A Master Class in Signifyin'

99. JAY-Z, "99 Problems"
Produced by Jay-Z & Kareem "Biggs" Burke; written by Shawn Carter, N.Landsberg, Felix Pappalardi, Rick Rubin, Billy Squier, J. Ventura, & L. Weinstein
Def Jam 000248411 2004 Billboard: # 30

Just after this single came out, a friend of mine was scheduled to speak at a conference on Black Masculinity in the Twenty-First Century. I suggested he and the other participants spend the conference taking apart this song.

Let me roll things back a bit to put this in perspective. In 1931, Louis Armstrong recorded "Shine," a song that lists nearly all of the qualities that are supposed to identify the stock Negro of early twentieth century culture. No one would deny that the song itself is deeply racist, a late survival of the worst minstrel show tendencies. The argument comes over what to make of Armstrong's interpretation of the song. Some--especially those who have seen the 1932 film A Rhapsody in Black and Blue, in which Armstrong performs the song in a leopard skin--would argue that his recording perpetuates the worst traits of racism, that one of jazz's great revolutionaries had by 1931 become no more than an Uncle Tom, allowing himself to be seen exactly as racist whites wanted to see him. For me, though, Dooley Wilson's version of the song in Casablanca is much more stereotypical. Wilson may be wearing a suit rather than a leopard skin as he sings it, but his eyes roll all the while, he hangs on the audience's reaction, and his vocal attack on the lyrics wouldn't have been out of character for such turn of the century minstrel legends as Arthur Collins or Byron Harlan.

By contrast, if you open your ears, what Armstrong does with the song is much more radical. He does more than simply "scat" the lyrics--he deconstructs them into smithereens. His vocal and improvisatory skill is so manifest, and the sounds are so chopped up into fragments, that the lyrics almost don't seem to exist anymore. He doesn't inhabit a racist song and allow it to endure. He stomps it into submission until we'll never be able to take the "real" words seriously again.

Jay-Z's performance on "99 Problems" is much the same trick, but it's more a matter of semantics than phonics. He takes one word that he, like many 1990s rappers, has rightfully been accused of overusing and rings a series of changes on it. The word, of course, is bitch, and if you don't think HOVA ever used it too casually, listen to 1998's "Can I Get a ---?" again (even though that track does technically give women equal time to complain about their worthless men).

Here, though, that noxious word gives rise to a masterpiece of the genre. Listening to Jay-Z on this record, from his supposed "farewell" album, I think he's not only read the complaints about his language, he's read the conference papers and dissertations about him too. He turns the word on its head, implicitly acknowledging that the concerns that dominate most rap lyrics are relatively trivial. The icing on the cake, of course, is when he takes a verse to brilliantly relate a far-too-typical DWB pullover and ends the cop's spiel with the line We'll just see how you feel when the canines come, taking bitch back in the ensuing chorus to its literal meaning. The drop to the downbeat between that verse and chorus may be my favorite hiphop moment ever.

Drunk & Unsure White Men Gotta Do What Drunk & Unsure White Men Gotta Do

258. BIG & RICH, "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy"
Produced by Paul Worley; written by Big Kenny & John Rich
WEA 6501 2004 Billboard # 56

259. STREETS, "Fit but You Know It"
Produced and written by Mike Skinner
Locked On 679L071CD1 2004 Did not make pop charts

These two singles mark the moment when I found it finally undeniable, almost thirty years after Sugarhill Gang, that rap had gone mainstream. The only thing whiter than country musicians are pasty-faced Brits, for whom calling a woman out on her spray tan is the ultimate form of drunken irreverence. Both groups, though, are out of their element: Big & Rich in a northern city, possibly New York, and the Streets on holiday somewhere. And so, like legions of drunk and unsure white men before them, they decide to emulate the black men they've heard and seen in popular culture as a way of acquiring courage. They do it in their own way, though, and the results are hilarious--on purpose, I think. We're laughing with them, not at them, right? You can't exactly say that either of these groups has (ahem) flow, but you have to love the self-consciousness with which they wield their newfound mackdaddy personae.

How Dirty Vibes Get Clean

189. LIL JON & THE EAST SIDE BOYZ ft/YING YANG TWINS, "Get Low"
Produced by Emperor Search, Bryan Leach, Lil Jon, Rob McDowell; written by D. Holmes, E. Jackson, S. Norris, & Jonathan Smith
TVT 2394 2002 Billboard #: 2

190. USHER, "Yeah!"
Produced by Usher Raymond; written by Chris Bridges, Sean Garrett, LaMarquis Mark Jefferson, Rob McDowell, James Phillips, Jonathan Smith, & Patrick J. Que Smith
Arista 59149 2004 Billboard: # 1

The life cycle of a pop style in just two singles.


Crunk, like gangsta before it, can present a problem for some listeners. In the best crunk singles, the vibe is slammin, but the lyrics can give you pause. Lil Jon's "Get Low" is an obvious example of this: it has a great dance groove that makes you want to get out on the floor, but its lyrics (about a trip to a strip club) can make you want to take a shower after listening. Even the trembling vocals of the East Side Boyz on some of the verses can make you feel a little shaky.

Fast forward two years, and here's Lil Jon again, this time fronting for Usher. You know: sweet, cleancut, sexy but not sleazy Usher. The poor boy's being cornered by a girl in a club. He's so cute that you've got to believe that this happens to him all the time. But this girl is something special, her power is almost hypnotic, and soon enough he's caught up in a 21st century Billie Jean scenario. None of it is his fault, you see?

The two songs, of course, have essentially the same groove, and this is how you make dirty music clean: Ludacris and Lil Jon serve as Usher's dirtyminded wingmen; Usher just plays it smooth and "Aw shucks"es his way through the song. In "Get Low," Lil Jon and his boys talk it up, but let's be serious: they're almost certainly going home alone. In this song, Usher presents himself as more acted upon than acting, but he is probably not going home alone. The earlier single is filthier and more explicit, but this song more strongly implies the possibility of actual sex, sex that the singer will probably explain away tomorrow as something that "just happened."

And then there's the whole question of where the two songs are set. "Get Low" seems to be set in a strip club, but by the end of the song there's a shoutout to all the girls on the dance floor, suggesting that the performer now thinks he's in a dance club. (The song in fact did lead to a popular line dance that pretty much corresponds to the instructions in the chorus.) "Yeah" seems to be set in a dance club, but the featured performers' interpolated guest flows sound no different than what we heard in the earlier single.

So which is worse: frankly crass objectification of women, or the smooth rationalization that explains it away? You know what? I'm not entirely sure that that's the real question. I think the real question is why everyone seems to be confusing dance clubs with strip clubs in the first place.