I Wanna **** You

Akon (ft. Snoop Dogg)
Album: Konvicted (2006 Upfront/Konvict/SRC/Universal Motown)

(the lyrics)



Summary

The scene: a strip club. A patron of this establishment feels a connection of sorts to one of the female performers. After engaging in some preliminary flirtations (i.e. photography) he tries to persuade her to join him in his Cadillac. He is aware of the fact that she, being a woman of high class and desirability, is spoilt for choice when it comes to men, but he believes he most suited for the job, having a high income generated by amphetamine addicts. Apparently swayed by financial factors, the performer joins him in his car, where they consummate their mutual attraction. Our protagonist finds himself more taken with his companion than perhaps he expected to be, soon thinking of greater, possibly marital commitments.

Analysis

So, like, who is Akon? I’m just starting to familiarize myself with the workings of American hip-hop celebrity culture, and one of my favorite things about it is that you have to be rich going in, otherwise you have nothing to write songs about. So, bully for Akon, he’s already built himself a nice sandcastle out of cocaine with his Lamborghini Gallardo parked in the front, therefore he’s already a celebrity without my having know about it. Cool.

We appreciate his bluntness: I wanna fuck you? Way to pare it down. Hemingway would be proud. The song starts so minimally, with gentle, music-box tones that make us think we’re about to hear something—perish the thought—heartfelt. If you’re listening to the MTV or the radio (and c’mon, let’s not kid ourselves, we probably are) you get the far blander and more tender reimagining: “I wanna love you.” Wow! He doesn’t even love this chick yet! He just wants to! Akon, with a little help from the FCC, has begun to paint a beautiful portrait of a trepidatious courtship.

So when Snoop comes on talking about riding poles and putting dicks places, it’s a bit of a tone change. He’s not interested in loving anybody, he talks about the female genitalia as a detached concept, delivering a classic compliment-that’s-not-actually-a-compliment with the winning “pussy is pussy and you be pussy for life.” Um, thanks? Then Akon chimes in, practically daring this young lady to engage in intercourse with him, going so far as to call her a tease for not immediately complying. Where’s the sentimentality? Where’s the gentility? Where have all the cowboys gone?

Which brings me to the bizarre yet irony-free style of wooing on display here. I think the greatest accomplishment of “I Wanna Fuck You” is the shameless sympathy it has for the archetypical romantic villain. You know, that age-old dilemma the heroine finds herself in: torn between true love with a penniless youth or a life of riches with the heartless millionaire. He usually has a title (Baron or Duke is best,) a money-stuffed gut, a handlebar mustache, or any combination thereof. But the more diamonds he lavishes on her, the emptier she feels. When she finally chooses to spend her life with her peasant boy, the Baron is furious that she would throw away a life of security for something as frivolous as Love.

This entitlement is felt by Akon. More or less, what he is saying in his verse is “I’m the richest guy in the room. Quantitatively speaking, there’s no reason for you to go home with any of these other poor-ass losers. Even if they make you feel alive for the first time in your life.” He plays the role of the impresario that knows no modesty while Snoop is the ganja-smoking dirty uncle. Neither have much of a sense of romance, though Snoop at least is preoccupied biological matters rather than Akon’s material concerns. However, after he and the dancer get to know one another, the attraction becomes more intense, and things get serious.

Baby you got a phatty, the type I’d like to marry,
Wanting to just give you everything, and that’s kind of scary

This sudden show of vulnerability catches us off-guard; suddenly the Hot Shit Richie Rich walls are being torn down and we see a man perhaps genuinely in love. And why? Well, he’s more than happy to tell you in the next line:

Cause I’m lovin the way you shake that ass

Oh. Okay. Good. I’m much more comfortable with that.

“I Wanna Fuck You” is a split-personality lover without an internal editor. It comes on gentle like your first high school boyfriend, who, right after sharing your first heart-pounding, sweaty-palmed kiss, asks if he can touch your boob. Akon and Snoop alternate between patronizing, bullying, and being rendered defenseless against the woman in question. And it’s no wonder: in this particular nudey bar on this particular night, love, sex and money have become one big amorphous blob.


My Only Unanswered Question:

“And you know we upfront” or “And you know we a front”? I REALLY want it to be the latter. The former makes more sense, but it just reminds me of TV douchebags having absurd dinners in New York and expounding on how culturally important Heroes is going to be.

