Posted by
Andrew Roman on Friday, September 26, 2008 12:21:27 AM
Two-and-half years ago, during the Academy Awards presentations, a hip-hop group called Three 6 Mafia tendered their contribution to the ongoing elevation of America’s cultural landscape by helping to make the word “p*mp” (rhymes with limp) a touch more family-friendly. That evening, they performed a song called, “It’s Hard Out Here For a P*mp” – a toe-tapping little number so catchy, so memorable, so culturally relevant that it was outdone only by the group’s all-consonant all-the-time acceptance speech.
At the time, when the story was new – and talk show hosts everywhere were going on and on about it – I remember thinking that a great big “thank you” was in order to the Academy, the producers of the show and anyone who may have been lobbying for the “Reach Out and Love a P*mp” campaign. Their hard work paid off. The word “p*mp” (which I’ve already used four times in this piece) was now that much closer to universal palatability.
Why mention this now?
I happened to be in the car with my sixteen year old daughter not too long ago, flipping through radio channels, when I happened upon the end of the song, followed by the DJ’s robust, mouth-watering proclamation that the song was an all-time classic. I admit that in two-and-a-half years I have probably spent more time thinking about the diversity of the lima bean in Jewish cooking than I have that particular song. However, hearing the jockey say that the song was a “classic” brought me back to 2006, recollecting the discourse of the day.
At the time, I recall quite a bit of outrage from those who said the song’s message was profoundly negative, stereotypical and destructive. Some rejected those claims, of course, making banal (and predictable) comparisons to musical trends of old. I specifically remember a caller on Laura Ingraham’s radio program commenting that those who were offended by the casual use of the word “p*mp” need only look back to the indignation of previous generations to understand how popular music has always raised the eyebrows of the elders.
(“P*mp” count now up to six).
While true to a point, this argument is somewhat flawed. Those who contrast the message and critical impact of today’s music on the culture at large to previous musical juggernauts – Elvis, the Beatles, et al – are missing something.
The Beatles’ arrival in America in February, 1964 was one of the Twentieth Century’s most important cultural phenomenons. Everything about them set every norm on its tushy. Above all, their music sounded unlike anything that had ever come before it. Yet, while the four Liverpool lads fused to create a revolutionary sound that set the planet spinning off its cultural axis, what exactly were those radical mop tops singing about?
The same old thing everyone always sang about: love.
Okay, I’m oversimplifying just a tad to make a point, but go back and pursue their lyrics from the early days of Beatlemania. They wanted to hold our hands, they had arms that longed to hold us and, in those days, they felt fine. Unless there are some hidden-in-the-vault bootleg recordings I’m simply not aware of, I don’t think the Beatles ever sang about a drive-by shooting on Penny Lane, or Lady Madonna being a ho. I’m almost positive George Harrison never suggested busting a cap in someone.
And how about Elvis Presley? There’s no question his pulsating pelvis sent shockwaves across America when he gyrated onto the national scene in 1956. However, a rudimentary look at the King in action by anyone with half-an-open-eyelid would have noticed that Presley didn’t really move nearly as much as Fred Astaire or Gene Kelley did – and not nearly as well. It was the sound and style of the music that offended Mom and Dad (which is a separate discussion altogether). Glance at the lyrics of any of Presley’s early hits. He loved us tender, took a walk down lonely street, asked us not to be cruel and was lonesome tonight. Sure, he told us we weren’t anything but hound dogs, but be honest. Who out there would rather be called a dog than a b*tch? (Language matters).
Shall we peer at the Motown catalogue for a moment? When did Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations and Diana Ross ever use the “n” word in one of their songs?
While we’re at it, how about taking a look at the later years of the 1960s – often proffered as the most “rebellious” time in popular music’s history? There’s no question the glorification of drug use was a hot theme during those hazy crazy days of free love and sugar cubes (clearly a profoundly negative message). And I’ll grant you the prevalent socialist overtones in much of the music, but if Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix ever sang about humiliating and degrading women, killing cops, emptying Uzis into one another and glorifying gang warfare, I missed it.
Let me be clear here … Pretty songs like John Lennon’s “Imagine,” with its Godless, socialistic, moral-equivalent, nonsensical, fantasy-land visions of unaccountable, judgment-free, boundary-dissolving, identity-crushing hand-holding meant well (I guess. *cough*). It was one utopian vision after another - as it always is from the left – emanating from the never-ending cavalcade of hit-making, hippie-bus driving, sandal-wearing revolutionaries (who were really private jet owning, fashion-conscious free-market practitioners). Millionaire counter-culturists couldn’t have been more conflicted if they had to be – evidenced by the fact that most of them lived as high on the Capitalist hog as they possibly could. ("Imagine no possessions," indeed!)
My brush is kind of broad here, I’ll admit. Many musical groups of the 1960s - including the Who, for instance - addressed different kinds of non-traditional subjects never really tapped into before ("Pictures of Lily," "I'm a Boy" and Odorono," for instance). Other groups, like the Rolling Stones, sang about some mighty interesting things as well ("Brown Sugar," "Stray Cat Blues.") But the level of moral depravity, the unheard-of advocacy and acceptance of violence, and the pervasive negative influence by much of today's angry, isolating, profanity-laden "art" has broken barriers that should never be broken. I understand artists push envelopes, and I am not in favor of rejecting new trends and fashions. However, there are some things that simply should never become “mainstream,” regardless of what decade it is or what style of music is threatening to breach societal boundaries – not because of some desire to impose a kind of censorship on any artists or performers, but because regardless of the context, being a p*mp is never good, and referring to women as “b*tches” and “hos” can never be passé.
As a father of twin sixteen year old girls, I can deal with them listening to music that just doesn’t appeal to me aesthetically. I was sixteen once, too. (Personally, I prefer real drums and lots of guitars to programmed electronics and sampled segments of songs that other people recorded with real musical instruments years ago, but that’s just me). I just don’t accept nor tolerate the “pimping” of violence, humiliation and degradation as mainstream. No one should.
Marvin Gaye once asked, “What’s going on?”
Good question.
Andrew Roman, Brooklyn, NY