So, growing up my parents listened to all kinds of music. I remember still having a record player with records of Tina Turner, Sting, and some Motown mixes. My mother loved John Cougar Mellencamp. I had a huge crush on Michael Jackson and Prince. I loved Madonna in her early years and loved the bad acting in her movie (wasn’t it called Desperately Seeking Susan?). I even still have a poster of Prince from when the song Kiss came out. It’s Prince and the New Power Generation and in the white background is a huge pair of lips. And of course Prince is in his iconic purple suit. I remember 8 track tapes lying around the house. My first cassette tapes bought especially for me were Salt n Peppa, and also the Wee Poppa Girls. I guess the last group just didn’t make it.
I knew about George Clinton and the Parliament early on. If I could say one thing that my parents love, it was the p-funk music. At one point my dad and friends had their own little club that would have parties in a rented building. I remember being there, the only child, my mom dancing with no rhythm whatsoever to her favorite song “Set It Off”. I remember my mom finding a cassette tape on the ground after leaving a store, Metallica’s Enter Sandman. Did she throw it away? No, we jammed to it in the car, lol. And later on in life, for some reason I can’t explain, if we didn’t go to church on Sunday, we would watch CMT (Country Music Television). As I got older and got into anime, I started adding J-pop and rock to my music lists. And of course loads and loads of hip-hop.
I say that all to say, these days, I’m confused as to what’s popular. I used to love hip hop and rap, but these days I wish for instrumentals to songs instead of the lyrics. I used to use Jay-Z, DMX, and Eminem to listen to as I wrote my angry young adult poetry. Now, I still use mostly older stuff. The gimmick that was the weird gremlin called Lil Wayne has lost its shiny long ago. And I finally flipped from toleration to outright disgust.
So I’m driving along and listening to the local hip-hop station, and this “song” comes on that has a nice beat but is pretty much 75 percent bleeped out. The song’s hook is Drake I believe saying with an echo “I don’t care what my haters say, long as my b*tches love me.” That last part echoes about 4 times. Then there’s the rest of the song, where the word b*tch is said over and over again. So I switch the station, and guess what’s playing?! Are you frackin kidding me?!
So my son and I begin to count how many times b*tch is said. I got lost around 30 something. My son believes he got past 50. Fifty times. The word is said. The whole song is about basically how many awesome groupies Lil Wayne has to bump uglies with. Apparently, some women see something in face-tatted drugged up midget gremlins. I’d rather puke. I’d rather an actual midget like Peter Dinklage from Game of Thrones touch my naughty bits than that disease looking assault on my senses. And little people are one of my top phobias!!!
Maybe I’m getting old. I mean, is this hip hop now? Let me clarify, my favorites were/are not saints by any means. Jay-Z, Tupac, Eminem, the Wu-Tang Clan, DMX. No, these were rough men saying very harsh things. But there was style! As a poet, I picked a part their rapping style, their flow, the way of flipping words and making things rhyme that shouldn’t, making metaphors stretch and flip until you went from Play-Doh to Nickelodeon slime consistency. I loved it for the art of it! When I was angry, depressed, those songs help me write out my frustrations instead of slitting my wrists.
Today? Today’s favorite rappers? 2 Chains, that yells his name constantly and dresses like Rick James? Nicki Minaj who really actually has skill, but is too busy vomiting retardedness on the mic and across our eyescape. She looks like a frackin Pokemon.
My rappers do NOT look like Pokemon.
My rappers can reference anime and pay homage to the kung-fu culture, but they should NOT walk around in cosplay everyday. And bad cosplay. I can totally see her being added as a creature on Digimon or Pokemon or frackin Power Rangers or something. Nicki Minaj – I choose you!
I got sidetracked. I got distracted by the crazy. Ooooooh shiny. Shiny as Minaj’s plastic body part additions.
I don’t remember my parents going through this disgust with the newer artists that came out in my time growing up. Is there something wrong with me? Am I missing something?
All I know is when I first heard “Bandz A Make Her Dance” I assumed it was about actual marching bands… Because I had only half listened to the hook. Until the internets taught me it was about bands of money to make a stripper dance. And I felt ooooooold. And naïve.
On a separate note/different genre: why is that big forehead walking vocal chord dissonance known as Rhianna still singing?
Her voice is what I imagine the first level of purgatory to sound like. When her song starts that says “throw it up, throw it up” I literally WANT to throw up. The sounds coming out her mouth is not fit for human consumption.
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dimensionthe5th 