Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Booty and Cultural Relations

In response to the amazing weather that us Kansans have been seeing, Barret and I went to a common area in the middle of the K-State campus. I love watching people, and winter does not allow for too much of this as I do not go to many popular social gatherings. Today I could not help but notice that many of the cars driving by were protruding very loud bumps and grinds. The fascinating thing was that all of the kids in these cars were white, and most of the cars were very nice. So I posed a question to Barret: When is the last time that you saw a black person driving around with the windows rolled down listening to say Green Day, Mozart, or the Shins? I honestly cannot remember a time. Now i know that there are those people out there, but it is obviously not the norm. How then do suburban white kids relate to music that is so obviously fake and distant from theirs? (or at least used to be I guess actually that it is probably not so far away from how many of these kids live) I was checking the news on MSN and ran across a very sad and telling title of a rap song called "smack that" by Akon. Here is the chorus:

I feel you creepin', I can see you from my shadow.
Wanna jump up in my Lamborghini Gallardo.
Maybe go to my place and just kick it, like Taebo.
And possibly bend you over.
Look back and watch me
smack that, all on the floor,
smack that, give me some more,
smack that, 'till you get sore
smack that, oooh.
smack that, all on the floor,
smack that, give me some more,
smack that, 'till you get sore,
smack that, oooh
Aside from just bad poetry, these lyrics are just absurd! Kick it like Taebo? Are you kidding? How can anyone take themselves seriously who listen and write this kind of stuff? As my friend Brian pointed out, it isn't the people that are making this stuff that should surprise us, it's that they are finding such a ready audience. Where have all of our brains gone?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

good post. at school i work out at the gym in the afternoon and the football team is usually in there too. akon seems to be on repeat. its seems as though every song in that genre takes place "in da club."

Anonymous said...

man, i don't even know what to say.
well, you know what i say 'cause i said it to your face.
i think that stuff is just easier for people to listen to. you know. a simple repetative beat and a couple other little noises. God forbid we actually put some thought and time into the music we write. that would take too much work for people's brains to process. "hey man, what's all this sound coming in my ears? it sounds like there are drums and guitars and pianos and all sorts of things going on ALL AT ONCE! and why is that guy dragging out his words so long? oh that's called singing? man, i don't like this shit. throw on some twista and let's kick it. bitch."

love,
barret.