“Last Friday Night” – Katy Perry

“It’s a blacked-out blur
But I’m pretty sure,
It ruled”

Ms. Perry, if you must refer to your vagina as a “blacked-out blur,” then you may be assured that it did NOT rule.

“Lighters” – Eminem

“Had a dream I was king, I woke up, still king…
This rap game’s nipple is mine for the milking”

Go back to sleep, Eminem. I’m afraid that teet is another man’s…

“Grow a Pear” – Ke$ha

“But you’re acting like the chick all the time
You are cool and now you’re not just like that
When you grow a pear
You can call me back”

Upon  first hearing the horticulture/agricultural references (“chick,” “grow a pear”)  in this verse, I recalled Dorothy Parker’s famous quote:  “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.” 

Looking deeper, it became clear that Ke$ha uses the language of horticulture/agricultural to invoke the Jeffersonian ideal of the Yeoman Farmer. Like our Founding Fathers, Ke$ha embraces the independence and individuality that has made the U.S. great. (If in doubt, see here (omg blue lipstick?!?!))  Ke$ha is seeking the self-sustaining individual, one who can grow a pear and other forms of fruits, grains and vegetables (preferably robust cucumbers).   She makes it clear that she does not want a chick, which requires nursing,  inferring that she instead seeks a full grown cock.

Clearly, Dorothy Parker was way off on this one.

“Motivation” – Lil Wayne/ Kelly Rowland

“Uh, girl I turn that thing into a rainforest
Rain on my head, call that brainstorming
Yeah this is deep, oh but I go deeper
Make you lose yourself, and finders keepers
It go green light, go Weezy go
I like to taste that sugar, that sweet and low
But hold up wait, new position
I put her on my plate then I do the dishes.”

In this brave verse, Lil Wayne comes out of the paraphila closet.  Paraphilia is a biomedical term used to describe sexual arousal to objects . . . that are not part of normative stimulation.

Lil Wayne sets up this verse as a proper playa, i.e., going deep in dat pussy.  At first glance he evokes the organic imagery of the humid climate of the rainforest to artfully cloak hitting that shit, but then he tells the listener that he goes “deeper.”  In other words, look beyond the obvious and ask ourselves what if the “that thing” in the first line does not reference da pussy?

The next line he speaks to losing himself/herself/oneself, “and finders keepers.”  If he was talking about da pu-tang, he clearly would have used “trapper keeper” despite the troublesome inferences of vagina dentata and Lisa Frank. Instead, Lil Wayne avoids the obvious and summons a child’s game of claiming things.

This leads to the next question: what kind of things?  Lil Wayne gives the listener a clue: He likes to “taste that sugar, that sweet and low.”  Here, Lil Wayne is juxtaposing the organic with the synthetic.  We see he uses a comma to conjoin the two, which is ambiguous as it does not let us know where his preferences lay.  Remember he began this verse celebrating the organic (evoking da pussy), as a playa is expected to do.  However, once Lil Wayne indicates his preferences and what he personally “like to taste,” Lil Wayne clearly diverges from the organic to the synthetic.

Lil Wayne drives his point home by announcing his “new position.”  He then evokes the sexual “her,” clearly referring to the vagina he summoned in the first few lines, and closes with “then I do the dishes.”  After such build up, Lil Wayne swiftly thrusts himself out of the paraphilia closet by pronouncing himself as a plate fucker.

“Look At Me Now” — Chris Brown

“She wax it all off–Mr. Miyagi”

Historically, “the hairless feminine” resides among the lesser-invoked archetypes.  The dominance of the visual during the last few decades has thrust the hairless feminine from subcultural fascination to penetrating mainstream culture.  Mainstream society rather recently took notice of the hairless feminine in pornography, resulting in the hairless feminine being associated with the unfortunate wild feminine.

Despite this initial rather wild appearance, the hairless feminine may actually symbolize stoic discipline.  To achieve the waxed hairless feminine after puberty, women must undergo painful, humiliating monthly rituals without complaint.  Chris Brown specially invokes the stoic hairless feminine by letting us know “she wax it all off,” rather than merely shaving it, which fails to resonate with discipline.  To make his point even more clear, Chris Brown then analogizes the hairless feminine with “Mr. Miyagi” a stoic master of the martial arts who is coincidentally also bald.  By specifically embracing the waxed hairless feminine’s stoic symbolism, Chris Brown demonstrates he can tame the wild feminine in his verse as well as he can in real life.

“E.T.” — Katy Perry feat. Kayne West

“Infect me with your love and
Fill me with your poison
Take me, ta-ta-take me
Wanna be a victim
Ready for abduction”

Despite the victimologic casting of this pending invasion, it would seem unfair to declare “space rape!” every time this song is played.  Even aliens can’t rape the willing.  By adding “wanna be a victim” to otherwise violent imagery, Katy Perry consents to the invasion, attempting to be the worst thing to happen to women since Rihanna .

