Ying Yang Twins - Whisper In Your Ear

I apologetically love this song.

i like it, but then i listened to "me and my brother" every day for like six months.

makes me wanna pull out my cheap ass Dr Rhythm drum machine and make more silly nothin' but 808 bassline beats

The consistent whispering delivery doesn't do it for me.

I don't think it's all that misogynistic, it's just sexual!

My favorite lyrical mix thus far is listing the groceries.

Dontforgethebread, dontforgethebread...

Uh..."wait til you see my dick, hey bitch, I'm gonna beat that pussy up".

Matthew P OTM.

Is the phrase "beat the pussy up" inherently misogynist?

*scratches chin and tries to judge level of sarcasm*

Or if they mean "beat", as in to "defeat", like in a game of Scrabble or something.

(he does mention consent in the first verse)

In certain senses this is misogynist but more in the indirect sex-as-a-competitive-sport sense than a full on sexual-assault sense.

here's the lyrics:

hey how ya doin' lil mama; lemme whisper in your ear.
tell ya sumptin' that you might wanna hear?
y'gotta sexy ass body and your ass looks soft;
mind if i touch it and see if it's soft?
Naw, I'm just playin'... unless you say that I can.
Hell yeah I'm known to be a real nasty man
And they said a closed mouth don't get fed,
So I don't mind askin' for head.
You heard what I said.
We need to make our way to the bed.
You can start using your head.
You like to fuck?
Have your legs open, all in the buck?
Do it up, slappin' ass cuz the sex gets rough?
Switch positions, ready to get down to business so you can what you been missing?
You might had some but you never had none like this.
Just wait'll you see mah dick.
Hey Bitch:
Wait'll you see mah dick.
Wait'll you see mah dick.
Hey Bitch:
Wait'll you see mah dick.
Ahmahbeathatpussyup.
Hey Bitch:
Wait'll you see mah dick.
Wait'll you see mah dick.
Hey Bitch:
Wait'll you see mah dick.
Ahmahbeathatpussyup.
Like: Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
beathuhpussahup beathuhpussahup.
beathuhpussahup beathuhpussahup.
beathuhpussahup beathuhpussahup.
beathuhpussahup beathuhpussahup.

it's obvious that these guys are borderline retarded. Or am I a rockist?

Well you're SOMETHING, but I don't think rockist is the word.

yes!

and of course Trina talks about sticking her cock into men's mouths as well.

I don't think there's anything in "Wait" which makes it especially misogynist in the context of hip-hop: it just feeds the above-mentioned sex-as-competitive-sport trope (with more than a frisson of power relations, which female rappers normally give back even better than they get) which is par for the course, albeit in über-explicit terms. And of course I'd expect crunk rappers to be into rough sex.

who did produce this then if not Lil Jon?

Ah, but what caused the expectation to start with?

The aggression of the music, the whole crunk ethos (losing control &c)...

I like thinking of it as a dialogue with the female rappers and R&B girls, who more than hold their own via either rejection (Ciara) or trumping the aggressive sexual imagery with something even more threatening (Trina).

No, I don't think they mean it literally at all. A generous interpretation would just be that it's a careless turn-of-phrase, a less-generous one might suggest that if beating a pussy up is your idea of the right way to, uh, sex than your ("you" as in "one", not you personally) attitudes towards women might need to be examined. I don't think it's neccesarily either, but I wouldn't be comfortable singing it out loud.

There's a comic, surreal quality to the bravado here that makes it more amusing than offensive personally, though I totally understand if someone has no desire to hear it. I like stuff that's crass and irreverent. If it was performed more hatefully I wouldn't enjoy it. It's why I can enjoy Eazy-E's rhymes more than Ice Cube's sometimes on Straight Outta Compton.

I sang it out loud today! My best friend wanted to know more. We were in the National Gallery, oh dear. I'd be totally comfortable with singing the whole song out loud as it's a whisper anyway.

btw Ying Yang Twins' "Georgia Dome" specifically references that one of them won't eat anything that gets up and walks away.

I could probably think of songs that are misogynist in a more unsavory way, maybe. Like the Ramones' "Loudmouth".

TS: "beat" vs. "pound" as a verb referring to rough sex, consensual or otherwise?

these don't sound non-consensual to me

actually, if you look, I haven't really praised it that highly (I think the extent of my value judgement was "this is bananas"). I wrote about/linked it becauses I thought (rightly) that it was noteworthy and would provoke discussion, and because noone else seemed to have heard it yet. I do like it, though.

I wouldn't say I'm totally suspicious or dismissive of weird or minimalist beats with novelty value. I could come up with a much longer list of the ones I love than the ones I hate. there are just some that grate on me or that I think could have been done more effectively.

i will report back forthwith...

this some crazy shit. i dunno that i've ever really heard anything like this. that minimal, listener-under-water-sounding beat is surprisingly effective to these ears. the lyrics don't do much for me, but i really dig the delivery.

ALL: oh *really*

"Somebody turned the faucet on and didn't turn it off," D-Roc, one half of the Ying Yang Twins, blurted out on Wednesday in the "TRL" green room. He was poking fun at the predicament he and his "brother" Kane are in. Their new song, "Wait," has gotten out early, so they are quickly trying to turn an album around. "Somebody had leaked our music, and the people, the world [were taken] by surprise," Kane further explained. "It wasn't time for us to be looking at our album." "Wait" is easily one of the Twins' most sex-charged songs yet, with the guys rapping through the entire record in the tone of a whisper. "It's coming from the point of talking to a lady in her ear," Kane said. "Perverted whispers in her ear!" D-Roc chipped in. "You trying to get you some!" "Wait" is the first single from the Twins' United States of Atlanta album, due this summer...

I have a favorite album title of the year already.

Neither did the Ying Yang Twins!

Also, music videos are hilarious and I love them.

cheers.

I love when that happens.

x-p totes = "totally"?

i love that at least once a day, in this little town of less than 10,000 people, you can hear that "wait" bassline dopplering down the street. every day for the last three weeks.

