I Done Had About Enough

I have a bad habit of listening to urban radio.

For the most part, I listen to very little rap any more. I still respect and appreciate the genre, and I have certain artists whose CDs I might still cop, but for the most part I've lost interest in what many mainstream rappers are talking about. Plus, I lack the energy or inclination to invest in the underground rap circuit because I'm pretty sure they don't share my values either.

But, I still have this vice of listening to the radio. I like music when I drive, and while I've tried listening to the local gospel channel, the paucity of music and plethora of bad sermons often leads me back to the local urban stations. And this week, that led to me listening to a song by Usher Raymond and Nick Minaj called "My Little Freak." (Video is here for those of you interested.)

Sigh...

Some of you have no doubt heard this song. With an infectious beat by Polow the Don, it's sure to become a regular on our airwaves. The ditty is an ode to women who not only are serious about sexing their man, but they are serious about going to find other women to join in with that sexing. That's right, it's a song celebrating the female, sexual wingman.

Again, sigh...

It's official, debauchery is the new black. I'm not one of those cats who thinks the "Good Ol' Days" were particularly "good" but dammit, when there are songs on the radio brashly discussing orgies and whatnot, well maybe family values have disappeared. Right?

I remember when Kanye had a song on his first album that had a line like "drug dealers buy Jordans and crackheads buy crack, but white people get paid off all of that". That line was deemed to risque to get radio play, and would always be beeped out of the song.

On Tupac's "All Eyez on Me" album, he had a song with Redman and Method Man. In that song, Method Man has a line about using German Lugers on Jews, and that was deemed unacceptable for the album and ultimately deleted by the label.

But a song celebrating chicks who love pimping out other chicks gets major radio play? So talking about race or the Holocaust is a problem, but songs about random gun play and demeaning sexual behavior are just fine? Thanks for the clarification.

And I believe that song is both demeaning and damaging to young women. I thank the Lord he hasn't blessed me with a daughter because I wouldn't get much sleep at night worrying about how she would navigate the ridiculous messages being pumped out by popular culture. From the long-standing morays about beauty, to the new jack crap about what constitutes a good woman, girls today are tripping the light fantastic in a minefield.
(By the way, I used that "light fantastic" line because I learned that's how lots of white folks and their sympathizers say "dancing." I never knew. A friend of mine compared it to the fact that white folks don't know Booboo the Fool despite the fact that black people know at least one Booboo in every family and on every job.)

Over the past decade, we've seen rap and R&B define the perfect black woman as a ridiculously beautiful, Madonna/whore, who has her own money, spends it on men, is willing to be a drug mule, doesn't mind infidelity or wedlock babies and also has a taste for casual lesbianism. Did I miss anything? (I could provide a similar description of the perfect man, but I won't.)

What is going on? Is that woman, the one described in so many urban songs, the woman we really want our daughters to become? Is that woman good for our community? Is she good for our children? Is she happy, is she loved, is she being used or is she a user? Is the woman placed on a pedestal by popular music a woman any of us really like or love?

I don't think so.

This ain't an attempt by a corny dude to gain brownie points with the ladies. This is a cry for help from the father of two sons and the uncle of a niece who is truly scared about what's being done to our children. I'm truly scared about what these radio stations, record companies and ultimately artists are pumping out. It seems like every month I'm writing a piece about some vile crap hat's recieving airplay, and every time I think the bar can't be lowered, I'm horribly wrong.

At times I even don my tinfoil hat and wonder if this isn't part of some larger, nefarious conspiracy. How else can I explain what seems to be a systematic attempt to create a damaging, female demi-god for the world to worship? I can't just shrug it off as capitalism-induced ignorance any more, now I see something malicious. I see something dark, nasty and frightening.

Enough is Enough.


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