The quality by which rappers are judged is what is known as their "flow" – the way they phrase the words within the bars and thus affect shifts in the rhythm of the rap, creating a feeling of a stream that in some places is gushing and in other places slow. Every rapper has their own distinct flow, and every hip-hop fan has rappers whose flows delight him more than others. For me, the flow I most enjoy streaming with comes from Busta Rhymes, especially when he collaborates with the Neptunes, who always make him less aggressive and more funky. He had many good records along the decade, and I chose the one that deals with the body part most identified with the funk: the pelvis, or, to be more specific, the ass.
To understand why the booty is so important, we must once again go backwards. Naturally, music is something that moves the entire human existence, feet, gut, heart and mind. But European "high" culture emasculated music, and repressed the beat. This is because Western thinking created a split between "body" and "soul", and rather than treating them as one unit, regarded them as separate worlds, and asserted that the soul should escape the body. Therefore, European music is designed to make you forget your body, and moves the soul alone. Dancing, in this culture, was demoted to a function serving other activities, such as courting, and its dance music does not generate ecstasy, but is very inhibited. In the dances of European "high" culture, the body remains stiff, and only the legs move, obeying a predetermined set of steps.
In African culture, on the other hand, dancing animates your entire being. African music is polyrhythmic, and the rhythms take hold of your being and make all parts of body and soul move freely. When the Africans were brought to America as slaves, they were forbidden to play their own music, and compelled to play the European music of their masters. But they always played it in ways that preserved some of their sensibilities, and when slavery was abolished, African-American musicians started to develop styles based on these sensibilities, and slowly created a new black consciousness. You can actually describe the history of twentieth century black pop as a gradual breaking away from the shackles of emasculating European consciousness, and a return to a more African perception of music. Full release was obtained with sixties funk, which put the emphasis back on rhythm, and produced polyrhythmic records that rattled all parts of your being. Funk also taught us how to dance in the correct way again, where the pelvis, the center of your body, moves freely, and makes the rest of your body move as well. "Free your mind and your ass will follow, the kingdom of heaven is within", preached Funkadelic, the premier prophets of funk: when we free our mind from the inhibitions planted by European culture, and move our pelvis freely, the stiffness in our body dissolves, and then we realize that the key to paradise is not in some distant place in the sky, but lies within our bodies, a-posteriorily part of us, and ecstatic dance turns the lock.
The demand to move your ass is therefore featured in many funk records, and naturally, it is usually directed towards women, mingled with sexual desire for that part. When it is done in a distasteful way it is offensive, and too many records made in the last couple of decades are just insulting and pointless. But if it is done with humor, and sits on a good funky beat, it enlivens body and soul. Humor is something Busta Rhymes has in abundance, and funky beats are the Neptunes' expertise, so the meeting between them has to result in something good. From the moment the records starts with the "boom, boom, bababoomboom boom", we get the mental image of a voluptuous woman moving her juicy booty as she walks, and all Busta has to do is provide the details. And, as usual, he delivers.
Showing posts with label busta rhymes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label busta rhymes. Show all posts
Monday, January 25, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
60. The Pussycat Dolls feat. Busta Rhymes – Don't Cha (2005)
When you ask where the feminine sexual revolution that peaked at the beginning of the decade came from, it all goes back to the end of the eighties, the end of the decade that saw America returning to "family values", after the promiscuity of the sixties and seventies. The values were updated – women were no longer required to remain home and focus on rearing the children, but were allowed to develop a career of their own – but girls were still educated to abstain from sex until marriage. This, of course, created a dissonance: on the one hand, they were taught to be independent and aspire to a career (which entails late marriage), and on the other hand, they were supposed to wait with the sex. Naturally, there were many young women who chose to rebel and express their independence through liberated sexual attitude, and one of the places they could do so was in the rock concerts of glam-metal bands, which were a shameless celebration of sex and drugs and rock'n'roll. Especially sex.
It goes without saying that the puritans were abhorred by what was going on in glam-metal, and preached to these girls that they are letting themselves be exploited. Admittedly, there was a lot of truth in that claim, but it had no chance of convincing the girls, because the "educational" assertions also had a lot of holes in them, and they did not jive with the intuitions of the youth. For instance, it was claimed that a woman who allows herself to become a subject of desire is exploited, because she is turned into a "sexual object". This contention ignores the fact that sex is a shared experience, in which part of the joy is being desired, and another part is enjoying the pleasure that your sexuality is giving to someone else. Those girls already knew that it is fun to be a subject of desire, but since the dominant culture repressed any discourse that treated women that way, they had to find this fun in places were it was taken to the opposite extreme, and in which they were exploited. Thus, an unhealthy situation evolved.
