Newer Envelopes to be Pushed
By Andrew Roman
Posted On March 14, 2006

Kudos to Three 6 Mafia for helping make the word “pimp” a touch more family-friendly during the recent Academy Awards ceremony. A hearty “thank you” also goes out to the Academy itself, the producers of the show and anyone who may have been lobbying for the “Reach Out and Love a Pimp” campaign. Your hard work has paid off. The word “pimp” (which I’ve already used three times in this piece) is now that much closer to universal palatability.

Since the performance of the sure-to-be-a-classic “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp” - a performance outdone only by the group’s all-consonants-all-the-time acceptance speech - quite a bit of outrage has emerged from those who say the song’s message is profoundly negative, stereotypical and destructive. Some reject those claims, making banal (and predictable) comparisons to musical trends of old. A caller on Laura Ingraham’s radio program commented that those who were offended by the casual use of the word “pimp” need only look back to the indignation of previous generations to understand how popular music has always raised the eyebrows of the older generation.

(“Pimp” count now up to seven).

While true to a point, this is flawed. Those who contrast the message and critical impact of today’s music on the culture at large to previous musical juggernauts – Elvis, the Beatles, et al – are missing something.

The Beatles’ arrival in America in February 1964 was one of the Twentieth Century’s most important cultural phenomenons. Everything about them set every norm on its tush. Above all, their music sounded unlike anything that had ever come before it. Yet, while the four Liverpool lads fused to create a revolutionary sound that set the planet spinning off its cultural axis, what exactly were those radical mop tops singing about?

The same old thing everyone always sang about: love.

Okay, I’m oversimplifying just a tad to make a point, but go back and peruse their lyrics from the early days of Beatlemania. They wanted to hold our hands, they had arms that longed to hold us and they even felt fine. Unless there are some hidden-in-the-vault bootleg recordings I’m simply not aware of, I don’t think the Beatles ever sang about a drive-by shooting on Penny Lane, or Lady Madonna being a ho. I’m almost positive George Harrison never suggested busting a cap in someone.

And how about Elvis Presley? There’s no question his pulsating pelvis sent shockwaves across America when he gyrated onto the scene in 1956. However, a rudimentary look at the King in action by anyone with half-an-open-eyelid would have noticed that Presley didn’t really move nearly as much as Fred Astaire or Gene Kelley did – and not nearly as well. It was the sound and style of the music that offended Mom and Dad. Glance at the lyrics of any of Presley’s early hits. He loved us tender, took a walk down lonely street, asked us not to be cruel and was lonesome tonight. Sure, he told us we weren’t nothing but hound dogs, but be honest. Who out there would rather be called a dog than a bitch?

Shall we peer at the Motown catalogue for a moment? When did Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations and Diana Ross ever use the “n” word in one of their songs?

While we’re at it, how about taking a look at the later years of the 1960s – often proferred as the most “rebellious” time in popular music’s history? There’s no question the glorification of drug use was a hot theme during those hazy crazy days of free love and sugar cubes (clearly a very negative message). And I’ll grant you the socialist overtones, but if Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix ever sang about humiliating and degrading women, killing cops, emptying Uzis into one another and glorifying gang warfare, I missed it.

My brush is kind of broad here, I’ll admit. I understand artists push envelopes, and I am not in favor of rejecting new trends and fashions. However, there are some things that simply should never become “mainstream,” regardless of what decade it is or what style of music is threatening to breach societal boundaries – not because of some desire to impose a kind of censorship on any artists or performers, but because regardless of the context, being a pimp is never good, and referring to women as “bitches” and “ho’s” can never be passé.

As a father of twin fourteen year old girls I can deal with them listening to music that just doesn’t appeal to me aesthetically. I was fourteen once, too. Personally, I prefer real drums and lots of guitars to programmed electronics and sampled segments of songs that other people recorded with real musical instruments years ago, but that’s just me.

I just don’t accept nor tolerate the “pimping” of violence, humiliation and degradation as mainstream. No one should.

Marvin Gaye once asked, “What’s going on?”

Good question.

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