Don’t Judge New Music

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April 16, 2013 by Coastal CoEd

I know I am not the only person with grandparents, aged aunts, uncles, and cousins talking about how derogative music is towards young women today.

Well, if you’re anything like me, I know you had to mind your manners one too many times when confronted with their closed-minded music taste. There are a lot of artists today that aren’t a replica of Teddy Pendegrass, Michael Jackson, or their precious cha-cha slides that deserve recognition for their musical abilities by the old skeezers, such as Wale, the Twerk Team (I’ll explain), Anthony Hamilton, and Drake.

Older people with outdated music tastes praise artists like Salt n Peppa (of “Push It” fame), but despise artists like Kelly Rowland for singing that she likes her kisses down low. “Push It,” is about a guy knowing how to push it “real good.” If Rowland is guilty of sharing her desires, then so are Salt n Peppa: “Ah! Push it. Push it real good…”

I hear my grandparents and their friends reminiscing about Teddy Pendegrass’ “Turn off the Lights,” where he outlines his entire scheme to get “it,” beginning with turning off the lights. But because he wore big-legged pants and spoke the slang of the older generation, it’s okay for him to outline his sex formula. However, songs today by sex symbols like Trey Songz are unacceptable. And I haven’t even touched on the older generation’s precious R Kelly, who put lines in his song like, “You may be young, but you’re ready,” and then followed up on this by being accused of child molestation. In one of his songs, “Ignition,” he compares cranking up a car to having sex with a woman. Where are all the older women who hate his music?

 

In my neighborhood, the same old ladies that buy food stamps, which is illegal, knock The Twerk Team for legally working because it “just isn’t right.” The Twerk Team uploads videos that YouTube pays them to make and upload of their created dances–“twerking”–and they say things like, “they shouldn’t allow that.” No one called Salt n Peppa derogative for their famous bump and grind dance, where they imitate sex by walking towards each other’s crotches. The Twerk Team closed the judgement door within this generation of females just a bit. They are examples of young women that hustled and made a living for themselves off of a dance they created. They made it okay to go to the party and “shake what your mama gave ya,” in the words of the older generation’s Uncle Luke. It was okay to get on the ground and doo doo brown, but derogative to “twerk.”

The point is not to point out all of the questionable lyrics to every generation’s favorite artists, but to promote an understanding between the two generations. For instance, the older generation had artists like TLC that made songs for girls with low self-esteem like, “Un-Pretty” with lyrics like:

“You can buy your hair if it won’t grow.. You can fix your nose if you say so… You can buy all the makeup that M.A.C. can make… But if you can look inside you, find out who am I too…Be in a position to make me feel so damn unpretty …Yeah, I’ll make you feel unpretty too”

We have artists like Wale that makes songs for women like “Illest Chick Alive,” with lyrics like:

illest chick alive, illest chick alive!
yeah, that my sista and i’m so proud how she hold it down
illest chick alive, realest chick around
pray you richer in confidence
when i’m paying you mind
look, the illest chick alive, the realest chick alive!
yeah, one time for the
one time for the illest chick alive, illest chick alive…

So before banning the rap and R & B stations in your car, listen to them. Before calling the Twerk Team derogative, think of the dances you once did to Uncle Luke’s, “Doo-doo brown,” in that hole-in-the-wall club in college. Today’s younger artists once listened to the older generation’s artists and are following their footsteps with tweaked lyrics and slang.

Same dances, right?