Too tired to transcribe notes (some of which were from five or six months ago), so here ya' go: multi-intstrumentalist, writer, producer, & singer Senegal-born Akon--pretty melody, you and me against the world, helen reddy, reggaeton, ultra-romantic, filtered background vocals, naive, ultimately very sweet, but then, love can be so at times, Romeo and Juliet, Mia whatshername from So You Think You Can Dance slamming blonde dancer for smiling too much on dance choreographer designed in honor of his wheelchair (maybe dead?) daughter who always loved dancing, she stated something like the dancer didn't bring any realism because life was about more than just happiness, what about the tragedy, she forgets that life is also about happiness and people can just smile because of dancing and music; song cops heavily from Bob Marley and R. Kelly, but with a song as sweet as this, you know what? It don't matter.
Your Cheating Heart, Part II: we turn the turntables on this one, another cheating song--almost. This one's from the woman's point of view; not from the woman who's cheating on her man, and not from the woman who's being cheated on, either. This one's unique in that its point of view is from the woman who wants the man to cheat on his woman with her. She wants the affair--up to a point. Then it gets complex.
Our protagonist sees that this man is dissatisfied with his woman, and she--the narrator--is perceptive enough to know that just by the way he's looking at her that he's not happy with his lovelife att home, that his wife isn't freaky like that--not like the way she is. The singer wants this affair to happen, but she only wants the man if he loves her, for she knows that though their relationship will be physically satisfying (at least to him), that it would tear up his family life, and--here's the revelation--this single woman who wants the affair--won't ultimately have him because she believes in the sanctity of marriage, the sacredness of somesticity. That type of duality doesn't often appear in pop songs, and that complexity isn't the only reason this song is here. The music is as sinuous as the narrator must be.
As Hank Williams once opined, "Your cheating heart/Will tell on you." Cheating has been the subject of songs longer than the automobile has been (of course, cheating has been around far longer than the automobile, though I'm sure the latter has surely helped proliferate the former). This is the new millennium, though, and you'd think that by this time we'd either have learned from the free-love propigators of our forefathers (figuratively and literally) to be accepting enough to allow our partners to partner with other partners, or we'd have learned from our esteemed biologists to be knowlegeable enough to understand that most mammalian species aren't hardwired to remain with one mate for the course of a lifetime, or--lastly--we'd have learned from our moral, ethical, and religious leaders to be loyal enough (for fear of some type of punishment) not to cheat at all. Doesn't work like that, though. People still cheat, and much more often than not, those cheaters get caught.
In this song, though, our narrator hasn't caught his woman cheating, but he suspects, and he's got grong reason to do so: her hair is a mess, she smells strongly of a cologne not his own, and she's stuttering...and so does the music. Whether it's the lead singer, the background singers, the bass guitar, or the turntables, some musical aspect of the song stutters. This marriage of form and function is well enough, but what makes this record particularly fascinating is the thought that maybe the accuser has been cheating, too. After all, it's he that's stuttering.
Of all the (male) rappers of the past decade, no one's* been as critically-lambasted as Nelly, and I still just don't get it. The main knock against Nelly has been his lack of lyrical substance. On paper, this denunciation makes sense...as does any knock against (almost) any pop (rock/rap/country) song lyrics. Why? Because this stuff ain't poetry. And that ain't a knock.
In poetry, verse and wordplay is not only central; it's all there is. The poet must focus on rhyme, rhythm, meter, structure, diction, and content; the lyricist must focus on rhyme, rhythm, meter, structure, diction, and content in realtion and subservient to the music (the rhythm, the melody, the harmony, the arrangement, the sound of the instruments, and the production). The words themselves aren't as important as are the sounds the words make.** For the most part, a song's lyrics are a means to an end, and the end is the overall impact of the record en toto. This fact should exonorate Nelly from any further criticism (as a rapper).
Few rappers have the smooth, bouncing, rhythmic cadence that Nelly expertly employs. He seems to take his beat-heavy flow--and much of his lyrical and onomatopoeiacal concepts--straight from child-hood street games, where the rhythm of the words is crucial--because to break stride means you lose (or someone trips on the rope)--and the meaning of the words is secondary. The content of these verses focus on chants or singsong nonsense, anything that'll produce a particular sound or beat, and Nelly's lyrics employ the same methodology. Think of some of his biggest hits: "#1" features the juvenile-like chant "I--am--number one" on the chorus, "E.I." swipes its chorus from Speedy Gonzalez, and "Where the Party" uses the ages-old cheerleader chant "uh-oh-oh-oh-oh."
Best of all, "Country Grammar" takes its chorus and entire melody from the old childhood jumprope singsong "Roller Coaster" (you know it: "Shimmy shimmy coco pop..."), and Nelly vamps all up, down, and around part of the repeated melody, much like a jazz musician will riff on C for half an hour. It doesn't really matter what he says--and, admittedly, he doesn't have much to say--because what he does say he says very well. Unlike almost every single one of the rappers and singers on this chart, Nelly has enough rhythmic vocal chops that one could remove the music from this record and what was left could still get played on the radio. Robert Burns he ain't, but then again, Robert Burns ain't got nuthin' on Nelly.