N.O.R.E. also did a decent, if predictable remix of it as "Wait Til You See My Gun".

6. Live Again feat. Maroon 5.

hmmm. i never did hear that kanye remix despite knowing of its existence, this is still a bit of a surprise tho.

I posted the tracklist on the shrimp the other day. I was all wtf too. Britney is on it!

hilarious to me that we needed something as obnoxious as this song to prick ears. thing is crass unpleasant metaphors (as opposed to something remotely clever, that doesn't strictly jock shock) are different than defending misogyny as art (some people here seem to be doing the latter).

suum cuique miccio, i won't call you scum (wink wink), but jamin doesn't miss the point either. the song doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's played on the radio, and as its controversy steps into the lime people can and should say something without the threat of your sort of pinko no-solution fingerpointing.

xpost- haha wow what an ass

The greatest retort to a piece of musical criticism ever.

I've been really tempted to post this Ying Yang song called "Your Daughter Like The Dick" to GN just to further rile up the puritans.

Pitchfork not connected to the street shockah

http://a2h3.org/images/barry%20solo.jpg
take off that brassiere, my dear...

...

xpost OTM Jess

(the song itself is pretty decent too. not mindblowing, not the new Mike Jones, but good)

and oh man Pitbull feature! yes!

i think we're all aware of what it means alan, you ghetto soldier you

xpost oh yeah, I'm such a backwards frigid nun that I have no idea what "beat the pussy up" means. Is that some new sort of slang?

xpost: Alan -- what shit are you smoking? It seems like it's the good stuff. I want some of that.

Basically, "I'm gonna beat that pussy up" = "I want to have sex with that for an extended period of time"

this song is two guys whispering their desire to have consensual rough sex to a woman. that's what. and again, you can say whether its enjoyable or not but to pretend this is something more than that due to omnipresence or whatever is just grist for the Tipper mill.

A world controlled by Lords of Acid.

For the record, I like the beat to this song and I like the delivery but I've never actually paid attention to the words so I have absolutely no concpetion of how offensive I would find it.

xp: i did!

(x-post)

Maybe some of y'all missed that part.

That's exactly what I find wrong with it. Fucking sick of lame ass base songs following me what it seems like everywhere I go. And besides that, the beat's really not that hot. How do you even dance to it without simulating fucking? I mean really.

NOW HOLD ON A MINUTE

Are you saying this contradicts the song's popularity in the clubs? I mean really.

The whispering aspect is the best part of the song! Don't fear the different vocal delivery.

xpost Well at my office Christmas party in front of all of the bosses, you had girls bent over at a 90 degree angle and the guys behind them doing that slam motion into their asses. I think the SVP was really impressed by that.

What does this have to do with the Ying Yang Twins? Do you hold them somewhat responsible for this? I'm not defending the actions above, I'm just intruiged.

Alan, I'm just putting it into context to answer what Al was saying.

[I]Are you saying this contradicts the song's popularity in the clubs? I mean really.[/I]

Of course not, people dance mindlessly to bullshit all the time without knowing what it's saying.

And I've got to admit I hope that there was an answer track where two women chant "wait'll you're in my mouth, I'm gonna bite that dick all up." Some guys like that I hear.

Sorry, brah. Necro already cornered that market.

+1 Jess

there's several threads where answer tracks are discussed. part of the reason I don't consider this track criminally hateful is that I wouldn't be bothered if some woman described wanting to wear my dick down to a bloody nub. My personal preference for the follow-up chorus would be:

sorry I came too fast
sorry I came too fast
sorry I came too fast
I'm gonna clean that pussy up
like slee-urp slee-urp slee-urp slee-urp

(ominous xpost)

And premature ejaculation isn't quite the same feel. If it was "let's see if get it up/you know you're a two-pump chump," that'd have been different.

xpost: Nah. Speeed's this hip hop club (or was?) in Midtown

I agree with this! And I liked the song to begin with.

I dont think its artless, not my favorite Ying Yang Twins song, but it's so weird and hilarious and off the wall.

As for this women beating thing, one of my friends - definitely a feminist, definitely a STRONG women in the sense that she doesn't let guys say SHIT to her without her giving them a LOT of shit back - LOVES and ADORES this song and in fact requested that I play it at a party multiple times. If I ask her to explain herself, why does she like this song, she answers that she thinks its hilarious, particularly when she sings along to the chorus (loudly). Its vulgar, but I do think someone was right upthread in saying that the delivery was what was offending people as much as the lyrics.

Now, I'm not saying that "i have friends who are girls who like it" is a defense, nor am I arguing that she would want to hear her students (she is going to be a teacher at some point) to be quoting it. But I do think its weird when you consider the levels at work here, and how quickly the aesthetic of the song will end up influencing how people respond, rather than what the song actually says. In ILM favorite David Banner's "Like a Pimp" there's a line that says "We make 'em swallow the nut," and the only one to even MENTION this (that I can see) on ILM is Sterling Clover, breaking down how quickly people will identify rap artists with sexism, even if they are just advocating rough sex.

This said - I'm not closed off from the idea that this song IS disturbing to a lot of people, I would just like someone - Candicissima for example - to go into greater detail for me, because I am just not sure (as Al was asking) why this would be the battle to pick. Its such a SILLY song.

...to be clear, the "swallow the nut" line was his example of an exception to this.

Actually, this song is kinda what pushed me over the edge you could say. I'm sick sick sick of these songs that I feel are degradating and simply unimaginative yet totally omnipresent. I swear this song is the soundtrack/theme song to every lewd guy on the street, on the subway, in a bar, everywhere. I hate it for what it says and what it's "representing." And that doesn't make me anti-sex or anti-music, but I, personally as a progressive person, don't think it is unconnected from problematic things that I fight against in general and I can't brush it off as harmless. That's why I hate it.

xpost And I wasn't around on ILM when things like "Like A Pimp" was the favorite and I can even admit that I had a reaction to it like your friend to this, but like I said, the cup done runneth over.

