Busting Back: Thoughts on Plies
Tuesday marked the release of Plies' sophomore album, Definition of Real. To mark the occasion BET's 106th & Park invited Plies to perform live in their studio. This is when I stepped in. Fresh from my 9-5, I plopped down on my couch, flipped through the channels, stopped at Robert Johnson's dastard network and caught most of Plies' Ne-Yo-aided performance of "Bust it Baby Pt. 2," a song of which I'd heard but had never heard. Ne-Yo drew me in, lip syncing or singing fairly imperceptibly over the track on the hook. I didn't attempt to distinguish much of what Plies was rapping, I was so captured by two young white dudes in the audience painfully trying to balance their clear enthusiasm for Plies and Ne-Yo with the appropriate masculine indifference to male celebrity.
Then Plies snatched me right into the rank confines of his verse with this line,
I juss gave her a nick name, it's wet-wet
'Cause when we finished she mess up all the bed sets
It was explicit but that wasn't the problem. It was just artless, coarse and unnecessary and I felt myself slowly morphing into Bill Cosby. Thankfully, it was too hot for sweats and my Birkenstock-esque Mephistos have long since been trashed. For whatever reason, I didn't flip the channel and caught a bit of Rocsi and Terrence J's interview with Plies and was shamefully surprised to hear a clear-intentioned articulate, seemingly thoughtful man. He didn't posture, expressed tremendous humility and proved entirely likable. In short, I thought, "he speaks so well." I'm not one to judge a book by it's cover but I did this time and was predictably wrong. That said, that dissonance between minstrel and man is what makes engaging some contemporary hip hop and R&B so confounding and frustrating. Many of these men and women of color, across class, know better. They do. They adopt over the top ignorant ass personalities for one perceived higher aim, the dough. They got up, got out and got something by any means necessary and seem to have lost all perspective on social and moral consequences of their business. For example, Plies offered this in response to Terence J's queries about the source of his success, "I don't follow the trends in hip hop and its worked for me so far." Really, Plies? How so? Explicit sex talk and obvious samples are going against the grain?
What was relatively unique about Plies's BET appearance was his decision to use his few minutes of airtime to speak words of encouragement to the predominantly Black teen audience, stating reflexively, "It's cool to be a successful Black man." Now, what Plies and others continually need to call into question is how they define success. This inclination among many youth of color and hip hop fans to defend and laud economic advancement above all else is foolish and fatal. We all remember Biggie's "Juicy." As fond as I am of the song, I was always bothered by that ad-lib that opens the song:
Yeah, this album is dedicated to all the teachers that told me
I'd never amount to nothin', to all the people that lived above the
buildings that I was hustlin' in front of that called the police on
me when I was just tryin' to make some money to feed my daughters,
and all the niggaz in the struggle, you know what I'm sayin'?
I say kudos to all those upstairs neighbors who ratted Christopher Wallace out. Drug dealing, however penny-anty, is indefensible. It destroys lives and families and feeding one's daughter doesn't excuse for pimping or pushing [insert drug] on someone else's. This is a basic concept but one with which few of these performers are confronted.
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Comments
1.
jburrell says:
I tell you, so much of cultural policing is about propriety not parity. They bleep the sexually explicit but not the misogyny.
06/16/2008 at 10:14 AM
2.
professorf says:
Normally I would've used an entry like this to solicit signatures for my Fire Rocsi and Terrence J campaign, but your review of Plies and their interview has to put this effort to rest, at least for today.
06/13/2008 at 10:40 AM
3.
mb83 says:
you always bring that fire JB! so on point.
your analysis of the white boy audience members is so useful particularly if you've seen the video. I'm beginning to wonder if there was ever a line between homoeroticism and hyper masculinity in hip hop.
also "wet wet" caught my attention for another reason. it's bleeped on atlanta radio but of course there are arguably far worse descriptions that don't get the bleep. Similarly, lil' wayne's use of "menstrual" is bleeped too though "shut up b*tch swallow" make the air.
what a world.
06/12/2008 at 4:58 PM