We now take a break from our regular programming to kick off The Love Week, because Valentine's Day is trite, but I'm in the mood for something themed. Our first order of business is sort of courtship, but mostly sex, really. Pretty much everything I learned about sex I learned from women who don't want to have it with you because you're a triflin' ass motherf***er.
The late nineties/early oughties were obviously the golden age of life on Earth, as evidenced by the stills and videos in this post. The music I listened to at that time has always informed the way I articulate my self-worth, i.e. lots of sass and cynicism grounded in the knowledge that I am the best thing ever and I hope you realize that before I'm gone outcha life forever. We start our adventure with TLC's Silly Ho, my favorite song off their 1999 album, Fanmail. It easily trumps No Scrubs with its indelible chant, "If you really wanna find/someone to get some behind/I ain't the one for you", although I highly encourage you to click through to that video as well for the styling and set design.
The late nineties/early oughties were obviously the golden age of life on Earth, as evidenced by the stills and videos in this post. The music I listened to at that time has always informed the way I articulate my self-worth, i.e. lots of sass and cynicism grounded in the knowledge that I am the best thing ever and I hope you realize that before I'm gone outcha life forever. We start our adventure with TLC's Silly Ho, my favorite song off their 1999 album, Fanmail. It easily trumps No Scrubs with its indelible chant, "If you really wanna find/someone to get some behind/I ain't the one for you", although I highly encourage you to click through to that video as well for the styling and set design.
I was (and am) a huge Aaliyah fan and this plaintive single from the best years of Timbaland productions decries a skeezeball whose girl would obviously leave him if she only knew he couldn't stop trying to get fresh with the embattled songstress. The message, "it ain't easy to get with me," is sort of my defining life mantra (and also why I'm chronically single - boys r stoopid!) Also, these videos make it readily apparent that my pants are not wide enough. None of our pants are wide enough.
Unfortunately for all of us, the video for Missy Elliott's Sock it 2 Me is not available to be embedded, but you can find it here. The above screencap should be incentive enough, I'm sure, to click through to the totally batshit crazy, apparently Megaman-inspired video. The song details how ready Missy is for you to "sock it" to her because her hormones are, "jumpin' like a disco" and features an insane guest verse by Da Brat at her finest. I like that Missy's got a sex drive and she's not afraid of it, as we can tell from the enchanting line: "I'm at your house around midnight, don't fall asleep/It'll just be me on a late night creep."
Foxy Brown is one of those late-nineties female rappers whose oeuvre is packed with only a few recognizable singles, but the cover art for her album, Ill Na Na, has always stuck out in my memory for its low rent intensity. The video for Hot Spot is just about the greatest thing since sliced bread if sliced bread is code for softcore snow fetish porn. My favorite line comes quick, so listen close or you'll miss it: "MC's wanna eat me, but it's Ramadan."
Kelis is one of my favorite artists, even though her sound has changed completely from the days of this Neptunes-produced track off her second album. In it she declares, "the good stuff's right here," and proves true to her word with a dip-dyed afro and roller disco sex party. I've totally got the "good stuff," too, but I prove it by packing away my weight in butter and dancing around in my underwear, alone. Same difference.
This song is admittedly a bit more recent (2006), but it features possibly my favorite line in any song ever: "I know I'm a hot hot shawty/but you gotta slow down/you don't know me." Have truer words ever been spoken? And by someone wearing so much carefully applied purple sparkle eye shadow?
And we end our journey all the way back in the 80's, where all journeys must end, with Janet Jackson (Ms. Jackson, if you're nasty.) I grew up listening to Janet, thanks to my mother's diva fandom, and she just doesn't get better than Control and its follow-up, Rhythm Nation. And this video: The hair! The shoulder pads! Multiple male dancers in lycra crop-tops! There's just no better way to say, "I'd rather not be having sex with you, thanks."
