records, and CDs before hearing BWP. “I guess this is what Tipper Gore was worried about,” I remember saying to myself after hearing the song again a few months later.

Out of New York, produced by No Face (think Mark Sexx and Shah collabs with Ed Lover and Shock G [RIP] for those who should know)/Def Jam Records, their sound wasn’t particularly unique. The duo’s willingness to be as real and nasty as they wanted to be, to go here, there, and everywhere as rappers was impressive. Their lyrics were the nastiest I’d ever seen and heard. I vaguely remember The Source doing a piece on them in 1992, and The Vibe a piece on their follow-up album from The Bytches somewhere in 1993 or 1994 (my friend Marc shared that article with me). Yeah, I liked them. I found them sexy as hell.

So much so that during my final summer coming back to Mount Vernon to work in 1992, I finally bought the album. I took my rare Friday evening at the beginning of August away from the duties of older brother and surrogate summer parent and took the 40 Bee-line bus up to The Galleria in White Plains. I saw nothing of interest at the Sam Goody’s there between Whitney, Boyz II Men (I was burned out from a summer of “End Of The Road” on air play every 20 seconds), and all the usual suspects in 1992. Then I stumbled on BWP. For anyone who loves raunchy lyrics, sex noises, and good beats, I promise you, there is no better collection of raps between 1971 and now. “ Is The P____ Still Good?” is the ultimate sex track. McCaskill and Morgan truly did it up. But, be warned. It can be addicting, especially for men who need to learn.

But the duo also dealt with Rodney King and police brutality on the LP, so it’s not just raps that some would say are better meant for hardcore porn. My second favorite song on the album was “No Means No,” or really “No Means No [m—f—]” There was some serious Black women’s empowerment going on with BWP’s work, but I guess most folk from the early 1990s either found them offensive or just weren’t ready to hear it.

Don’t believe folks — especially anyone under 35 — when they say stuff about “nasty lyrics” or “the raunchiest music videos” from 2010 or 2022. They really don’t know what they’re talking about. Seriously, willfully ignorant fans are the worst. They’re fickle, they’re momentary, and they turn anything any favorite artist of theirs does into the GOAT because they have no basis for comparison. Especially Beyoncé’s Baehive folks.

Separating The Musical Wheat From The -ism/-phobic Chaff

25 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, music, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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50 Cent, @BlkLibraryGirl, Biz Markie, Contradictions, Correlation vs. Causation, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Speech, Geto Boys, Hip-Hop, Hip-Hop Culture, Homophobia, Lil Wayne, Lyrics, Michael Jackson, Misogyny, Music Videos, Ohio Players, PE, Public Enemy, R. Kelly, Racism, Rap, Rape Culture, Rick Ross, Sexism, Twitter, Violence

Separating chaff (left hand) from wheat (right hand), November 25, 2013. (http://www.colourbox.com/preview/).

Back in April, I managed to get myself into a Twitter argument with @BlkLibraryGirl over Rick Ross and Lil Wayne’s releases and the misogynistic, gang-rape-advocating lyrics that came with them. The problem was, she was in the midst of a long rant (which I didn’t realize at the time), and you should never interject into someone else’s Twitter rant unless you’re nodding your head in agreement. At least without going through their entire Twitter timeline first.

In response to another luminary on Twitter, @BlkLibraryGirl tweeted

But it’s not just Rick Ross’s rape lyrics. The entire Hip Hop genre is rape culture. Is somebody going to talk about that?:)

I specifically said that this strain of rape as/is okay is one that has deep roots in American culture, and in African American notions of masculinity specifically, which led to a barrage of tweets from @BlkLibraryGirl about how Rick Ross’ lyrics + ten-year-old Black boys = Black boys thinking that raping Black women is perfectly okay. And that I was okay with these lyrics, too.

Rick Ross, absolutely disgusting, September 30, 2013. (http://cdn.stupiddope.com).

