There’s a guilty pleasure I get when listening to “Shawty” by Fort Myers, Florida native Plies. On one hand, the musical track, the catchy hook sung by R&B’s hottest singer of the moment, T-Pain and the complimentary music video-complete with cars, jewelry, celebrity cameos, thick attractive females and a pool, fits what seems to be the perfect formula for a hit record on the radio, on the charts, on cable music networks and in the streets these days.
On the other hand, many listening to the song would find the lyrics offensive and demeaning to women (that includes the music video), and yet every time it’s played on the radio I turn up the volume and whenever I catch the music video on cable let’s just say that it’s “must see TV”.
I’ve said before that Hip-Hop, whether it’s uplifting, militant, political, comedic, ready-made for the nightclub, “gangsta”, or “audio pornography” is very seductive. Even the “anti-Hip-Hop” listener will find it damn near impossible to not tap his feet or bop his head to the beat. And if he doesn’t know or even understand the lyrics within the verses of the song, he’ll be able to pick up the words (or at least be able to hum the tune) to the catchy choruses.
But I’m not an anti-Hip-Hop listener. I love Hip-Hop. I’ve always been sort of an old soul greatly influenced by the 60’s and 70’s R&B/Soul music and yet my generation and much of my own identity has been shaped from the lifestyle of Hip-Hop culture and the sound of its music. Being that I’m a loyal fan of Soul music in which most of the themes center around love and romance, the Hip-Hop love song has always been a favorite of mine. There have been a lot of love songs in Hip-Hop but of course the most well-known, documented and celebrated one is “I Need Love” by L.L. Cool J.
Well, “Shawty” isn’t “I Need Love”!
L.L. is a master of the Hip-Hop love song. First of all, as his name indicates, Cool J gets much love from the ladies. But he lived up to their appeal and developed a reputation for writing and performing romantic, heartfelt songs about love and relationships. The lyrics to many of L.L.’s love songs could have been sung as R&B songs by Marvin Gaye or Luther Vandross without any reservation. L.L. knows how to make the kind of songs that will have mass appeal to the ladies regardless of race, age or geography.
But to keep it all the way real, L.L. has made “love songs” that are more about lust than love-“Back Seat” (“In my jeep….let’s swing an episode”) immediately comes to mind. Plies’s “Shawty” is more “Back Seat” than “I Need Love”. The song is basically about a guy that’s fooling around with another man’s girl. The relationship is far from serious and the lyrics to the song details Plies own episodes of raw, uncensored and unadulterated sex…
“First Time I Caught Her Shit, She Aint Even Know How To Throw It Back
Now She An Animal, I Got Her Sex Game Right
I Taught Her How To Talk To Me While She Take Pipe
& Opened Her Up & Showed Her What A Real Nig*a Like
I Told Her I Don’t Usually Do This, I Don’t Fu*k On The First Night
Cause After I Beat Ya Baby I’m Liable To Fu*k Up Ya Whole Life
I Got her Trained, Now She Suck Me With Ice
I Call Her My Lil Bust It Baby Cause She Keep It Tight….”
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a love song!
“Shawty” is a perfect song to play in the background during the freaky sex scenes in the average bootleg, ‘hood porno flick! It’s not exactly the kind of song that a newlywed couple puts on to set a romantic mood on their wedding night. The song is made for the late night booty call. As you can tell from the above excerpt, the lyrics are explicit and not appropriate for the ears of junior high school kids. Of course, let’s not fool ourselves, junior high school kids are likely Plies’ biggest fans!
“Shawty” is a song for grown folks however and I know I’m not the only adult-30 and over that enjoy this song. What is it about “Shawty” that has appeal? Is it the musical track? Is it the catchy hook sung by the “electronic” sounds of T-Pain? Is it Plies’s swagger?
There are many listeners that can relate to the kind of sex-talk rhymed in “Shawty”. Like it or not, there are more relationships based entirely on raw sex than those based on serious, long-term true love. People, young and old, are deeply and sometimes dangerously involved in affairs that revolve around late night wild, sex-capades. The details of these kinds of bedroom activities are often left secret or reserved for the men’s locker room.
But Hip-Hop artists are going to say what no one else is willing to say, right?
Yes and no.
“Shawty” actually follows a long line of songs, from Rock, Pop, and Blues to Hip-Hop that are filled with explicit, raw, down-and-dirty lyrics about sex. Some of these songs are celebrated as art while others are rejected as smut. I’m not one to make that kind of distinction. I will say that songs that speak of “love and happiness” (like Al Green would say) are universally accepted and respected because they reflect what most of us supposedly claim we want out of our relationships.
Musically there is nothing better than a beautiful, well-written, well-arranged and well-performed love song. I’m not knocking Rock, Pop or any other genre but I personally believe that the greatest love songs have come from R&B and Soul music, songs recorded by singers like Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, The Isley Brothers, etc. But I also think that some of the best Hip-Hop songs ever made have been about love and romance.
I have to be honest in saying that the love song just isn’t what it used to be. I almost feel bad for younger generations of music fans who don’t hear enough well-written, well-arranged and well-performed heartfelt love songs unless they “dig in the crates” of their parents’ old records or listen to “old school” radio stations. For example, there are lyrics to some of today’s so-called R&B/Soul music that are just as explicit or sometimes more so than anything you’d hear on a Hip-Hop record.
Though the lyrics to “Shawty” are undoubtedly a turn off to fans of more conventional romantic love ballads, the fact that the hypnotic song is in heavy rotation on radio stations across the country and is quickly becoming one of the most downloaded songs on the Internet, shows that there is a rather large audience for music more about wild, crazy, and freaky sex with no strings attached than those songs about passionate and committed genuine love.