Well, I asked upthread why sex rap always has to equal misogyny in so many people's eyes.

As for this women beating thing, one of my friends - definitely a feminist, definitely a STRONG women in the sense that she doesn't let guys say SHIT to her without her giving them a LOT of shit back - LOVES and ADORES this song and in fact requested that I play it at a party multiple times.

My best friend's girlfriend (soon-to-be-fiance) is what they would've called a "tough cookie" back in the day - outspoken, independent, and not one to let anyone walk on her. She LOVES dirty sex rap like "Whisper In Your Ear" and "Magic Stick" because, as she says "Sex isn't polite. It's supposed to be a little nasty!"

By switching it up, I think there's something to be said for the way in which cunnilingus is a power move on jacki-o's part. And in a sex rap song, I'm not sure why it's expected that jacki-o take a deconstructionist feminist approach to the track.

All of the executives I mentioned in my story are middle-aged white people! My explanation is that they're from the Bay Area.

xpost Considering you asked me why I dislike it and I told you -- without saying "y'all are backwards because you don't," WTF are you talking about LD?

Uh, when did I say it invalidates anything? Like I said:
Now, I'm not saying that "i have friends who are girls who like it" is a defense...
------------------------
Considering you asked me why I dislike it and I told you -- without saying "y'all are backwards because you don't," WTF are you talking about LD?

Sorry, I think I got a little defensive with the "of course, men won't jumping to the conclusion that this song is an affront to civilization" argument. Not that I remember it coming from you neccessarily (i'd have to look).

Yeah cause cunnilingus has NEVER BEEN MENTIONED in a rap song EVER BEFORE. Power move, my ass. Have you ever listened to Lil' Kim or Trina?

And why couldn't someone possibly expect a feminist rapper? I'd think that'd be more radical than yet another "yeah nigga, you know my pussy is where it's at!" lyric. I (and perhaps Jamin) can't be the only ones who would be slightly pleased if that popped up.

ghost dan perry, i agree, no one should necessarily feel guilty about liking this song (that's a lot to ask of people, ha) or even thinking of it as passable art (plenty of art hates women, directly or indirectly or accidentally) -- BUT, at the same time, i do think dismissing the song (or anything) critically because it's misogynistic is, in fact, a valid criticism, not knee-jerk, not christian right, not an issue of "not getting it".

And hey Dan, I said the song was lame too! :)

xp to Dan.

feminist = anti-sex

I don't think this at all.

x-post oh woah woah woah "the exposure of children to pornography" is whollllle nuther bag of worms.

http://image.basspro.com/images/images2/76500/76891.jpg

Indeed?

You said: "because its a sex rap! Its in a long line of sex raps from the miami/atlanta axis, and i would be very surprised (maybe pleasantly, maybe not) if there was suddenly some sort of 'feminist rapper' (in the academic sense) on the track." If that's not an excuse, what the fuck is?

C: And why couldn't someone possibly expect a feminist rapper?

Me: because its a sex rap!

I'm not saying that rap from the ATL-FL axis CAN'T be feminist, I said I don't EXPECT it to be, except in the way that Jacki-O apparently is - by suggesting dominance over men (and no its not something new, but neither is the Ying Yang's approach.)

xpost I'm arguing that it's not especially suggesting anything of the sort.

When did I say feminists don't like sex rap?!

????

xpost That was just a statement.

http://www.sundaynightslowjams.com/Content/Main.aspx?PageId=19

I often think about the Luke/2 Live case when Luke said they "don't sexual brutalize women in their songs", and immediately lines such as "I thought I came in her mouth/but I was only peeing" and "she'll suck on my dick if I buy her a rock/she sucked my dick/she got jacked/punched her face/and I took my money back."

That's brutalizing.

Beat that Pussy Up just sounds like hard pumpin' to me.

Blowfly...

-- Nick Sylvester (nick...), May 11th, 2005.

ooh, nice. that fits the rhyme scheme better than N.O.R.E.'s "Wait Til You See My Gun".

That's diamond princess, the one w "BR Right." Its great, but not as good as "Da Baddest Bitch."

-- Lethal Dizzle (ddrak...), May 11th, 2005.

yeah, it was Kanye. I wish he'd fuck around with vocal effects more like he does w/ Luda's voice on the hook and the "pop my trunk" line, it's amazing.

-- kate (masonicboo...), September 16th, 2001.

OTM.

haha jesus xpost hell

but anyway i do find it pretty bizarre that the pitchfork thing takes issue with the jacki-o remix in particular, especially now that the incredibly bad "pull my hair" is out.

The Nas track?? Is this really as "bad for the kids" as 2 Live Crew or Akinyele?

the latter actually is ridiculous and funny, as many are trying to claim for 'wait' which is neither. 'pull my hair' really crystallizes this debate better: 'bitch, you done talked a whole lotta shit/but wait'll you see my dick'.

it's disengenuous to claim that the delivery and not the lyrics are what people are reacting to. the purposeful highlighting of the relentlessly sexually aggressive lyrics via the minimalism of the track is obviously the point of both songs; this focus thereon intensifies their impact and imparts a sort of nihilism i dont see as inherent in a song like 'put it in yo mouth' or even 'pregnant pussy'

(PS: feminism/misogyny aside, I cannot listen to 3 minutes of raspy monotone whispering; FUK THAT)

I never asserted it was immune to critique! Jesus.

Extremely gross.

No one said that it was. Rather, the question posed as in return was, "Why single this song out?"

because "the purposeful highlighting of the relentlessly sexually aggressive lyrics via the minimalism of the track is obviously the point of both songs; this focus thereon intensifies their impact and imparts a sort of nihilism i dont see as inherent in a song like 'put it in yo mouth' or even 'pregnant pussy'"

although it looks like we can stop knocking this song and instead focus on the forthcoming album. in that sense we dont need to single out this poor defenseless song

(nobody's even going near pitchfork-guy's arcade fire relativism big finish, are they)

The Nas track?? Is this really as "bad for the kids" as 2 Live Crew or Akinyele? (finally figured out the right goddamned tag!)