NOTES
*Okay, Kanye West's rapping skills have been dissed (and rightly so) more than Nelly's have been, but West's forte always has been his production skills, and his rapping is just, well, a means to an end.
** Think of it like this: how many instrumentals have been played on pop radio over the last fifty years? Heck, even the past thirty-five? Well, I don't have the exact answer, but the approximate answer is many! Now, have many spoken word lyrics (completely sans music) have been played on pop radio over the last seventy years? Answer: next to none (it's none as far as I've been able to find, but you never know). Why? 'Cause, other than news, weather, sports, political talk, and NPR, people listen to the radio to hear music.
Possibly the most lilting and lovely, windy and winsome, happy and harmonious song ever created from (almost) nothing but samples, Aussie group (I'm not sure I can call them a band) The Avalanches' "Since I Left You" is a perfect pop concoction of dappled sunshine, flowers and flutes, and ambient surf spray, with just enough of a breeze to pick up and carry the beat as it floats through the air, wafting over us like, carrying us along its airwaves with just a spritz of nitrous oxide. Ahhh. Listening to it makes me feel like the men on the Viagra commercial, the ones who stand out on their deck to view the sunset over the ocean horizon, with a lovely lady draped over my shoulders. Bliss.
Stax and Malaco sound-stealers JJ Grey (singer, songwriter, guitar, bass, and--here--tambourine) and Mofro (a soul/blues/jam band out of Florida) heard Ludacris's record that I listed yesterday--and they laughed: first at Ludicris's lyrics, and then at Ludacris himself, for Grey & Co. know that 'Cris won't be able to keep his woman for long if all he's focused on is the boudoir. Sure, he'll be able to run through his fantasies for a time, but after awhile, Ludacris will move on, and the next woman might not be as imaginative as the one 'Cris just sang about, and then 'Cris is S.O.L.: straight outta luck.
You see, Grey & Mofro knows something that Ludacris doesn't: Grey knows that a woman needs as much, uh, intimate caressing as a man does (like Ludacris mentions). Grey takes it one step further, though: he knows that he's got to be patient, understanding, open to criticism, and acquiescent enough to say, "yes, honey" even when he knows he might be in the right because he wants his woman to keep him around so that she'll cook for him in the day time and at night, again and again. Now that is a smart man.
Grey also knows better (to an extent) than to kiss and tell, as lyrically, he graduated from the Charlie Rich School of Discretion. Sure, he'll take his woman out dancing, and when this song comes on, he'll take her out to the dance floor and hold her tight and grab what she lets him out on the dance floor in front of others who don't give a flip what others see them do while dancing, and if he doesn't get too frisky, then when they get home, she'll take him upstairs. The next morning, when he wants to mention the night before to his woman who's cooking now (just like she did last night), he finds that even with his deep blue-eyed soul voice (his singing a Southern-fried cross of Ray Charles falsetto squeals of pleasure and Otis Redding's serrated soul stirrings), as earthy and fulfilling as it is, can't replicate the magic of the night before. The music can, though.
The music here--and it's all just basic country/blues chord progressions, as simple and direct as can be--is what sells the message, what tells us the secret story that Grey leaves to our imagination, as the music takes it's time, pauses at time for anticipation, and builds to a crescendo, pausing again to allow for some relief, before going right at it again.
The sax and the drums tell their whole story anyway--the drums his rhythm and the sax her...well...no one knows what goes on behind closed doors.
#195: "What's Your Fantasy" (2000) - Ludacris & Shawna
The funniest serious rapper in the game, Ludacris here--and this, if not quite revolutionary, is still pretty rare--sees his woman as his equal, vowing to pleasure his woman just as she pleasures him, and he uses his wit, his wild imagination, and his gift for meter to detail about sixty-nine (or so) different sexual fantasies and positions and settings (all of which rhyme, of course, and that takes some doing), and he makes it all sound exciting and fun, not lewd and crude (even though a cursory perusing of the lyrics may lead one to this latter presumption).
The woman, Shawna, goes along with it, but verbally she's completely overwhelmed. 'Cris's cadence here is masterful--heck, he doesn't even need the backbeat nor the synths (though I do like the electric typewriter plinks) to rock this joint. And his voice is as lacking in personality as his is full of it (take that phrase however you like), so much so that I wonder if 'Cris is fantasizing about this woman or just doing so to hear how far he can go himself, how creative he can be with his verse, and how much energy he can put into a four-minute pop song--and it's so much more than Shawna puts out (ahem), that I'm sure he'll be done with her pretty soon. Wonder if the next one will oblige him, or if 'Cris will be left to be the master of his domain.
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