She obviously not only missed my point. She didn’t care what my point was in the first place. But that’s an issue of the limits of being able to communicate complex ideas and emotions on Twitter, not to mention the larger issue of etiquette. @BlkLibraryGirl is but one example of the steady and growing criticism of rap/hip-hip as the source of all our cultural ills, -isms and -phobias. It’s the idea that a kid will watch a video and listen to lyrics, and with zombie-like reactions, act out the lyrics and the video as if they don’t have a mind and guidance systems in their lives to stop them from being Rick Ross’ and Lil Wayne’s puppets.

For those of you who know me or this blog, the one thing that should be obvious is that while my music tastes are eclectic, my rap music list in particular is a small one. I didn’t like much of the little bit of rap I heard growing up, got into it a bit in the ’87-’97 years, and have liked almost none of it over the past decade. I’ve never liked Jay Z, found 50 Cent to be about a notch and a half above Biz Markie, and still think Eminem is the best lyricist in the game today, despite the fact he is as homophobic and (at times) misogynistic as they come.

So while these fools will never win the Social Justice Music Awards, they do have the right to put out their schlock, to write lyrics filled with hate and angst, to play with tired stereotypes and archetypes in their music and videos. And we have the right to critique, to not buy, to provide ourselves and our kids with the wisdom necessary to see through the smokescreen of big business making big bucks off of rap/hip-hop “artists” who present themselves as little more than stereotypical Bucks themselves.

But let’s also not get carried away here, either. Last I checked, didn’t the rap I listened to in college contain some similar themes? Geto Boys “Gotta Let A Ho Be A Ho” and PE’s “the parts don’t fit” line from one of their raps on their Fear of a Black Planet album (both from ’90) come to mind. What about “running the train” lyrics from the late Notorious BIG or Tupac’s (perhaps the greatest poet/rap lyricist ever) works? How come critics of today’s rap and hip-hop game don’t go after the moguls and producers that make Rick Ross and Lil Wayne possible, folks like Sean “Whatever his nickname is now” Combs, Jay-Z, Sony Music Group or BMI?

Or, given my eclectic tastes, why limit this strain of cultural ugliness to rap and hip-hop? Why not be historical for a moment and go after Prince’s and Rick James’ sexist lyrics of the early-’80s, or the Ohio Players and The Jammers of the ’70s? Or, for that matter, R. Kelly in the ’90s and early ’00s? Why should we even limit this to R&B or hip-hop, as music is a universal — and not a neatly separated — language? What about Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe,” or the White male angst and violence embedded in honky-tonk, hard-core heavy metal and grunge?

Fans protest Michael Jackson’s innocence in the child molestation scandal, Paris, France, December 17, 2003. (Rafael Rozendaal via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via Creative Commons 2.0.

Oh, I get it. Hip-hop’s a globally-dominant cultural and musical phenomenon, which means it could bring tens of millions more folks outside the US into our -isms and -gynys. But, has there ever been an individual in the musical world more culturally transcendent than Michael Jackson? You know, the guy who faced two trials in the ’90s and ’00s over child molestation charges? The man who struggled with identity issues — racial ones included — for the bulk of his adult life before dying in June ’09? What do we do about the couple of billion people Jackson influenced beyond his lyrics, especially since child molestation must be as common as the common cold?

We should critique and advocate as much as we can over the sexism and misogyny, homophobia and racism, colorism and ignorance contained in the lyrics and videos of artists from Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Nelly and DMX and so many others. But let’s not act as if this is a new thing, a strictly hip-hop and rap thing. This is an American thing. So why act surprised when it shows up in rap music videos and in lyrics?

As for me, I chose to enjoy Michael Jackson’s music and PE’s other lyrics even in the face of the contradictions between their lyrics and behaviors. I think that most hip-hop lovers — even those impressionable ten-year-old Black boys — will do the same. If I’m wrong, then the Apocalypse has truly arrived.

Shawn of the Dead (2004) pic, as used in Philadelphia Daily News, June 4, 2012. (John Baer).

