Doo-doo d-doo-d-doo-doo-doo, boom-boom b-boom-b-boom-boom-boom (Sexyy Red's "Ah Thousand Jugs")
In 2002 Vanessa Carlton had this beautifully girlie and arty song, "A Thousand Miles," and now just last year Sexyy Red grabbed it and probably liking all its nuances and the chord twists and tuneful turns she nonetheless had fun bashing around in it, "Ah Thousand Jugs," just pawing at it with a who-cares out-of-tune voice, throwing her own words onto it, slapping around Vanessa's sweet and aspirational piano trills, "plink-it y-plink-p-plink-plink-plink" in the original and sung here, "doo-doo d-doo-d-doo-doo-doo," like it's a Sexyy Red water pistol; then turning it into sung gunshots, just as casual and who-cares and out-of-tune as before but now "boom-boom b-boom-b-boom-boom-boom" like a spray of bullets. Vanessa had sung, poetically, "If I could fall into the sky," Sexyy Red sings "We put 'em in the sky," meaning she killed someone.
Sexyy Red "Ah Thousand Jugs"
I'm interested in working out how this works aesthetically, of course, wondering why it works since some drunken lout can take a song and maul it and it's usually unfunny or you had to be there and what's so great about taking beauty and turning it into a song about gunshots and die-bitch-die anyway? Something about excellent social and emotional timing, Sexyy Red not prettying her voice up for the occasion, though if her timing doesn't work for you I doubt that I could explain what's working for me. On the page her words aren't really much fun. On tape there's a pretty good combination of insouciance and sarcasm; and the doo-doo d-doo-d-doo-doo-doo and boom-boom b-boom-b-boom-boom-boom are penetrating and lacerating and blissful: maybe it's also how the casualness and the casually taking the piss partake of an underlying sense of social dread. This doesn't necessarily mean that the dread is real or that song or singer or audience have to believe in the dread to play with it*: how many people care about dogs and postmen and about who does or doesn't walk into a bar, after all? But people use these stock characters and plot conventions as setting for all sorts of gags. I think there's something deeper here in the daily dread - whether Sexyy Red pulls her gag machine from supposedly tough urban life or from the plots of hip-hop videos. There's an anomalous instruction, "Kids stay in school," right in the middle, though maybe she's just sending up a counter-cliché amidst the bang-bang clichés.
Sexyy Red "Ah Thousand Jugs" video
In any event, although a song that's out there to get laughs and reactions isn't meant as a picture of What Life Is Actually Like, it nonetheless draws on people's sense of the world. "Draws on" and "sense of the world" are pretty vague, but I've been thinking about this ever since college, to tell you the truth. I was thinking back then about, for example, Barrett Strong's original version of "Money" from 1959 and how in his version the lyrics aren't A Great Truth About Life but rather setups for gags and vocal inflections and riffs and vamps and feelings ("The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees, I need money, that's what I want"), but the words draw on a social background of wisecracks and pseudo-wisdom, "romance without finance is a nuisance" and "can't buy me love" and such (similar to "the race is to the swift" and "slow and steady wins the race": neither of these gets to be the truth, but both are there when you need them**) and in the original version of "Money" with Strong's matter-of-fact delivery the issue of moolah is just sort of matter-of-factly there, not a big deal but not going away. Whereas the Beatles' version in 1963, four years later and across the sea, is a different sensibility; John Lennon is throwing it in your teeth like it is a great truth, take that!, the humor is basically lost (though that doesn't stop you from laughing with it, if you want), but in socking us with this truth the Beatles actually put it way more into question - something to be challenged - than Barrett Strong had.
I don't know where Sexyy Red is with her boom-boom b-boom-b-boom-boom-boom; feels more on the Barrett Strong matter-of-joke, matter-of-fact side, but that doesn't mean that's where all her listeners are, and hip-hop is really all over the place on such things. YouTube commenter Bri Moni: "'I killed anotha fool, Kids stay in school' 😂😂 so we killing or we learning?? Im confused"
*In an online interview Sexyy Red doesn't really clarify her intent:
Sexyy Red: "I was just playin when I did it. And I recorded it and everybody was laughin at me. In the studio when I recorded it I'm like, "This isn't- what's funny?"