If you want to see a presentation of eighties family values, go no further than the TV sitcoms of the period, which all painted a picture of happy homes where everyone loves everyone else, all the children grow up to be successful, and every drama is happily resolved by the end of the episode, an end that carried an educational message. Until 1987, when the first sitcom to slash through this idyllic charade hit the little screen. Married With Children presented the dysfunctional unit of the Bundy family, in a comedy that slew all the sacred cows of conservative America and sishkebabed them. One of the components in this unit was daughter Kelly, a dumb bleached bimbo who screwed anything that moved, and was the antithesis to anything the conservatives described as the ideal all-American girl. This was the satirical dimension of the character, but actress Christina Applegate infused her with other dimensions, and turned her into a rock chick, expressing the mindset of her coevals. Unlike the dumb blondes of the past, who were always sweet and naïve, Kelly Bundy took shit from nobody. While the dominant culture regarded a sexually active girl as "putting out", Applegate presented her as "taking on".
In the nineties, this new female consciousness already started to settle in, and Applegate, now a big girl, took it one step further, and branched into the stripping business. Strippers were always considered cheap and whorish, women who turn themselves into "sexual objects", but Christina wanted to change things, and form a striptease act with more class. In 1995 she opened the burlesque act The Pussycat Dolls, which for the next decade would be in the forefront of the new sexual revolution. Young starlets who wanted to parade their hotness, both from the field of pop music (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani) and the field of cinema (Applegate, Carmen Electra, Jaime Pressly, Charlize Theron, Charlie's Angels) came to sing, dance and strip with the Dolls. Thus they became increasingly more famous, and naturally wanted to expand. In 2004, a band was formed on the basis of the concept (and including some of the cast members, but mainly new recruits), and set out to conquer the world.
And they made it, too, but when they first appeared, it was one of the signs that the revolution has ended. When a pop or movie starlet plays a stripper, it is naughty and titillating. When strippers become pop stars, it takes all the naughtiness out of the stripper image, and kills the thrill. This record, their first hit, was still good: starting out with bubbling funky music, Busta Rhymes sets things on a roll with his rap, and the girls ride on the momentum he gives them, bringing it on with a bitchy, slutty and taunting song. But they went nowhere since then. None of them has the personality to become a real star, and it all still seems like a burlesque show to me, with rather patchy music. This remains their only record that can be called a classic, and I suspect it will play in strip clubs for years to come.
It goes without saying that the puritans were abhorred by what was going on in glam-metal, and preached to these girls that they are letting themselves be exploited. Admittedly, there was a lot of truth in that claim, but it had no chance of convincing the girls, because the "educational" assertions also had a lot of holes in them, and they did not jive with the intuitions of the youth. For instance, it was claimed that a woman who allows herself to become a subject of desire is exploited, because she is turned into a "sexual object". This contention ignores the fact that sex is a shared experience, in which part of the joy is being desired, and another part is enjoying the pleasure that your sexuality is giving to someone else. Those girls already knew that it is fun to be a subject of desire, but since the dominant culture repressed any discourse that treated women that way, they had to find this fun in places were it was taken to the opposite extreme, and in which they were exploited. Thus, an unhealthy situation evolved.
If you want to see a presentation of eighties family values, go no further than the TV sitcoms of the period, which all painted a picture of happy homes where everyone loves everyone else, all the children grow up to be successful, and every drama is happily resolved by the end of the episode, an end that carried an educational message. Until 1987, when the first sitcom to slash through this idyllic charade hit the little screen. Married With Children presented the dysfunctional unit of the Bundy family, in a comedy that slew all the sacred cows of conservative America and sishkebabed them. One of the components in this unit was daughter Kelly, a dumb bleached bimbo who screwed anything that moved, and was the antithesis to anything the conservatives described as the ideal all-American girl. This was the satirical dimension of the character, but actress Christina Applegate infused her with other dimensions, and turned her into a rock chick, expressing the mindset of her coevals. Unlike the dumb blondes of the past, who were always sweet and naïve, Kelly Bundy took shit from nobody. While the dominant culture regarded a sexually active girl as "putting out", Applegate presented her as "taking on".
In the nineties, this new female consciousness already started to settle in, and Applegate, now a big girl, took it one step further, and branched into the stripping business. Strippers were always considered cheap and whorish, women who turn themselves into "sexual objects", but Christina wanted to change things, and form a striptease act with more class. In 1995 she opened the burlesque act The Pussycat Dolls, which for the next decade would be in the forefront of the new sexual revolution. Young starlets who wanted to parade their hotness, both from the field of pop music (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani) and the field of cinema (Applegate, Carmen Electra, Jaime Pressly, Charlize Theron, Charlie's Angels) came to sing, dance and strip with the Dolls. Thus they became increasingly more famous, and naturally wanted to expand. In 2004, a band was formed on the basis of the concept (and including some of the cast members, but mainly new recruits), and set out to conquer the world.
And they made it, too, but when they first appeared, it was one of the signs that the revolution has ended. When a pop or movie starlet plays a stripper, it is naughty and titillating. When strippers become pop stars, it takes all the naughtiness out of the stripper image, and kills the thrill. This record, their first hit, was still good: starting out with bubbling funky music, Busta Rhymes sets things on a roll with his rap, and the girls ride on the momentum he gives them, bringing it on with a bitchy, slutty and taunting song. But they went nowhere since then. None of them has the personality to become a real star, and it all still seems like a burlesque show to me, with rather patchy music. This remains their only record that can be called a classic, and I suspect it will play in strip clubs for years to come.
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