Hip-hop just so ridiculous / Everything sounds so confusing
You see, it was only in 2003 that 50 Cent, in his hit single "P.I.M.P.," was carrying on a tired and familiar refrain (in fact, a remix features Snoop Dogg, who also flogged this theme for long before 50 arrived on the scene): I don't know what you heard about me
But a bitch can't get a dollar out of me
No Cadillac, no perms, you can't see
That I'm a motherfucking P-I-M-P.
Now it's 2008, and this dude T.I., about whom I don't know a lot honestly, has a hit with "Whatever You Like" (although he's a rapper you could almost say he's singing it, or at least trying to). This is the hook:
Stacks on deck, Patron on ice
And we can pop bottles all night
And baby you could have whatever you like
I said you could have whatever you like, yeah
He makes it clear elsewhere that this is not love, as he tells the girl merely "I want your body, need your body." But the entire song is nonetheless about how he will buy this girl literally anything in order to keep her available to satisfy his lust.
See, I all too readily understand how both attitudes equally support sexism. Both rely upon an unquestionable assertion that "women only want money," and both are about men proving their prowess in some way (either through cold-hearted seduction, using their riches as motivation for the woman to give in to sex without actually spending any of their riches, or by showing their dominance through sheer excess of acquisition and consumption).
What I don't understand is why it shifted so hard in such a short amount of time. Now I have tried to ignore mainstream rap and mostly listen to the same "left of center" artists I picked up on in 2000, so it's possible there were a few songs like "Whatever You Like" in '03, and I'm even more certain there are songs like "P.I.M.P." even today. Yet both seem to be the flagbearer for mainstream rap sexism today, as far as I can tell. Anyone want to guess why? The best I can figure is that with the bad economy, stinginess with women might be more readily interpreted as indicative of a general lack of funds, no matter how much the rapper might protest that he's only unwilling to spend them on women.
I did actually watch the , in which there seem to be occasional hints that T.I. (well, his character) has several women around in the background, and even at the beginning he is with a woman when he invites a comely fast food worker to be his next conquest. At the end, we learn that this was just the worker's fantasy (he merely left her a $100 bill) which is even more astounding as it shows she actually fantasizes about being just a member of a harem as long as it comes with such possessions. Now, I may have misread this video, but that's what I'm picking up now. It does strike me that the consumption becomes all the more preposterous if we are supposed to believe that T.I. buys everything for every woman. And in fact, as I had been thinking about posting on this, an LJ friend finally prompted me to it by posting about "Weird Al" Yankovic's own version of the song, which is of course about the diminished expectations of the bailout era. Not even bothering to change the title, Yankovic seems to be thumbing his nose at the absurdity of the premise more vigorously than I've seen him do in a long time, perhaps for obvious reasons.
Hmm, see I'm supposed to be talking about consumption in medieval and Renaissance literature, but sadly this is more interesting to me.
But a bitch can't get a dollar out of me
No Cadillac, no perms, you can't see
That I'm a motherfucking P-I-M-P.
Now it's 2008, and this dude T.I., about whom I don't know a lot honestly, has a hit with "Whatever You Like" (although he's a rapper you could almost say he's singing it, or at least trying to). This is the hook:
Stacks on deck, Patron on ice
And we can pop bottles all night
And baby you could have whatever you like
I said you could have whatever you like, yeah
He makes it clear elsewhere that this is not love, as he tells the girl merely "I want your body, need your body." But the entire song is nonetheless about how he will buy this girl literally anything in order to keep her available to satisfy his lust.
See, I all too readily understand how both attitudes equally support sexism. Both rely upon an unquestionable assertion that "women only want money," and both are about men proving their prowess in some way (either through cold-hearted seduction, using their riches as motivation for the woman to give in to sex without actually spending any of their riches, or by showing their dominance through sheer excess of acquisition and consumption).
What I don't understand is why it shifted so hard in such a short amount of time. Now I have tried to ignore mainstream rap and mostly listen to the same "left of center" artists I picked up on in 2000, so it's possible there were a few songs like "Whatever You Like" in '03, and I'm even more certain there are songs like "P.I.M.P." even today. Yet both seem to be the flagbearer for mainstream rap sexism today, as far as I can tell. Anyone want to guess why? The best I can figure is that with the bad economy, stinginess with women might be more readily interpreted as indicative of a general lack of funds, no matter how much the rapper might protest that he's only unwilling to spend them on women.
I did actually watch the , in which there seem to be occasional hints that T.I. (well, his character) has several women around in the background, and even at the beginning he is with a woman when he invites a comely fast food worker to be his next conquest. At the end, we learn that this was just the worker's fantasy (he merely left her a $100 bill) which is even more astounding as it shows she actually fantasizes about being just a member of a harem as long as it comes with such possessions. Now, I may have misread this video, but that's what I'm picking up now. It does strike me that the consumption becomes all the more preposterous if we are supposed to believe that T.I. buys everything for every woman. And in fact, as I had been thinking about posting on this, an LJ friend finally prompted me to it by posting about "Weird Al" Yankovic's own version of the song, which is of course about the diminished expectations of the bailout era. Not even bothering to change the title, Yankovic seems to be thumbing his nose at the absurdity of the premise more vigorously than I've seen him do in a long time, perhaps for obvious reasons.
Hmm, see I'm supposed to be talking about consumption in medieval and Renaissance literature, but sadly this is more interesting to me.