This isn't the definitive list I hoped it would be. Instead, it's more a 'mixtape' of songs that were playing during moments of alienation in various social settings: Lloyds Bar, gyms, strip clubs, house parties, school discos, the years 1998 -2010. That said, some of these are the greatest songs ever made and one day I WILL get 'Krunk' - if and when that term comes back. This is a selection of what I will tentatively label Slagology.
"I got a double bed, One's to sleep on the other one's to get my freak on"
Chappelle has got Kelly covered on this one. In summary: "...and they gave a 15 yr old boy life in jail. If you think that it's okay to give him life in jail then it should be legal to pee on him. That's all I'm sayin' ".
"But we kick 'em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger"
Kesha is rough - in a grisly roadkill kind of way. She has the traits of a Jagger, which makes the above quotation quite disturbing. Sooner or later Mick's gonna fuck one of his many illegitimate children making this a very, very tragic song. But, this song does make me happy in ways I don't quite understand. Perhaps it's the possibility she's immortalised her Oedipal mistake in a catchy pop song? Yeah, I think that's it, the irony thing init?
Primary School was the first time I wondered 'is there any point to life?' It gave me something to think about while I sat through the mandatory school discos resenting songs like this one.
"some of them call me Einstein. I'm a lyrical dan."
The idiocy more than speaks for itself.......it also rhymes over a beat.
"Ooh move your body girl, makes the fellas go. The way you ride it girl makes the fellas go"
Ethnics will always be a commodity. Proof of this is the periodic appropriation of their culture into the mainstream symbolically signalled by a caucasian's successful integration. For example, Hip Hop found a new audience when Save the Last Dance came out. Similarly, Reggaeton had its time and Latinos had the pleasure of shedding Ricky Martin as THE example of 'Latin Music' in the mainstream.
"There's something oh so sexy about the kinda woman that don't even need my help"
At first I thought this is some patronising bullshit. But, perhaps he genuinely misses the insulting contradiction of complementing a woman for doing a 'man's job'. I can imagine him, in an earnest effort to impress, using the cliched conceit of comparing women to a work of art and suggesting Coolidge's ubiquitous, Dog's playing poker as analogous to their profundity. Cos they're like dogs playing poker init?
"I melt in your hands girl, not in your hands (ha ha)"
Slags hate this song the way magicians hate the masked magician because it introduces a moment of self-consciousness during their respective 'acts' - something along the lines of, "they already know how this works, so why bother?" The only polite thing to do anymore is to act surprised.
Conversely, this is the most assuring song. Hearing this song is like seeing John Terry walk into a nightclub.....with a string of condoms shaped like a lasso..."next thing you know shawty got LOW LOW LOW LOW low low"
"Sweat until my clothes come off"
The word 'buck-wild' comes to mind as does the heady musk of sweat and fake-tan bearing on you like a cross. I've heard this compared to "wanking with a hot towel over your head". Intense.
Lil' Wayne - Got Money / Lollypop Fedde Le Grande - Put your hands up Eric Prydz - (pretty much anything or anything under 'Ministry of Sound' like this.)
I was once asked this during a job interview. I mumbled some mess like: if you don't give up you technically haven't lost yet. Another favourite has to be the often cited Thomas Edison quip: I've not failed, I've just found 'somewhere between 5,000 - 20,000'* ways not to do something. Motivational speakers love to say shit like this. I've seen audiences smile with the reassurance that this sentence provides, but it blithely conceals the 20,000 wretched sacrifices that were 'necessary'. What I wish I could have said during that interview was: "winners will not let piss stop them from winning. Therefore I am a Loser because...
I couldn't piss on the side of the road or rather 'race track', in broad daylight, in front of some fans, a mobile camera crew - and consequently the world, or rather worse: the people in the world that are watching specifically to see me because, to them, I am a friend, their child, their sibling, a symbol of hope for our nation, an example for the future - for some small child that wishes to grow up and be just like me and do what I am doing: pissing on the side of the road-cum-race track, in broad daylight, in front of some fans, a camera crew and the world - all of them solemnly beholding a winner squatting down to wee.
I can't handle that pressure.
But winners can. Paula Radcliffe did. She carried on and won that race. So what I'm saying is don't hire me; hire Paula".
I'm just saying...
* The number of times he claims to have failed is disputably within this range.
I imagine this song quite literally, which makes it decidedly masochistic.
I imagine the woman has her philandering lover hogtied in a cellar, and with every crying curse she stabs. She stabs her chest searching for a little piece to force down his throat. She guts her gaping chest and forces him to take it.
Another little piece, squeezed between thumb and forefinger, pushed to the back of the throat. His lips stretched taut to tear from the volume of everything a woman can possibly give.
She stabs for another little piece. Clawing and retrieving the scraps of her heart, her lungs, her skin, her bones. Break it and chew and struggle to swallow back the sick. Come on. It's tough, but have another little piece. Come on. Take it.