Didn't we decide that we had to ixnay on talking about the kids because that would open up a whole new can of worms? Besides that, I'm strangely not crazy about the "yo, what's your price to let me in that? You owe me that shit like an ex-master owed freed slaves 40 acres and a mule!" ugh.

and it appears Julianne agrees with me.

And so what again? Who died and left her some sort of an authority?

From that other thread - The idea that males can't be feminist comes from a twisted and incorrect view of what feminism even is.

-- kate (masonicboo...), September 16th, 2001.

OTM.

-- Lethal Dizzle (ddrak...), May 11th, 2005

Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back, money.

YES. YES. You definitely should. Diamond Princess is a fucking amazing album. And similarly Dan needs to hear 'B R Right' like yesterday. More people talking about how great Trina is please.

I haven't heard the 'Wait' remix with Jacki-O, if anyone would like to gmail it to me that'd be appreciated. (And while we're here, any general Jacki-O pointers? I saw an album by her in the market the other day, Poor Little Rich Girl or something, any good?)

I completely understand Candicissima having reached saturation point but a) I haven't yet, b) when I sing/whisper along to 'Wait' my object of subjugation wouldn't be a woman but a man, which is fine with me, and c) I kind of need to hear this in a club, I imagine it'd be quite something. Also d) it's fun to listen to this and think: these guys worked with Britney!!!

-- Candicissima (candicissim...), May 12th, 2005.

Haha. Out with arguments, in with jabs.

I'm not trying to start some stupid beef over this, especially when from the beginning I've agreed with most of what C. has said, although I explained my differing perspective on it, and tried to do so without delegitimzing her position. I got overly defensive at first, and copped to it. If I've somehow been elected as the whipping boy in this 'battle' i think its pretty misdirected.

"wait'll you see my dick/I'm'a bet yours measures up"

Jacki-O is fantastic even if I'm a little disappointed that she's fantastically sexy rather than fantastically threatening/brutal.

(xpost: haha)

oh no anybody heard "play" by banner yet?? :(

Psyche.

xpost: Hehe. What's the BBQ part of OMGWTFLOLROFLBBQ? Or is it exactly what I think? That'd be funny to use if I could remember half those letters of the top of my head.

This Is the Shack [Def Jam/RAL, 1995]
Lazing around in Warren G's groove without making a pass at his tragic sense of life, these arrogant hangers-on would be yawns if they weren't the ugliest sexists to make a three week splash all year. Although the hatred is everywhere, it's most painful on an early "skit"-song-"skit" triptych: "The Train" (a backslapper about gang rape in the dark),"Fuck Ya Mouth" ("To all our hookers and hoes"), and "Slap a Hoe" (a device invented for punks too yellow to do the job themselves). Heaven forfend the rappers actually doing any of these things, except maybe buy a Slap-a-Hoe--this isn't advocacy, it's constitutionally protected representation, harrumph. What I don't understand is why anyone who doesn't hate women is outraged when C. Delores Tucker goes just as far overboard in response. If they understand when self-serving black men express themselves in these, harrumph, metaphors, why don't they understand when self-serving black women counterattack by any means necessary? C+

Obviously this is the same world that Dave Matthews wants to see.

(hike up skirt, etc etc just go read the Dave Matthews thread)

btw, the latest copycat/formula whisper record is Marques Houston f/ Ying Yang "Do It".

well actually if your beef is that I find the song "defensible" you better not have dug it a while back.

currently playing, Magazine "Shot By Both Sides"

(and maybe a little drunk)

There is nothing wrong with finding 'Wait' to be misogynist. He refers to the woman as "bitch" and uses excessively violent imagery while describing the sex he would ike to have with her.

But her post goes far beyond that and turns towards a broader point about how its OKAY TO BE WRONG. She said herself in my comments box that she was referring to a problem beyond my review and I'm trying to figure out what connects my review to this broader problem of ILM culture, Ivy League passes and NYC cliques. Maybe its just the hatorade-heavy PWN OR DIE TRYING tone of ILM in general (hi blount!), maybe its a specific incident in which I was guilty of it (the SFJ deal being the latest and loudest). And while I'm a bit defensive about having someone respond to my piece with 'NO MEANS NO' and refs to the Ivy League, as I say in my 'rebuttal,' I don't really mind having my blurb be stepped on a bit to make a broader point.

Seems to me that (in her view) your review connects with the ILM/Voice mindset that (can seem like it) combines what blount called "the old 'art has no duty to anything/one but itself' jig" with a snickering, boys' club embrace of sexual ultra-machismo as rebellious fun (rather than implied threat, which is how lots of women, not just overeducated campus-speech-code-happy women view it).

My take on all this is that it's all about relative public profile. I don't think "Wait" is exactly misogynist, in that it doesn't express hatred or loathing for women. It is a call for rough sex, and said rough sex may not be as consensual as a few half-phrases are clearly intended to convince the (critical) prosecution that it is. So it's a song written by half-literate knuckle-draggers who are happy to be that because that's what's made them their money. And (I'm trusting the rest of the thread on this, because I don't actually own the Twins' album) this is not the first time they've trampled into potentially misogynist territory, and indeed some earlier examples seem to be worse. In this case, I think it's the creepy whispering (with its obscene-phone-call/stalker implications), not the lyrics on their own, that's making (some) women shudder. If these same lyrics were delivered in the usual crunk bark, I don't think the outcry would be as loud.

