Music Appreciation

The Mean Streets of Longmont, CO

Distaste is what someone might feel for a certain floral scent or vinyl upholstery. Rap music makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

Perhaps it’s just the wrong side of melodious for my taste. Maybe it’s because the subject matter has me on the edge of my seat, wondering what inappropriate gem of reprobate insight will next be sandwiched between “bitch” and “nigga.” I propose that the homies are calling it too real for my pink and lightly weathered skin.

At 50, female and white, I’m guessing I fall outside the demographic targeted by rappers. I did like the Beastie Boys in that they heartily encouraged selfish indulgence and immaturity at a time when I too, embraced those values. But I’ve never been a “Fight the Power” type.

I’m also not a prude, nor am I a racist. I think I might be rappist, and these feelings have really only surfaced since I began listening absently to the rhythm but with mama-bear-like vigilance to the lyrics – along with my 12-year-old son. He is also a rappist, but of the appreciative sort.

The allure of the illicit is always a near and present danger, “illicit” checking in at different levels as you age, and according to circumstance.  Like mothers before me who found Elvis, mini-skirts and Penthouse outrageously vile, my “illicit” threshold now sits at the low end of the spectrum, with my antennae perking up at phrases such as “open up your gates.” My fear is that, not knowing what the words imply, my children will belt this out in front of someone who does. Like me, and it’s creepy.

Actually, the only place I endure rap music is in the car when I’m toting my children around and that’s enough. More than anything I would love to expose them to some feisty ’80’s headbanger classics, both as a point of historical reference and to demonstrate that Mom is not the rusty ol’ cog they might think she is. But, like most things introduced by adults, my musical selections are rebuffed out of hand. I let them have their lolli pop tunes for the duration of the ride, and wait patiently for my turn. It’s just that the pop is trending lately to rap, and this motha’ be trippin’.

I’m don’t deny rap its musical origin. Surely, a car being dragged over concrete by a semi has musical qualities, depending on the listener’s level of aural sophistication. I don’t hate it because it’s teeming with profanity. In fact, when I hear it my instinct is to scream “Would you turn that f*&cking Sh#t off!”

Proponents of rap will disagree that the lyrics are meant to incite violence. Yet for me, it’s painful. Usually though, that’s because I’m slamming the car door repeatedly on my own ankle, my screaming drowning out the song.

It’s not like rap music requires superior intellect to understand, in fact, much of the time it rhymes, and frequently makes about as much sense as Dr. Seuss. This comes through despite the fact that today’s rap vocalists sound like they’re murmuring in their sleep. Mumbling is insulting and annoying. By uttering something the mumbler grabs attention but then doesn’t even make the effort to part their teeth enough to form distinct words. The listener strains for comprehension. With effort and patience, it is painstakingly revealed that the rap vocalist wishes the listener to know he “Got a pocket full of hundreds and a closet full of clothes, with a phone full of hoes and they trippin.” Disturbingly, the conveyance becomes clear only as you hear your 12-year old mumbling along about “hoes” who be “trippin’.” When I finally glom on, I want to turn my own self in to Child Protective Services. “Hoes!” In my car!

Whenever I gently suggest, “please turn that down or off, it’s inappropriate (ie “Turn that F%&king Sh&t Off!”), it’s heard as a request to recite the names of 86 friends – and siblings – who listen to the very same music. Which prompts me to name the many humans and other creatures that categorically better not hear my kids playing it. The list includes our cats who need no further encouragement to urinate on our stuff. I do also reference grandparents who, even with compromised hearing and all the mumbling, might still read the lips of their grandchildren as they mutter along and be surprised to find the kids can no longer conjugate verbs or match them with the correct pronouns.

