make a wuush

The filing fetish of my mini iPod seats Mirah’s “Exactly Where We’re From” next to Murs’ “Bad Man!” “Exactly Where We’re From” is very Garrison Keillor in its quaint affection for province; I suspect Ms. yom tov Zeitlyn wrote it whilst navigating the Appalachians—the mountains of her birthplace. She’s bird-cooing and whistling, as though the extra breath will push her little car up the burning incline of the Penna Pike, and sings a lullaby: “We have been blessed with certain thoughts/ and speak with very little talk.”
According to my iPod, Murs answers, “All I wanted was to fuck from the start, I never lied/ Now it hurts my heart to have to see you cry.” Parity? Mirah did have that song a couple albums back about pegging w/a strap-on, and Murs, ever-sensitive, “gotta find a new chick/ someone who’s gonna understand a man’s gotta be a man/I don’t wanna have to lie just to get into your pants.” I wonder if Murs believes he has any women fans, AT ALL; 3:16 is like, straight from the dudes-only billiard room: “I love chicks on E… they use it as an excuse to misbehave.” MALE CONFIDENTIAL. Go tell it to the bathroom stall.
Annoyingly, I find Murs funny at times and—also at times—smart, though he was wittiest when was ruling the world, and I’m not just saying that cause I got a pen out of it; but at least “these thugs do what they like/ Some of them be on Friendster tryin’ to find a new wife” is some improvement over “Fuck a tramp who don’t swallow,” or whatever.
I also don’t know how anyone can get away with reviewing 3:16 without mentioning “And This is For,” a precision indictment of white appropriation of/ownership over hiphop and its cultural tendrils:
“Any white boy who thinks he knows my struggle
Because he listens to Pac and his adrenalin bubbles
I ain’t got problems with you bein yourself
But when you front and use the N word it just don’t help
I might not trip and your friends’ll laugh at you
but I know some real niggas that’ll straight up slap you
Now you could be down
but let’s act growed up
cause we ain’t the same color
when the police show up”
He goes on to explain that “yes it is jazz and yes it is blues and yes it is the exact same way they did rock/ but i refuse to watch the same thing happen to hiphop/I refuse to watch that bullshit.”
Now read the entirety of this Quannum review.
On the positive sex end, here’s what’s really really hot: “Tush” by Ghostface & Missy sends all sorts of sparks to my “the jam” receptors; the unexpected lyric, “charlie horse threw me off balance/ when all I wanted was to show you my talent,” especially. It’s Ghost admitting weakness, or rather letting humanity shine through the breaks in his pro-kegel, Pretty Toney superhero suit; smack amid the hottest ’bout to get it on song, eager to please’n take off the thong song. Lil’ Kim is conjured as signifier for sexual accomplishment (twice! on this record, in separate rhymes by both Ghost AND Missy), plus Missy’s like, “you got a lotta nerve” to wanna get with her total radness. It’s not just about the panting high-hat, though there is that; “Tush” is just so unequivocally REAL. Dirty humor, bravado, skepticism, cockblocking: it’s specific, honest in regards to power dynamic.
[ADDENDUM: this is not to say I think Murs isn’t being real RE: sex, because I think he’s being VERY real. I just think he’s got a broke M.O.]
[ADDENDUM 2: Pertinent to this post is Jay Smooth observing Renee Graham in Boston Globe—because this issue holds such close hands w/economics.]
[ADDENDUM 3: Article & discussion on Davey D boards, interesting debate on multiculturalism in hiphop.]