At the same time, I think the (commercial/pop-cultural) success of the song is helping draw fire, too. The women linked complain that whiteboy critics who embrace this song, and crunk in general, shrug off its offensive aspects partly out of fear of being called racist. Since I've seen it happen many times online (and even in Spin - one of their articles about the 2 Live Crew court case was called "Fear Of A Black Penis"), I buy that. But I think that if the song wasn't a hit, nobody would give a shit. Exhibit A: Nelly. The outcry over his "Tip Drill" video was relatively short-lived, because "Tip Drill" was not a hit. (Was it even a single in the traditional released-to-radio sense?) Exhibit B (and here's where we leave race behind, sorta): Cannibal Corpse. What do Julianne and Jessica think about "Fucked With A Knife" and/or "Entrails Ripped From A Virgin's Cunt"? Nothing, I suspect. Because Cannibal Corpse play to a fairly small audience/scene, relatively speaking (actually, they probably sell just as many records as the Twins, or damn close, or did at their peak), and (oops, here comes race again) that audience/scene has no hipster cred with whiteboy critics the way crunk (black, culturally "other") does.

I'd really like to know, tho, if female fans of Cannibal Corpse (on ILM-esque boards, or at large) have qualms about that sort of content, tho. Of course, then this discussion can go into the stereotypical image of women (fans) (or performers) in metal v. women (fans / performers) in rap, but bringing female stereotypes into a discussion about misogyny ... well, that's how this misogyny started, isn't it?

David R. no way "that" content would EVER get a pass. no matter who performed it, unless you could somehow claim it was an attempt at a universaL sex education anhthem.

Yeah, it's a matter of degrees, but the gap between this and the potty-mouthed version is vast. I actually haven't heard the REAL version of this song (and, knowing what they actually say in the damn track, I really don't want to).

Railing against the patriarchy has its time and place, but is this the part where Hopper and Shep draw the line in the sand? Do they renounce their paychecks from The Man? Do they renounce their own complicity with The Machine and declare a feminist war against the phallic jungle that is ILX and the music press? Are they going to actually fight the system and quarrantine themselves against the inbred circle jerk? Because near as I can tell, railing against misogyny is a fulltime job that few are truly willing to accept with any sort of consistent ideological or intellectual rigor. Not to mention that backhanding C. Delores Tucker was just plain weak, given the context. And please--singling the writer for issues like this when it's the editor's decision to run it is also pretty shallow. I'm not sure why Hopper couldn't train her sights on Eddy when he holds the keys to that car.

Thing is, the song is rather misogynist. I don't think Miccio ignored that.

"such reaction" = my two line response to candicissima?? blount pretty much covered all the bases up there, but i'd add that if you're going to write 200 words about this song now (when it least needs the extra press) and THOSE are the 200 words you choose, julianne has every reason to jump down your throat.

(does FOSFJ mean 'fan of sfj'? i think you must have me confused with somebody else)

this line is designed to wall off criticism and shut down discussion before it starts and is top-to-bottom bullshit

(Yes, I'm submitting this despite the subject matter of the thread.)

i finished the thing after jessica wrote hers and didn't want to cover the same ground, hence the tangents.

editor's note: ivy league ref was a little vague, ineffective--not hating on anyone who went to college. thought it worked in set of spheres where "argument for the sake of being right" or hating on peoples' mistakes 24-7, can seem like the going standard, but came out rather myopic and also, i have no idea, my post-high school education is pretty much limited to a semester of biology at ozarks technical community college. go springfield.

none of this has anything at all to do with sasha frere-jones, diplo, dj shadow, riffcentral.blogspot.com, corn tortillas, "fucking crunk hat," or PDFs.

a month ago i was reconciling the beat, which i enjoyed, with the lyrics, which i did not. then i realized i hated the beat because it was weak "drop it like it's hot," then the "you can be wrong" was also personal, and that entire paragraph about self-examination and thinking about ramifications and being wrong was directed towards myself as much as anyone.

I think the ability to change your mind is something which is often taken as a sign of mental feebleness in what might, for lack of a better term, be called "current online music critic culture". I mean, yeah, maybe it would have been clearer if Julianne Shepherd had specified in that blog post the process that she refers to above (reconciling > hating), but I think in a format like a blog you can't always be linking back to yr earlier posts and spelling it out, "here's how I got from A to B"...

I think anybody who considers themself at all 'progressive' (again, for lack of a better word) and is also into good music, by necessity wrestles with this kind of stuff, which can sometimes look like vacillating back and forth between prioritising political and aesthetic concerns - eg, I was on the point of writing off Snoop for 'Keep Your Bitch In Line' until I heard 'Signs' - but doesn't deserve the name 'hypocrisy'.

Oh, and by far the most noxious thing going on in this thread and elsewhere in this discussion = the kneejerk "humourless/sexually repressed" accusations.

1) The whole thing where guys say: "hey, but I know lots of strong feminist women who love dancing to songs like this!" - sure you do, don't we all, but those women can speak for themselves if they want to defend this music, right? And the thing is, the ones I know would probably agree with many or even all of Shepherd and Hopper's criticisms of the content of this music while at the same time reserving the right to dance to it - which may be a contradiction but it's also in a contradiction acknowledged in Shepherd and Hopper's writing and I don't think it's one that any of us are going to get away from any time soon - that is to say, it doesn't in and of itself provide a riposte to said criticisms.

2) The whole thing where guys say "but rough het sex where the man tops is often okay and even what strong feminist women want, don't you see?" - sure, but don't play dumb and try to act like you don't know there's an imbalance in terms of how sex is presented in popular culture as a whole right now.

also: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/tracks/05-06-01.shtml

(i think nick gets into some shaky territory when he starts in on the stripper stuff...i've known plenty of girls who have gotten into it for non-horrible reasons [i.e. tutition, student loans, curiosity]. [that they all wigged out about a year or less into it notwithstanding.] also, isn't the flipside of misogyny misandry? or have i been misinformed?_

misandry is greek-derivative; i flipped greek to latin like that, however chintzy

xp hi

Oh sorry, when I typed "never wrong" up there I meant to type "a well-established tradition in music writing"...