There is also the issue of racism, which I feel the rappers themselves are doing a good job of addressing through their art and murder. I’m not particularly offended by the poor and overwrought term “nigga.” It’s lost its impact. Not quite a household word, it does have it’s home-based fan base. You’ve noticed that the more some words are denied air-time at home, the more attractive they become to children. Yet, relative to some of the look-away-kids raw “street reality” narrated in rap music, I feel like that term is one of the usual suspects, and something that can be ignored in light of gratuitous vulgarity.

Speaking of, let’s hear it fo’ da hoes! While much of rap’s contrived ghetto smack disses police and mistreatment of black people, these are the terms used to name the genre’s ever-present protagonists – women.  “Bitches” and “hoes,” rival the “N” word in its original intent to demean and subjugate a group of people. Yet I don’t hear “B word” and “H word” bandied about with all manner of propped-up apologetic sensitivity to women. Rather these two gangs, The Bitches and The Hoes have become generally accepted caricatures of the real thing.

Swearing and mumbling aside, overlooking the discordant droning, improper grammar and the subliminal knowledge that the performer’s pants are belted just above the knee, I don’t appreciate the vulgarity, especially, when I’m sharing audience with my son. I’m sure there’s a time and a place for tuneless smut, slurred rhythmically and often in iambic pentameter, but it ain’t mainstream media.

It’s hard enough for parents to cultivate and nurture respect for others and women in particular need their regard elevated just to come out even. Further, at this stage, I’m grappling with the context and vocabulary, the setting and even my own facial expressions to explain human reproduction to my children. I don’t appreciate that they are singing along to this flap, oblivious to the fact that the words they are using debase females in ways their minds could never understand at this age.

Music or poetry that emphatically and repeatedly denigrates another group of people is not fodder for everyday mainstream entertainment. I hate that the simultaneous dumbing down of media while loading it with the lowest hanging obscenities is normalizing mysogyny.  Unfortunately hoes and bitches are the raging hot subjects of many rap hits, so on top of mom’s wholesome sixth-grade discussion of crabs, genital lesions, and wet dreams, I need to answer “Mommy? What’s a ho?”

As the bad words are forbidden in speech, my children want to know, if they are present in a song, can they sing the bad words. I consider in what scenarios they will be listening to the mumbled subpar pornography in feeble English, through a bluetooth speaker, muttering along to Lil’ Wayne, “Swagger tighter than a yeast infection / Fly go hard like geese erection…” Ummmmm. Hmmm. No? Can I enforce that? Yes? Way too permisive. Mmmm. “I guess, you can but NOT within hearing or lip-reading distance of these people.” Again, grandparents top the list , teachers, me, your dad, your younger siblings, your friends’ parents,  their grandparents, the lunch lady, your parole officer – wait. I’m getting ahead of myself.

In my full answer to my child, I first remind him that he is embarrassed merely by my presence and that my person in general, whether standing still or transacting the purchase of his Cheetos, makes him wish he were invisible. Well, preferably that I were invisible, but he’d be without Cheetos and a ride, so. Next I ask how would he feel if one day I were so moved by Ol’ Dirty Bastard that I just started belting out “Hippa to the hoppa and you just don’t stoppa!” What if I referred directly to his friends as “little slugga’s?” What if I took up twerking and bounced my butt around the house in spandex leggings? “Ok,” he said. “I’ll only sing along if I’m by myself and maybe if my friends are singing, too. Alone. Only when we’re alone.” We have an understanding.

Suffice to say, I’d rather this music was unavailable to kids or that we could enforce a rule about what music they can and cannot listen to. They did it in Footloose, right? Banned music that led to lewd behavior and loose morals? That was my first introduction to the idea of music as a “gateway” artform. But I’m kind of seeing the preacher’s side of things now. At the same time, like it happened in the movie, the advent of my tweens’ avid fascination with rap has brought with it opportunities for some valuable discussions, irritatingly, about hoes and bitches. And, I have to admit, if we were all watching TV, I’d be trying to explain pharmaceutical ads for bipolar depression and vaginal dryness. That would make for some good rap.