However, is Katy’s proclaiming “take me” and “wanna be a victim” consent?  Katy opens this verse with “infect me with your love and fill me with your poison.”  Thus Katy may be ready and willing, but she will not go gentle into that good night.  By juxtaposing the negative  “infect” and “poison” with “love,” Katy suggests this “love,” i.e. the invasion, is toxic.  Categorizing “love” as toxic suggests that Katy is more passive than willing.   Katy’s passivity combined her possibly low IQ raises the question: if Katy is passive, and maybe a little bit dumb, is she capable of consent?  Without Katy’s consent to this invasion, I am justified in loudly declaring “space rape!” every time I hear this song.  Holla!

As if pornifying E.T.  wasn’t cringe worthy enough, Kayne West gives Debra Harry a run for her money busting out the following:

“I know a bar out in Mars
Where they driving spaceships instead of cars
Cop a Prada spacesuit about the stars (!?!?)
…
Tell me what’s next, alien sex
I’ma disrobe you, than I’mma probe you”

I finally understand how Evie from Out of This World came to be. Prada and probing, who could resist?

“On the Floor” — J-Lo feat. Pitbull

“It’s getting ill it’s getting sick on the floor
We never quit we never rest on the floor”

Here we have a variation of the dingbat-gangsta model discussed below. Some may say J-Lo is too…“mature” to be a true dingbat. Age, like maturity, is a relative concept. J-Lo clearly suffers from the former, while lacking the latter, but nonetheless “brings it.”

J-Lo does not seem old because she’s trying to reenter pop music 20 years too late: J-Lo seems old because of the above-reference verse. Pairing “ill” with “sick” sounds like a soccer mom mocking her kid’s music (while still trying to impress them) by pulling from MTV Raps from her own youth.   J-Lo continues to momify by following the ill/sick happenings on the floor with “we never rest on the floor.” Of course not, mom! Bust out the sanitizing hand wipes because who, besides Ke$ha, would rest on a floor covered in ill/sick?

J-Lo keeps at it with “If you’re a criminal kill it on the floor.” No self-respecting gangsta would ever say this, but most moms would. It’s science. If you told a room full of moms that most jailed “criminals” are non-violent offenders, they would respond “no, criminals kill, I saw it on the evening news.”

I would not say that J-Lo epically failed in trying to reclaim her jenny-from-the-block manufactured street cred from 10 years ago, but that J-Lo is instead bending the rules and creating her own space in this profitable era of pop music. Down with dingbats and behold the MILF-gangsta model! Remember haters, it ain’t trick’n if you got it, and this MILF’s got it.

“California Gurls” – Katy Perry feat. Snoop

“Fine, fresh, fierce
We got it on lock”

Here, we see the increasing pop phemon of white girl trying to be gangsta.  (See also: this entire blog). We get our first hint by the spelling of “girls” as the edgier  “gurls.”  Pretty effective, but Perry does not stop there.  She reaches “Muffin Top” heights by juxtaposing “fine, fresh, fierce” (i.e., dingbat) with “on lock” (i.e., gangsta!).  According to Urban Dictonary, “on lock” is to have something under control.  Therefore, California has “fine, fresh, fierce” under control.  Sounds like a nice place to take the family.

Perry does not stop here.  This movement of Barbie gone Dr. Dre  amazingly oscillates the other direction.   Clearly Perry joining with Snoop Dogg brings a much needed gangsta edge to her song (the fact that Snoop will feature on anything that pays, including Cal Worthington ads, is irrelevant!)  But then Snoop bravely drops “Bikinis, tankinis, martinis.  No weenies,” meeting Perry more than halfway on the dingbat-gangsta spectrum.

“Fancy” — Drake

“Nails done, hair done, everything did
Oh you fancy, huh?”

At first, I lazily assumed Drake was playing with verb tense to toy with the listener’s expectation.  If nails and hair done, then surely everything done?  No, assuming listener, everything did.  Why do did and not do done?

Drake is schooling us all in flow by exploring the grammatical aspect of the verb “do.”  The grammatical aspect is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given situation.  Commonly the distinction is in how the speaker views the situation, either as unitary and bounded (“I ate”) or as on-going and unbounded (“I was eating”): The distinction here is not in the situation itself, but in the speaker’s portrayal of it.  The lexical aspect is invariant, while grammatical aspect can be changed according to the whims of the speaker.

Here, Drake’s mad skills defines the temporal flow of “do” by employing do’s grammatical aspect to represent fancy.  We can see that Drake did choose the grammatical over the lexical aspect of “do” as a wink to the “done” of the proceeding nails and hair, both vital components of fancy.  Clearly, Drake views fancy and unitary and bounded, as the “nails,” “hair” and “everything” is not doing, but did, done.  Thus, to Drake, fancy is done did, or did done.

“Rocketeer” – Far East Movement

“Where we go we don’t need roads,
…
Got, got a jetpack with your name on it,
…
Go on the next level, Super Mario”

What happens when a Caltech frat house gets a recording contract?  See above.