On the Insignificance of Saggy Pants & Respectability

20 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Movies, music, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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Birmingham Church Bombing, Black Elite, Boyz n the Hood (1991), Economic Inequality, Florida A&M University, Hip-Hop Culture, Institutional Racism, John L. Lewis, Jonathan Ferrell, March on Washington, NWA, Police Brutality, Racism, Respectability, Saggy Pants, Thug Life, TLC, Trayvon Martin, Tupac, Violence, White Supremacists

“When They Took Us Seriously/Why They Don’t Now” poster, September 20, 2013. (Tim Brinkley/Google +).

In the past month of March on Washington and “I Have A Dream” speech commemorations and Birmingham church bombing dedications, a series of images lamenting rap culture and “thug life” have made their way around the Internet. The one that has stuck with me the most has been the image of the Selma March in 1965 juxtaposed with seemingly random photos of young Black males with saggy pants. The caption reads, “When they took us seriously/Why they don’t now.” Really? White supremacists took respectable Negroes seriously in the ’60s because they marched and wore suits, but don’t take Black males seriously now because of the saggy pants phenomenon? The truth is, they did and didn’t take us seriously then and now, and it has almost nothing to do with pulling our pants up above our boxers.

I have to say, though, that I hate saggy pants. It makes the people wearing them look somewhere between goofballs and idiots. It’s never mattered to me whether White guys or Black guys or college guys or hip-hop divas have worn saggy pants. I didn’t like it when it became a style in the early ’90s, thanks in large measure to NWA and Tupac, TLC and Snoop Dog and a host of other hip-hop/rap artists. I certainly don’t like it now, and would never buy a pair for my ten-year-old son to wear that way. The saggy pants style has been a sad twist on hand-me-downs and poverty as marketable clothes for the hip-hop cool.

But the saggy pants style has never translated for me as embracing a “thug life” or some devolution of Black culture or American society. It wasn’t life imitating art, ala Boyz n the Hood (1991), Menace II Society (1993) or Clockers (1997). Nor have I ever seen it as something that meant that Whites or the new Black elite could say, “See. These Black folk don’t deserve respect, or health care, or a quality education, or good-paying jobs.” Over the past two decades, I’ve seen it as a style — a bad style, to be sure — but a style that some Blacks (and Whites, Latinos and Asians) have embraced.

Any young Black person who’s striving for higher education, or careers, or their own stereotypical success story in life, will tell you that they don’t wear saggy pants for every time or season. Even those who don’t know learn very quickly that saggy pants aren’t welcome in allegedly more respectable settings. If anything, the prevalence of saggy pants in 2013 has as much to do with the reality that opportunities for education, employment and prosperity remain so out of reach that it really doesn’t matter to many what they wear and where they wear it. There’s no need to code switch if everyone in your world knows the same exact code of cool.

Jonathan Ferrell, Florida A&M football picture, September 20, 2013. (AP/Florida A&M University).

Recent events have made it pretty obvious that it really doesn’t matter what Black males wear. We remain targets for deeply ingrained stereotypes, institutional racism, and pre-emptive White violence. Whether it was Trayvon Martin wearing a hoodie in the rain, or John Lewis wearing a suit in Selma forty-eight years ago, it hasn’t mattered to Whites in fear of the Black boogie man. Florida A&M University graduate and former football player Jonathan Ferrell learned this deadly lesson in North Carolina just a week ago. It doesn’t matter what we wear, at least as far as many Whites and some Black elites are concerned.

Blacks all look the same to them, and looked the same to them in the ’60s. Suits, hoodies or baggy pants, we’re criminals and imbeciles from birth, thugs for life, and a drain on families and American society. This doesn’t mean that any one of us shouldn’t take responsibility for how we act, speak and look in public. I dare say, though, that structural economic issues like unemployment in deeply impoverished Black communities (or crank-infested White ones) won’t be solved with young folk pulling their pants up. We need to stop focusing on the insignificant, because saggy pants and respectability are the trees in this morphing forest of racism and economic inequality.