Sleazy music videos ….

Is it just me or are lyrics in R&B singles getting seedier by the day? It’s not too long ago that I remember hearing a certain track with the chorus ‘Stroke it for me’. Although uncertain, I believe that these lyrics come from a single by Aaliyah, a ‘promising’ female vocalist who apparently died in a place crash quite some time ago.

Glad to know she left the world with such a deep message.

As far as some female R&B singers are concerned, the underlying message seems to be ‘the nastier the better’. More amusingly, the subtle sexual messages in lyrics are being dropped in favour of explicit instructions:

“Lick my neck, lick my back, lick my pu**y and my crack.”

Hmm … charming. Despite being rather in your face, excuse the pun, one wonders whether the above words are any better than Mariah Carey’s ‘And it’s just like honey, when your love comes over me.’ Oh well, guess she’s just another female vocalist who prefers the ‘in your face’ approach.

Occasionally, I do watch shows like Rage (ABC) and Video Hits (Channel 10). Classic rock seems to have taken something of a dive, in favour of R&B, Hip Hop, Rap etc. I really don’t know what the correct terminology is – it mostly sounds the same, and it all sounds like sh*t. As one commentator famously said when remarking on a Spice Girls video, “It is like watching a porn video, only with worse music”.

Amusingly enough, a number of male R&B singers – notably Judakiss and 50 Cent – release ‘wet & wild’ versions of some of their commercial music videos, namely those involving bitches, whores and booty. These clips will never be shown on free-to-air television, and it’s essentially a given that they’ll never see the light of day on MTV. However, they are readily available using online file sharing programs such as Limewire or Bittorrent. Even more disturbingly, they are downloaded in vast numbers the world over, such that other cultures may also learn of the importance of ‘shakin dat azz’, ‘backin it up’ and ‘makin dat azz clap’.

Difficult as it may be to believe, I am not a wowser. ‘Wowser’ is a slang expression, most commonly heard in Australian and New Zealand English, referring to a person whose overdeveloped sense of morality drives them to deprive others of their pleasures. I would hate to any such thing, it is not my intention to deprive countless impressionable teenagers of ‘booty pop’ – especially in its visual form. Rather, my argument begs the question of whether we need so much of it. No matter what you do, eye candy is not going to compensate for bad melodies and worse singing.

It’s a little sad to note that one of my favourite bands, Black Eyed Peas, have sunk to a new low by singing about ‘all dat azz’, ‘all dat junk inside your trunk’ and ‘lovely lady lumps’. Man, I think we’ve had enough by now. We’re overloaded on images of powerfully built African American and Latino women gyrating in front of cameras while gawking rappers look on in a stupor. If you want to be seedy, take a cue from Chris Isaak, who set a new benchmark for sensuality and sleaziness in his infamous music video for ‘Wicked Game’. A certain degree of ‘class’ helps alleviate, if not nullify, the very real perve factor of that particular clip.

Leaving aside visuals, the lyrics of ‘booty pop’ leave a great deal to be desired. For one, the grammar could not be more horrendous. For example:

Incorrect: “I likes dem girls who likes dem girls”.
Correct: I like women with homosexual tendencies.

Incorrect: “I likes the way yo azz be vibrating”.
Correct: “I quite enjoy watching you wiggle your bottom”.

I may well be guilty of being picky here. After all, it’s unreasonable to expect young males with little or no secondary schooling to employ the Queen’s English with quite the same panache she displays. For example, “One rather likes the way one wiggles one’s bottom with sufficient vigour to elicit earth tremors” does not have quite the same ring to it as “I likes the way yo azz be viiibbbrrraatttingggg. Shake dat ting like yo wanna start an earthquake”.

I guess we can expect stars like 50 Cent, Judakiss and Eminem to further assist in the denigration of the English language by continuing to produce, sell and market their wares the world over. After all, if you’re appealing to one of the lowest common denominators in society (e.g. sexually frustrated white males with no sense of cultural identity who ‘adopt’ the worst excesses of popular African American culture), then there’s little if any point in seeking to be sophisticated.

As for intellectuals such as me, we’ll simply have to make do with skin-tight ballet costumes, attractive European flautists and the like. There’s something to be said about leaving a little to the imagination AND having some restraint over the baser of emotions ….