Is it really misogyny that renders the track indefensible or is it the violence and vulgarity? Or is a 'three strikes' deal? Are songs featuring male-on-male violence defensible while a non-violent misogynist number like the Rolling Stones' "Stupid Girl" is not? Are we going to define all songs that use the word "bitch" as criminal hate speech? "Wait" has an ugly combination of elements that individually we might let pass. So when does a track become indefensible?

but anyway, look, one of the twins says hes "known to be a real nasty man" so hes putting it in context that hes a bit of a degenerate (unless he just meant nasty as in sexual), plus he alludes to the fact that "the sex gets rough" so hes not saying this stuff is 'normal' per se. isnt beatthepussyup just to do with the colloquialism that hes going to - to use less offensive language - 'fuck her really hard and good'??

nonetheless, i'm anxious to defend something on a technical level, because to an extent everything offends somebody, but offense is an assertion of freedom of expression, which i value possibly more than anything else here is so OTM. I was never arguing that one shouldn't voice when they're offended.

xpost And yeah the ubiquity. Here in NYC, you can not escape it.

On the other hand, I like dancing to pretty much everything.

this links into what I wrote about identification with one or the other of the voices in this song being crucial. currently I am imagining the possibilities of (as a listener rapping along) taking on the persona that you're not supposed to, eg a group of girls in a club cornering a boy and whispering "beat the pussy up, beat the pussy up". I want to direct an alternative video like that.

xpost The 'Wait' video seems less liable to offend than the 'Get Low' video.

In a way, this was a brilliant calculated move on their part. If the video would've been something akin to even a Next Episode type deal, they would've gotten their asses handed to them on a plate. The song itself is even constructed as restrained, almost persuasive, and unless you're in the habit of listening close for lyrics (unless that whispering made your skin crawl first), it's really easily to get caught up in it. How can they be wrong when they're pandering to the ladies?

I wrote a very angry post before I realised that this meant 'defense of yourself from the track' instead of 'defense of the track from other people'. (xpost oh fuck!)

You might be! But isn't that the great unspoken "great" thing about commercial rap music? *gag*

Jessica's blog isn't here, though; it wasn't even directly linked here. Also, no one appeared to think that point was interesting/troubling enough to mention it here and it's a pretty huge fucking point (to me, anyway, since it directly impacts me; then again, there are more women/men who identify with women here than black people/people who identify with black people so it really shouldn't surprise me).

(xpost: I just wish more people would be like Ludacris; if they absolutely have to be nasty, do so in a literate, clever manner that makes people think you've got a brain and ergo more to you than a penis attached to rampaging testicles of doom.)

-- jones (victorygarden...), June 1st, 2005.

what gets me here is that i DON'T agree that because jacki-o's presence means "consensual situation" that suddenly this shit's (a) any less misogynistic. i do think women can contribute to misogyny as much as men, and in my mind she's not making something less terrible, only condoning something terrible (and possibly making it much worse)

xpost djperry (or just agreement in general here)

Although even on a painfully bad track like "Splash Waterfalls" Luda is light-years above Ying Yang Twins. I don't even privilege accomplished lyricism all that much but anyone who digs YYT for the words is pretty much a mouth-breathing feeb of the highest order who would be doing the gene pool a favor by diving off of high-rise head-first into a picket fence.

(xp)

What does that mean? Why would anyone want to beat up a pussy?

Gotcha. I'll put away my cat o' nine tails then.

maybe the whole deal is that "whisper" without the surrounding context of the twins looses that?

i think that he even started making "yes i am, no i'm not" jokes on "the real slim shady".

JShep nor I was "praising" XXL -- I did not see it with my own eyes, but if I am correct, that is the article in which YYT's themselves reference "Wait" as "the date rape song" -- the article is by Jon Caramanica. I am sure someone will correct me on this, if i am wrong.

Anthony Miccio: You think this is about you, and you seem to be taking it personal, flashing a lotta "am not!" -- it's not about you. It's about what you wrote, your ideas expressed, and in case other people missed it, I do call out the Voice, I do implicate Eddy, for giving YYT a pass by proxy and and effectively co-signing on "I brake for lechers". PS. I would love it if you would actually respond to some of the questions we posed, rather than defending your-personal-self.

And not to rep for J Shep too much here, but in our answer-backs, we are not just addressing this review, we are not just addressing Eddy, we are not just addressing this ILM thread and Anthony Miccio, or crunk, or hip hop, the difference between liking it rough and what you wanna hear on B96, implied consent via cameos of Raw Southern Divas, or the Ivy Leagued editorial cognescenti deciding alla our fates. Both J Shep and myself have written extensively about reconcsiling our feminism with our fandom (see a previous treatise ). It's not a clean thing - being a feminist and loving hip hop ( & punkrock or dancehall or hardcore etc) is really treacherous -- Mark Anthony Neale and SFJ have also written about thier experiences with the same that might be relevent for this convo. It is about the elaborate tap dance one must do to explain your heart outta being alienated by patriarchal music culture, both mini and blingtone-huge, just to get through a show or a record.

And in ref to Alex M's "I identify with both the YYT pussy-beater-upper and who he is whispering to and so I take no offence" -- that must be a totes awesome priviledge. Personally, I can't identify, and I cannot defend like Mr Miccio, I do not have give for lechers in real life or in Billboard-charting stratas. If you have been raped or beaten, or have known or loved someone who has, it's just one of those things that it is never easy to be anything but really fucking serious about.

I'd just like to say thank you for pointing out the ugly, lowest common denominator rrendering of black men also put forward by this song. These guys aren't even artful enough to mask their troubling stereotypical pose in a veneer of hipster-approved cool (HI SNOOP!). I'd like to punch them in their hyperproductive nuts for making me look bad by proxy.

i think "wait" walks lots of these lines on purpose, and so raises these questions v. deliberately (at least the latter one).

Co-sign my ass. I mean, hip-hop and critics have been doing this dance since N.W.A. released their first album, a record I despise despite loving the beats (which means I note its importance, file it away, and never listen to it). All Anthony did was note his ambivalences. It would have been too easy to say "this song is revolting" and move on. Perhaps a Christgau (who's been quite vocal in his disgust with a lot of misogynist hip-hop) would have put his wisdom to good use in calling this swill what it is. But this is not Christgau; this is a young critic who's putting his still-growing critical chops to use. The only thing we owe him is to call him on muddled thinking. Frankly, I've read more amateurish thinking on this thread than in the review in question.