Princess Stormm: "I'm dead ass!"
**Filched this insight from Thomas Kuhn. See his "Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice" in The Essential Tension.
This entry was originally posted at https://koganbot.dreamwidth.org/373091.html. Comments still welcome here, there, and anywhere.
Sexyy Red "Ah Thousand Jugs"
Click to viewI'm interested in working out how this works aesthetically, of course, wondering why it works since some drunken lout can take a song and maul it and it's usually unfunny or you had to be there and what's so great about taking beauty and turning it into a song about gunshots and die-bitch-die anyway? Something about excellent social and emotional timing, Sexyy Red not prettying her voice up for the occasion, though if her timing doesn't work for you I doubt that I could explain what's working for me. On the page her words aren't really much fun. On tape there's a pretty good combination of insouciance and sarcasm; and the doo-doo d-doo-d-doo-doo-doo and boom-boom b-boom-b-boom-boom-boom are penetrating and lacerating and blissful: maybe it's also how the casualness and the casually taking the piss partake of an underlying sense of social dread. This doesn't necessarily mean that the dread is real or that song or singer or audience have to believe in the dread to play with it*: how many people care about dogs and postmen and about who does or doesn't walk into a bar, after all? But people use these stock characters and plot conventions as setting for all sorts of gags. I think there's something deeper here in the daily dread - whether Sexyy Red pulls her gag machine from supposedly tough urban life or from the plots of hip-hop videos. There's an anomalous instruction, "Kids stay in school," right in the middle, though maybe she's just sending up a counter-cliché amidst the bang-bang clichés.
Sexyy Red "Ah Thousand Jugs" video
In any event, although a song that's out there to get laughs and reactions isn't meant as a picture of What Life Is Actually Like, it nonetheless draws on people's sense of the world. "Draws on" and "sense of the world" are pretty vague, but I've been thinking about this ever since college, to tell you the truth. I was thinking back then about, for example, Barrett Strong's original version of "Money" from 1959 and how in his version the lyrics aren't A Great Truth About Life but rather setups for gags and vocal inflections and riffs and vamps and feelings ("The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees, I need money, that's what I want"), but the words draw on a social background of wisecracks and pseudo-wisdom, "romance without finance is a nuisance" and "can't buy me love" and such (similar to "the race is to the swift" and "slow and steady wins the race": neither of these gets to be the truth, but both are there when you need them**) and in the original version of "Money" with Strong's matter-of-fact delivery the issue of moolah is just sort of matter-of-factly there, not a big deal but not going away. Whereas the Beatles' version in 1963, four years later and across the sea, is a different sensibility; John Lennon is throwing it in your teeth like it is a great truth, take that!, the humor is basically lost (though that doesn't stop you from laughing with it, if you want), but in socking us with this truth the Beatles actually put it way more into question - something to be challenged - than Barrett Strong had.
I don't know where Sexyy Red is with her boom-boom b-boom-b-boom-boom-boom; feels more on the Barrett Strong matter-of-joke, matter-of-fact side, but that doesn't mean that's where all her listeners are, and hip-hop is really all over the place on such things. YouTube commenter Bri Moni: "'I killed anotha fool, Kids stay in school' 😂😂 so we killing or we learning?? Im confused"
*In an online interview Sexyy Red doesn't really clarify her intent:
Sexyy Red: "I was just playin when I did it. And I recorded it and everybody was laughin at me. In the studio when I recorded it I'm like, "This isn't- what's funny?"
Princess Stormm: "I'm dead ass!"
**Filched this insight from Thomas Kuhn. See his "Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice" in The Essential Tension.
This entry was originally posted at https://koganbot.dreamwidth.org/373091.html. Comments still welcome here, there, and anywhere.