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Crap Mondays: No luv for hoes

Too Short featuring Trick Daddy, Scarface, Daz & Joan of Arc "I Luv (Dirty)"

Too Short featuring Trick Daddy, Scarface, Daz & Joan of Arc "I Luv (Clean)"

Did you know that Too Short likes sex? I did! I could (and probably should) fill pages detailing the influence rap had on my sexualization (in short, the release of N.W.A.'s Efil4zaggin kicked off my puberty). Porno rap holds a tender place in my heart, and "I Luv" finds the sub-genre at its most high contrast and flourescently lit. Like porno itself, porno rap is presented in a few structures, primarily: the story (BWP's "Is the Pussy Still Good?") and the vignette series (N.W.A.'s "Findum Fuckum & Flee," which also has instructional tinges). Too Short knows all about structure, as his work in the early '90s attests. 2001's "I Luv," however, is the equivalent of a gangbang video, simultaneously stuffed and braindead ("I luv gettin' my head blown / I luv gettin' my nuts rubbed / I luv gettin' my dick licked / I love gettin' my nuts sucked," says Short in the chorus, and c'mon lazy boy -- "nuts" twice?). The result is an oozing, sloppy mess. Of course it is.

The locker-room-as-porno-set fraternizing in which Too Short, Trick Daddy, Scarface and Daz Dillinger partake is as sexist as it has to be. But it's sexism as drawn by a 15-year-old. In crayon. Sure, Scarface's description of his fucking style ("Beat the pussy like I'm mad at it") is enough to enrage any Internet feminist with no sense of hyperbole. But leaving everything in its context, "I Luv" carries little weight -- it's a desensitizing stream of lurid images that bore instead of titillating. This is the sound of falling asleep during sex.

The song's biggest  misogynist offense has nothing to do with its lyrics, but its credits. The Trinalike Joan of Arc appears during each chorus, donating the song's most memorable lines ("I luv gettin' my pussy ate / I luv when a nigga see me masturbate" -- who can't relate?!?) and yet, she isn't credited on the front of the 12" (her name appears in much smaller print on the back). Way to tell us how you really feel, guys.

The thing is, I never would have heard this song if it weren't for Joan. In a great illustration of the fun editing down XXX to PG-13 (compare for yourself!), "I Luv" first caught my attention via a commercial that aired on BET advertising some compilation. The commercial excerpted the edited video version of the song, in which Joan was just as ear catching ("I luv gettin' my nails done," is really just an awesome thing to say). Clit licks or square tips, it's all the same to bitches, I suppose.

What I did on my summer vacation: Scoffed

Not all Mondays are crap -- having off from work helps. To celebrate the 4th, I'm posting four more summer songs that I love. I posted about summer before -- rather late, even, since it was on the official (June 21) start, not the unofficial but widely celebrated one (Memorial Day). But the 4th of July seems most summery of all. Summer's routine by now and we're used to functioning under these UV-heavy, sweat doused terms. The heat needs a soundtrack, so here's a mini, dancey one (R. Kelly and Snoop's "Happy Summertime" would have been perfect to put up -- it's the best summer song I've heard in years -- but it's too available, and sometimes for a cost, so get it yourself).

Crap Mondays: Not-So-Great Jones

Grace Jones "7 Day Weekend"

"Wait, this was a single?" I said outloud (to myself, no doubt) when I saw the promo 12" for Grace Jones' "7 Day Weekend," while used-record shopping. After listening to the Ben "Hackmaster" Liebrand house mix of this, the very worst track on 1992's temporarily unstoppable Boomerang soundtrack, I was so tempted to buy the vinyl, impressed with its sheer awfulness. I didn't, which was totally shortsighted, since it would totally be the scourge of your ears today. Instead, I'm presenting the album version, which is better than the remix in the same way that having your fingers chopped off is better than having your fingernails pulled out.

Maybe there's some kind of desperation to appreciate in a 44-year-old sometime-model's foray into new jill swing (a musical form that was aging, itself), but Dallas Austin's production is so generic and the mastering is so murky (you're hearing direct-from-CD rip, if you can believe it) that it's just about impossible to discern anything except embarrassment (the cherry on ha! is the disclaimer on the back of the CD stating that the song doesn't even appear in the film!). "Let me show you how to ease my tension / Use your body and soul / Just how far will I go?" to which I say "Ew" and "I don't care," respectively. Grace clearly is channeling the Helen Strangé character she played in the film, but she isn't even allowed to get nasty as this necessitates (really, five minutes of "Pussy, pussy, pussy," would have been far more entertaining than this uncomfortable aspiring to a 168-hour orgasm). Sad and ugly, "7 Day Weekend" does nothing but show Jones' age, painting her as a new jack Blanche Devereaux. Gross.

Crap Mondays: Episode I

In tribute to the 24 hours of excruciating pain that are Mondays, I'm starting an MP3 series. Think of Crap Mondays as the nipple twist at the end (or during the middle) of a particularly uncomfortable, chafing fuck. Come commiserate, y'all!

Since I'm attracted to bad as often as good, I'll use Crap Mondays to share the a-little-fucked-slash-very-fucked music I come across. One man's trash is another's treasure, sure, but if you're like me, telling the difference between the two isn't always so easy. Like riding roller coasters over and over again to have your stomach turned, it's possible to get off on repeated listens to what superficially appears to be very bad music. For me, this goes beyond guilty-pleasuredom, beyond car-crash rubbernecking and into the realm of consciousness permeation. Even if you won't join me in reveling at the dump, you'll at least be touched by the smell.

The first entry of Crap Mondays belongs to Frank Ski's "Bitch Track II - Yes!" The man behind "Whores in the House" and the execrable "Doo Doo Brown" dropped the Baltimore club shtick (which, if "Doo Doo" was any indication, was to merely arrange every imaginable hip-house and Miami bass cliche into a clusterfuck against nature) for something, uh, deeper on 1993's Frank Ski's Club Trax - Volume 3. The murky, straightforward house (I think that techy clanking bit was ganked from Bizarre Inc.'s "I'm Gonna Get You" and rearranged) is made extraordinary by Miss Tony's vocals. "When two people decide to love one another, be that women like women, men like men, that means that they are gay, and they are happy," reasons Miss T, who in his activist lyrics (it's no coincidence that I'm posting this as anticigaytion for NYC Pride week mounts) apparently believes we do choose who we love -- and that it's a picnic, to boot! A case for millions of years of homophobia flashes by your ears when T aggressively lisps, "The military can kiss my ass," though he'll have you right back in his, erm, fist with, "Gays has been in the military, running it, so catch it." And then there's the inane-times-infinity chorus, which, like all of the song's musical lines, has such minimal effort behind it, it's not even trudging toward melody ("YES i'm gay! YES i'm gay! NO i'm not ashamed! YES i'm gay!" it chugs).

Do I even need to point out that this shit's been in my head for the two months since I first heard it?