(the video)

Fergalicious

Fergie ft. Will.I.Am
Album: The Duchess (2006 A&M)

(the lyrics)


Summary

Having made up a new word to describe what sets her apart from other women, our speaker sets out to describe it. Aside from good genes and certain biological traits, the key to her sexual irresistibility appears to be a strict “look, don’t touch” policy. She dismisses the failed attempts of fans and posers to associate with her, making her boundaries clear, though she clearly relishes the spotlight of mass male attention. She relents slightly at one point, offering the possibility to the listener that if they wait long enough, they might have the opportunity to engage in some sort of sexual union. Then, suddenly aware that all this vanity might be off-putting to some, she apologizes in a way, but asserts that she simply can’t help it: the public consensus is that she is attractive and therefore she is awarded certain rights and privileges.

Analysis

Stacey Ferguson has never been one for subtlety, since earning her stripes and graduating from the Black Eyed Peas’ School of La-La-Las. Her lyrics tend to have the slightly nerve-wracking effect of an ESL student making a dirty joke; the coyness is there but the words are anything but subtle, and are followed an awkward “get it?” wink. Friend, there’s nothing to get. “Lovely Lady Lumps” is probably the opposite of a euphemism.

So, “Fergalicious.” It’s a song about cunnilingus, among other things. Triple-duh. In plain English:

Fergalicious
Definition: adj. Having a nice-tasting vagina, and not being generous about it.

In the World of the Song, EVERYBODY knows that Ferg’s got a yummy cooter. This means that, in the World of the Song, either an astronomical number of people have gone down on her, or the subject is so fascinating that rumors of it qualify as a topic of conversation. Stranger things have happened; I’m sure if universities started offering degrees in Celebrity Anorexia Evaluation, college enrollment would soar. At any rate, public fascination, rather than the narrator’s own libertine behavior seems more likely, considering the ad nauseum assertion of her selectivity (In the World of the Song.)

What interests me most is the thin line here between slutty and blameless. Fergie IS a tease. Fergie is NOT promiscuous. (If you told me five years ago that “promiscuous” would become a pop culture buzzword, entering the vocabularies of 10-year-olds around the world, I would have slapped you and then tongue-kissed you.) You CAN’T come up and talk to her at a party. You CAN jack off to a picture of her. Fergie will NOT fuck you. Fergie WILL give you a killer BJ. That last part is questionable, but I personally couldn’t help but hear shades of Kelis in the following:

I blow kisses (mmmwwahhh)
That puts them boys on rock, rock
And they be lining down the block just to watch what I got

So, she hands out the blowjobs like it ain’t no thing but doesn’t let anyone return the favor. I’m not judging, but that doesn’t seem like a lifestyle choice I’d write a song about, at least not one so dancefloor-ready. If you want, there could be a much darker reading of the song, starting from the open-ended and mysterious line: “I got reasons why I tease them.” What are her reasons? Past betrayal? Abuse? With that phrase alone “Fergalicious” could become a melancholy, sado-masochistic torch song sung by a woman who, scarred by a trauma of the heart, denies herself pleasure with other human beings and toys with the hearts of men.

Except for the fact that “Fergalicious” is too much fucking fun. The beat rolls out like a Hummer on I-15 trying to make it to Vegas before midnight, and cuts to the bare minimum just when it needs to. Fergie’s delivery is sassy and matter-of-fact, albeit a blatant Peaches impression, and largely spoken-word—a voice we haven’t really heard from her before. It’s a decidedly stronger voice than Will.I.Am, who here is a bored would-be impresario later relegated to the chorus, singing her praises in traditional exponential style.

Boys are her doting playthings in the song; they line down the block for an awful lot of things, even just to watch Ferg hit the treadmill. In the Wonka-themed video they dance with delightfully unsubtle candy canes, brainless robots with dicks attached. In that sense, despite all the innuendo, this is one of the least sexual songs currently on the air, if sexuality is to be defined as a chemical reaction between people who are attracted to each other. There is no attraction in this song, only fanaticism, and Fergie herself is certainly not turned on by any of the hullabaloo. “Fergalicious” is more a self-image manifesto than come-on, it would have been a fantastic debut song but works just as well as a renewal of vows of sorts.

My Only Unanswered Question:

Is that really how you spell tast(e)y?


(the video)

Introduction

My name is Emily. I live in Los Angeles. My favorite radio stations are 102.7 KIIS FM and NPR.

Pop Voxuli is a blog about pop music by somebody with a complicated attitude towards it, equal parts fascination, revulsion, and kinda-deep love.

Come back and be inundated by a collection of essays and musings on the songs that have found favor with mainstream America, and what that may or may not say about mainstream America.

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