A few songs that I feel awkward about liking

Growing up, watching James Bond flicks and other forms of espionage genre films, every time a teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I'd always say, with a straight face mind you, "I want to be a spy!!" I'd usually ignore my class's cries of laughter and my teacher's subdued chuckles, wondering how many other visionaries were laughed out of the building before proving their detractors wrong years later. What did they know anyway, filthy peasants the whole lot of them, while the rest of them are squeezing out detestable crumb-snatchers I'd be in some foreign country choking a guy to death with a telephone chord. While most of them are slaving at some job that they openly reject like a new kidney that their bodies can't take, I'd be fucking the holy shit out of some women named "Punany Supreme" on a bed littered with french currency. At the same exact moment that one of my classmates is enjoying his riding lawnmower and how "fast" it is, I'd be impressing some ultra fine model who has a four-thousand a day cocaine habit with my land-to-water Maserati that my tech guy built for me in his off time.

During my teenage years I took this fantasy a bit too far, placing a big wad of gum on the lock of the front door at my then girlfriends house, not to enter at will later that night so I could make sweet love to her, but to steal some of her old man's pornography stash. Because I've never been the inventive sort, even thinking about rigging my car to release oil so other cars can crash makes my head hurt even today, I would squeeze lotion out of my window so it would land the front window of any garden variety douche-bag who decided to chase me.(For real, that shit works. People's first reaction when anything hits their windshield is to put their wipers on, this smearing lotion all over the place making driving an impossibility)

But I also referred to many girls that I was sexually active with at the time "Covert ass", not because they had some top secret information that they stored in the creases of their butt-cheeks, but because I didn't want anyone knowing that I was fucking these behemoths. Most of them where amazing people, stellar personalities, women who I could tell back then would make amazing wives, but regardless how great they were I always felt funny about being seen in public with these unimpressive females, I sort of feel the same way about these particular songs.





Jimi Hendrix: "Hey Joe": I know that I act out and talk a tremendous amount of shit, but it's just a defense mechanism, having my beating heart ripped out of my chest by a few caramel temptresses who barely reciprocated oral will cause you to have a few walls up. A few years ago I dated a girl that I loved so much that I found myself saying silly shit like "I love you to pieces" at the end of every phone conversation, a fact that is diminishing my hetero street cred as I type this. Anyways, for the first time in history I was an innocent party when she decided to leave me for some artsy fartsy guy, a gentleman who looked like he couldn't take a punch if a UPS man delivered it to him in a cardboard box. I was floored, but instead of drowning my tears in 151, weed, and women of ill repute who actually find pre-ejaculation beneficial, I decided to exercise my relationship demons with good old fashion Karaoke. I got on that stage, picked Jimi Hendrix's version of "Hey Joe", and swayed back and forth like an angst-ridden mid 90's grunge rocker as the song came on. Well wouldn't you know it, as soon as I sang the part "..I'm going down to shoot my old lady, you know I caught her messing around with another man..", my ex-girlfriend walks into the joint with one of her chicken-head friends. I don't know why her and her friend had horrified looks on their faces, sure I sang the song with an untamed passion, I looked at her for most of it, when I sang "I shot her!!" I did kind of have a Charles Manson gleam in my eye, but those weren't legitimate reasons to be fearful of me. Oh, that's right, I did scream "I love you......to pieces" right before dropping the microphone.





Akinyele: "I luh Huh": Since it seems that your average rapper has a shorter shelf life than most store bought apples, as a fan you have to be specific when talking about what time period of their career you're a fan of. For example, I'm a fan of Ice Cube pre-"Lethal Injection", I have to make it clear that I've pretty much ignored Q-Tip's solo career, I like Guru with Premiere and C.L Smooth with Pete Rock, just like how I like Akinyele before he dedicated 99.9 percent of his rhymes to his cock.(Look who's talking, huh.) When this song came out I remember journalists the world over, especially of the female variety, ripping Akinyele a new asshole because of his rhymes about injuring his girlfriend to end an unwanted pregnancy. At the time I thought that everyone was overreacting, that this was just some good old fashion Akinyele hyperbole, with him just expressing how much he's wasn't ready to become a father. Fourteen years later that still might be true, but I now see the other side's point because the song is kind of fucked up, and I feel weird about liking it.






Smoothe Da Hustler feat. Trigga The Gambler: "Broken Language": I love violent rhetoric and macho posturing as much as the next guy, hell, outside of me referencing my small penis, that's what my writing career is based on. I guess that's why I love this song, sure the rhyme device does walk that thin line of being irritating, but each one of the brothers tosses it back and forth as effortlessly as a Stockton to Malone pick and Roll. But I'm a good catholic boy, I'm a bona fide "O.G" of St. Gregory's Catholic School(Represent!!), but every time I hear Smooth da Hustler say "The Noah killer, the expert slinging, the white girl gang-banger, the virgin Mary fucker, the Jesus hanger" I always clutch a rosary and do the sign of the cross. As soon as I put my holy beads away and try to enjoy the rest of the song I hear "...the cross breaker and bible ripper". Heavens!





Slick Rick: "The Moment I Feared": Slick Rick is called a great storyteller for a reason, his vivid tales leave the listener actually imagining the fictitious rhymes that he puts to paper, MC Ricky D is one of my personal favorites. "The Moment I feared" is a great song, detailing how a random string of events can lead to the worst of conclusions, with Rick informing people that the wrong decisions can lead to you getting fucked in the ass without your permission. Yes, you read the last part correctly, at the end of the song Rick is imprisoned and he goes on to say "Now I'm in jail doing life and I'm scared, some kid sniffed me cold and greased me where no one dared". Besides the mention of prison love, the song is hard to enjoy because of the sounds Rick makes himself while getting fictionally ass-raped. Come on man, that was a bit much.





Culture Club: "Do you really want to hurt me": Just like it's easier to fuck a married woman if you've never met the husband, I'd imagine shooting a missile into a warehouse filled with terrorists is easier for a fighter pilot when he doesn't know about the innocent people who live around said warehouse. As a fan of music, it's alright to groove to love songs sung by gay men because the person they are really writing about is faceless. I was able to shamelessly fuck women to Luther Vandross songs because Ignorance is blissful as a motherfucker, when my sports teams won championships I didn't think about Freddy Mercury's penchant for cock as we all sang "We Are The Champions", and how many Judas Priest fans knew that while they aggressively nodded their collective heads to his music that they were mimicking a neck motion that Rob Halford practiced in his private life. I guess the problem with "Do You really want to hurt me", a song that I love and have played every time a woman decided to take a proverbial shit on my emotions, is that years later we learned that the song was really about the drummer of his band. Jesus Christ man, I still love the song and all, but putting a male face to a song I've played a million times is kind of troubling.