A friend of mine approached me last week after my column about Jay Sean's "Down" ran: "Hey Mitch," she said. "I liked what you did with ‘Down,' but I bet you can't do that with just any song — what about something crunk?"
"[Name redacted]," I replied, "sure I can!"
She challenged me to the following songs: "Get Low" (2003) by Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz (feat. Ying Yang Twins), "Laffy Taffy" (2005) by D4L and the LazyTown/Lil Jon mashup, "Cooking By the Book" (2008). I told her that a mashup didn't count, but I was confident enough that I could do it, so I took her up on the challenge.
The funny thing is that all three songs — the jam that shuts every club down, the stupidest song ever written (fact) and the mashup, respectively — are actually all about the same exact thing.
All three are feminist anthems.
Now, before your head explodes, think about it for a minute: "Get Low," "Laffy Taffy" and "Cooking By the Book" all feature lyrics objectifying women, for sure. But rather than claiming ownership of the women, the songs put women on a pedestal: The nameless, faceless women to whom the songs are directed (or, really, shouted) hold all of the power over the men dedicating the song, due to their sex — and sexual power.
The focus of all three songs is, quite explicitly, the vagina. On "Get Low," Lil Jon barks "Pop that p−−−− on the pole, do yo' thang baby." The entirety of "Laffy Taffy," title included, is an embarrassingly juvenile ode to said female anatomy. "Cooking by the Book" features the line "Back that p−−−− she's a m−−−−−−−−−−−."
The anonymity of the women in the songs gives any one listener the power to put herself in the place of the woman being asked to "pop [her] p−−−−." While some songs feature lyrics that endorse violence toward women (think: most Eminem songs), D4L and Lil Jon admire the women in these songs.
The lyrics of all three songs are repulsively captivating. Who but Lil Jon could think of this particular combination of words: "Back that p−−−− she's a m-----------"? No one — that's who. But in his own special way Lil Jon is trying to compliment someone who he finds attractive. Whereas I might tell a woman that she has beautiful eyes, Lil Jon might scream, "Rub that s−−−: it's yours, b−−−−! / Grab this d−−−: it's yours, b−−−−!"
The message is the same ("you are a beautiful woman"), but my approach might not be as valid in the crunk nightclub setting that Jon seems to perpetually inhabit.
By telling a woman to "grab [his] d−−−," and that it belongs to her, he isn't giving her an order to pleasure him, but bestowing the power in their dynamic. She is the factor that has power over his phallus — the modernist symbol of power — and thus the underlying factor behind his power. Without the woman, Lil Jon is nothing.
These songs bring to mind nervous prepubescent schoolboy chatter. "Get Low" starts in the most singsong, nursery−rhyme manner imaginable: "3, 6, 9 / Damn she's fine." This recalls any number of playground taunts (i.e. "Lil Jon and someone sitting in a tree").
The language featured in these songs also doesn't support the idea that any of these rappers will be doing anything more than talking about women. Meaningless slang substituted for "adult" words is exactly the sort of thing that children do — such as "skeet" for ejaculate or "laffy taffy" for vagina — and doesn't exactly inspire confidence in Jon's or D4L's statuses as sexually active rap stars.
By putting themselves in a juvenile, impotent, subordinate position, these rappers — regardless of how crude their language is or how obnoxious their heckles are — are empowering the women whom they so desperately want to "toss," "flip" and "get right back at."