This discussion has been quite edifying, like the review in question.

p.s. dan perry to make your bass addiction clean again you should now play some jungle.

hey, Jessica! Did you read the dozen plus comments that followed yours in my comments box? Cuz I actually answered the questions you posed there. You didn't pose any questions here so I didn't answer them here. And I've already explained and admitted that I'm being defensive, and while this isn't about me I have a tendency to try and clarify my POV when I think someone is misrepresenting it. Anybody would be if they thought they were being misrepresented.

xpost: Alfred Soto OTM

From Moya: if a white man wrote a song called "wait til you see my noose" a little throw away song about a complicit black man who didn't have a problem with being called nigger and boy, I think the black community would have a problem. I don't think we would have any doubts about whether the song was racist. We wouldn't feel indifferent about it.

I'm mad that whenever women speak out about our objectification we are told we are over reacting. That's absurd! The fact that our humanity is so ill regarded that "beat your pussy up" can be defended by that's just referencing rough sex is ridiculous. what if it said "beat that nigger up" would we think the good ol' boys were spouting playful banter?

Seems we have to put gender in terms of race just so men can listen.

From Jessica: Moya makes a great point re: Seems we have to put gender in terms of race just so men can listen.

There are paralells, and I think it is hard for those who are ensconced in their power within the patriarchy to understand ( or overstand) that a cock qualifies as a weapon, a song can feel like a threat, and that ultimately it is not my job to convince anyone that my feelings about this song freaking me out is "valid" --

I think that is the last I can say about any of this.

My response: Actually, I'm sorta pissed at Moya's "Seems we have to put gender in terms of race just so men can listen." All The Women Are White, All The Men Are Black, But Some Of Us Are Brave. That's a good book that maybe you and she should both read, Jessica. For some of us, being a woman does not trump our race and is greatly entrenched with it. You want to talk about people who need to recognize their places of power yet you (and possibly Moya) as (a) white woman/women are speaking as if black women are neither women nor as feminist as you.

I've found through link following that Moya is actually black. I still think what she said is fucked up though. All us black women don't agree?! Shocker!

-- j blount (jamesbloun...), June 2nd, 2005.

oh christ blount drop it.

haha xpost

just meeting someone for the first time on, say, a dancefloor, and calling them "bitch" is a power move right there, and in a way where there isn't some prior-negotiated power-game dynamic going the way there would be if the two folks knew each other already.

in some ways there's the threat. not in getting called "bitch" but in getting called "bitch" out of nowhere.

moya bailey's the student/grad/blogger that led the "tip drill" boycott at spelman. anthony miccio's the student/grad/blogger that defended the 'date rape song' in the village voice. guess which one got paid for their efforts?

leaving aside whether art can be immoral or whether it has any responsibilities to the 'larger world', couldn't/shouldn't a critic note repellent politics as at least an aesthetic element? i think every thing i read about the last montgomery gentry (ESPECIALLY the raves) noted the politics were repulsive. read any country review in an alt-weekly and if the record expresses rightwing politics they'll be sure to point it out and denounce it (if it expresses leftwing they'll be sure to point it out and give it an amen) - (pretty much) EVERY TIME. does it get old? yeah. but so do one million other things rock critics do. why can't 'calling out bullshit' be part of the hack bag of tricks? and if it did would it have any impact? would it have an impact if say the source docked half a mic for every use of the word 'bitch'? how much impact would it have if say radio refused to play even a radio edit if one of the words edited was 'bitch' or 'faggot'? would any of these actions be a good idea?

I've had a few drinks tonight, but looking this over I think I'll agree with it all when sober. I would like to see some other people acknowledge that sometimes, like jessica and julianne were saying, its not always important to be right. I'd like to be more effective.

(xp if that was the case, massive apologies to Alex!!!!)

also, and this is why WHERE miccio's piece matters at least as much as what it said, but even if the debate, the 'no free passes' only has it's impact within the circlejerk rockcritics that's still some impact, impact that if rockcritworld has any influence on popculture (for the sake of argument let's say it does)(humour me) could eventually translate into an actual impact on the music ("and thru that the world!" - c. martin) or at the very least the promotion of it, enough so say a glossy entertainment feature/interview with ______ where he was taken to task for his misogyny might be as routine as a glossy feature/interview with _______ where the subject isn't even broached (or if it is the subject is let off with ye olde 'i'm not referring to all women when i say 'bitches', i just mean some women, the bad ones' - do i even need to say what the racial analogue of this is?) is now.

re: the source, expecting critical reflexivity from it about *anything* is a joke these days, but yeah it does exemplify this panic-mongering w/r/t race while completely ignoring gender. i bought the issue on 50 recently to see what scoops it had on the recent drama, etc. where it did pull up interesting things in its neverending quest to fuck with em, and was taken aback/amused by the fawning profile of the ying yang twins in the same issue that didn't even seem to engage at ALL with sexism, etc.

but for the most part, in the larger world outside of benzino's reality distortion field, and extending all the way to mtv and vh-1 (if not usually BET) the basic outlines of the feminist critique of hip-hop and sexism are hardly unknown.

it also depends what you mean by "calling out" becuz saying "yeah, this is there, and it bothers me, and here's how i deal with it" is all the calling out that this really merits, i think (not least becuz anything more extreme than that gets rather ineffective fast) and it can be done without dominating a review, and if done right can even provide an organizing context for a review.

but i'd rather have ppl. talk about my very interesting points upthread about context in the use of the word "bitch."

