A FREAK WITHOUT WARNING
As a child, there was no greater thrill than being naughty. Learning to ride a bike or write in cursive seems insignificant in the long, dark shadow of me and my brother’s secret stockpile of Playboys (unwisely stolen from our father and even more foolishly hidden under the living room couch). Oh, to be preteen again, decoding nature’s sweetest message. A peek of hair, a National Geographic pecker, so many things sent my mind into a flurry of wonder and excitement, shame and hope. Unfortunately, it takes more than an anatomy textbook to titillate me these days. That’s why I’d like to take this opportunity to celebrate some truly special musicians. Daring artists who have a knack for nastiness that have kids all across the land hiding under their covers with their ears glued to a set of headphones, gladly risking punishment for the irrepressible thrill of learning about the nasty.
CLARENCE CARTER
Clarence Carter is all about fantasy. In more than one song, he boasts about his qualifications to love the ladies. They include (but are not limited to) a 16-inch dong and his ability to “touch you in places you forgot you had”. I first heard him on KDIA, the now-defunct AM soul station in Oakland, with a live version of his hit, “Strokin’”. I was delightfully scandalized that they could play such a filthy song on AM radio. In the culminating point of the song, Clarence explains how he can tell his woman is “sassified” by the way she calls out his name: “CLARENCECARTER!CLARENCECARTER!OOooOOh, shit! CLARENCE CARTER!” His freaky intent rings clear in his laugh, a mischievous, baritone, “Heh, heh, HEH!”. To add further to the intriguing persona of Clarence Carter, he’s blind. You know what they say, lose one sense and the other four become more pronounced. Watch out, Ray Charles.
LIL KIM
Lil Kim is the nastiest woman in show business. I would stop short of calling her a role model for the youth, but her songs about getting paid and getting off are funny as hell. In my favorite track off of “Hardcore”, she spins a tale of a man who kept her in Chanel perfume and Gucci sheets, perfect in all ways except for the most crucial: “Something I wanted but never was pushy/the motherfucker never ate my pussy”.
Lil Kim is not charitable to the horizontally challenged. “The sex was wack/ a four-stroke creep/ jumped on the dick and rode his ass to sleep/ he called the next week asking why i ain’t beeped him/ I told him: I thought your ass was still sleeping”.
“Dreams(of fucking an R&B dick)” is about getting freaky with a wide spectrum of R&B guys from R. Kelly to the Harlem Boys Choir. “What’s up with that Prince cat?/ He be lookin’ fruity, but he still could eat the booty”.
I heard that Naz wrote most of her lyrics, but I could give two shits. I like to imagine Lil Kim 30 years down the road, sagging, starting to look a little rough and crazed, but still flamboyant and enticing men half her age into cunnilingus.
BLOWFLY
Make no mistake, Blowfly writes parodies that would straighten Weird Al’s hair. Clark Kent to the glittering insect super hero is Clarence Reid, who worked for 70’s soul label, TK Productions. The persona of Blowfly emerged during “take-five” breaks where he would keep the musicians entertained by performing filthy parodies of pop and soul hits. Everyone thought it was hilarious, so he began to put out records (twelve in all). Often, the musicians backing-up Blowfly on the parodies were the same musicians who performed on the original versions of the songs.
Many of Blowfly’s records were damn shitty, but the early stuff was usually funny and the album covers cannot be beat. Some of my favorite parodies include, “Bad Fuck” (“Bad Luck” by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes) chronicling the woes of unsatisfying love. A more triumphant number is “Spread Your Cheeks” (“Swear To God by Frankie Valley) where Blowfly espouses the joys of anal sex. “Spread your cheeks, you can do something you never did/Spread your cheeks, and don’t worry about having a kid/ Spread your cheeks and let me serenade your mmm-mm-mmm”. Toward the end of this song, however, the lighthearted campiness is replaced by genuine disturbance as Blowfly starts to go off, “Spread your cheeks! I have some sandpaper!/ Spread your cheeks! I have a hacksaw!”
PRINCE
I’m generally distrustful of people who don’t like Prince. It seems that the people who don’t like Prince are cowards. They’re scared of sex, scared of style, and scared of life. Besides writing some of the best pop songs of all time, he also wrote some of the dirtiest songs of all time. One of his first albums features a photo of himself buck naked and riding a pegasus. His entire career seems to echo this sentiment.
On his “Dirty Mind” album, he has a song called, “Sister” which is so scandalous, it makes “Kissin’ Cousins” come across like a nursery rhyme. “She doesn’t wear no underwear/ Says it only gets in her hair/ Honey’s got a funny way of stopping the juice”. Ew!
Prince is brave and he’s all about truth. He was messing with gender roles long before it was hip to do so. I love that he can French kiss his guitar, or wear ass-less pants, or dry hump the floor and squares hate him for it. I love that he’s all about sex, whether Darling Nikki is masturbating in public, Wendy and Lisa are in the bath tub together, or his date has a pocket full of used rubbers. Prince is for the underdog (Controversy), for seizing the day (1999), and, of course, for getting it on. I could never say everything there is to say about such a complicated and prolific artist, especially in so limited a space. But, in summation, I would like to say, if you don’t like Prince, you are probably an asshole.