(also it's absurd to drag chuck into this. the voice never tows just one critical line and by publishing tate and coates and emb and etc. he's done as much as anyone to give the smarter critiques of the state of hip-hop a place. i mean disagree w/ miccio all you want, great, but the pages of the voice are precisely where this exchange of views is SUPPOSED to happen. [just like in the blogosphere, the neighborhood barbershop, the school hallway, the break room at work, the morning talk-radio show hosted by the less shock-jocky djs (i.e. not just B96 but also WGCI), etc.] oh yeah, and the nice article the voice ran on dancehall and homophobia too, and its ongoing coverage of protests against hot 97, et fucking cetera.)

this counter-argument is not new, either; it is lazy; and, obviously, a 'better/braver' (writing reviews is not brave) critic might also be able to 'fess up to/examine' being repulsed by the same elements you find thrilling. and if they could do it without calling their oppos 'morons', even better. no new territory is discovered by finding that critics get off on offensive/whacked-out lyrics. it's common knowledge.

I will unhesitatingly fess up to how clumsy that phrase was. And I am sorry that my glibness and the wave-the-red-flag headline inspired such fury. What I was going for is that, by declaring all people who enjoy "Wait" to be scum, you're asking people to look at your own tastes in vulgar erotic content and see if you have any ground to stand on when declaring this song indefensible as a source of entertainment (this is the ironic thing - declaring something defensible doesn't mean its beyond critique, it means you feel it deserves critique and discussion as to its qualities. Something indefensible - perhaps like this "date rape song" we've been threatened with or "Black Korea" by Ice Cube - would overtly endorse a criminal act, there would be no room for interpretation).

and obv I'm not actually saying all songs that endorse criminal acts are necessarily indefensible.

i can't believe I'm just now reading this. lol wow.

(interest sparked cuz i just acquired the album this is on for two bucks, tho how could you miss the single when it came out).

so...uh...has anybody's minds changed?

lol reading this just cuz I've been listening to their music & remembering how popular they were when I was in college, and while honestly I think there's better songs on the album anyway ("Badd" and "Shake" are both better singles) the couple posts (poorly) attempting an analogy of what a "female response track'd" entail are super-headdesk

my basic issue with the beat is idk what it does that "Drop It Like It's Hot" doesn't do better, although I suppose it doesn't "pop" as much and that works in the context of the delivery

anyway party like it's 2005 man

"Shake" is a low key classic, nowadays it's the song i'm most likely to hear a rap DJ play by the Ying Yang Twins OR by Pitbull

yeah, Pitbull's opening verse is so great too

Funny thing about this song is how much my best friend in college's first gf / pretty much every girl there were mad into it, truly the (slightly more unnerving?) "Blurred Lines" of its day

I did not realize how old Mr. Collipark was btw, kinda cool

wow, wtf I had no idea. for context, dude is older than Grandmaster Flash! o___O

wait, he was over 40 when he decided to briefly go by Beat In Azz?

haha

Grandpa Collipark onthebeathoe

man I always think it's too late for me to try making beats as a hobby and this gives me hope, thank you DJ Smurf

BTW if y'all put the producer under Composer in iTunes what do you tag the names as? I used to just update to whatever their last alias is but I feel like tagging Collipark as Beat in the Azz/Mr. Collipark/DJ Smurf and sorting as Mr. Collipark is more respectful to his name game lol

I did not realize how old Mr. Collipark was btw, kinda cool

― nova, Tuesday, September 16, 2014 7:58 AM (15 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i didn't know this either and it's fantastic.

this album is good, but looking at old tracklists the first 5-6 songs on me and my brother are unstoppable

This album is pretty hard to f/w outside of "Bedroom Boom," a couple more maudlin numbers and a few "party" tracks that don't pop off like the best stuff, but I should give Me & My Brother a closer listen

how did it take me 9 years to buy it lol, everyone in college loved these guys

"Fuck the Ying Yang Twins" does nerd-revenge fantasy rap better than any nerd rappers & "Live Again" does "I understand what these strippers go through" better than Drake too lol

oh man i forgot about Adam Levine singing "oh, the life of a stripper"

lol yeah

man 2005, Adam Levine's year of being Chris Martin before it was all cruelly snatched away

Is Mr. Collipark the Timbaland to Lil Jon's Neptunes/Pharrell? Not a qualitative comparison either way mind, just a working thesis I thought of where Collipark does club shit while Lil Jon does club shit and/or "hard" shit that Collipark doesn't really

idk doesn't really matter lol they're (were?) both good

Timbaland's hard shit is harder than the Neptunes tho

Damn, when was the last time Lil Jon really did street rap tho? I miss that shit

Mustard is so consciously indebted to Lil Jon that i don't feel like i miss him as much as i did a few years ago. would be interesting to hear him be more engaged w/ rap's current wave than that new "Turn Down For What" knockoff single featuring Tyga, though.

Timbaland's hard shit is harder than the Neptunes tho

― The Reverend, Saturday, September 20, 2014 5:39 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nah honestly I think most of 'em are pretty bad but idk how many I'm thinking of. "3 A.M." being the one exception I'd agree with you on, shit's like a horror flick lol

dude at Ohword back in the mid-'00s had a post dissing the hell out of Timbaland during his JT/Nelly Furtado/Danjahandz resurgence and one of his main criticisms was that his catalogue's devoid of straight-up bangers. I disagreed at the time but he was onto something

Not that his "poppier"/typical old style in diff. eras style hasn't yielded tons of classics but it is a problem that disconnects him a bit from the core of the genre imo. Plus there's the fact that I just can't listen to Missy's albums straight through like that, although that is partially her fault, I don't think she's a very good rapper & the "goofiness" is not enough to make up for it

also Mustard may be indebted to Jon but I don't think he's anywhere near as good. though yeah not into "Turn Down for What" and lol don't know the other one you mentioned, fuck Tyga though

OK triple post my bad gonna chill heh

This song grosses me out. I don't like it when vox are recorded in a way that you can hear the saliva noises of the vocalists mouth...there's some Leonard Cohen songs I can't listen to for the same reason...this is my biggest pet peeve in all of music....this is maybe significant cuz it's the first rap song ever to do it. but it's still GROSS! yucky.
― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Friday, 29 April 2005 14:13 (sixteen years ago) link