little dude, you’re going to listen to all sorts of music as you grow up. Your mom and I will make sure of that. Maybe it’s because the only music I recall listening to growing up was Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler (don’t get me wrong, that’s probably one of the greatests songs ever written, but I digress…) and some old Bill Cosby concerts on 8-tracks. I could probably recreate the entire comedy-concert Bill Cosby Himself, if you gave me a day or so to practice, and to find a working 8-track player.
Your mom is a big music fan, too, and I don’t think there was an awful lot of music in her house, either, so we’ve talked about the sorts of music we’re going to play for you.
I won’t get into what we’ll play, right now, because that’s all a surprise. Keep your pants on. What I did stop by to say was, simply, you may not listen to the Black Eyed Peas, because I fear that listening to their music will just make you dumber.
Let’s start with the fact that they were once a rapping/singing/dance group oh so many years ago, but as time went by they saw themselves surpassed by other groups and quick startups. They stayed out of the limelight, although it was obvious they wanted to get there.
So, a few years back, they added another person to their all-guy group — a woman named Fergie, who can sing like crazy. And that added a whole new element, because once you add a singer to any rap song, you’ve got a hit ready to go. You’ve got a model that easily replicable and with a model (people say Fergie’s very attractive) in your group, it should be easy to put the pieces together and add some sex appeal to your videos. I guess that doesn’t really make them dumb, or not worth listening to — they’re obviously very savvy businesspeople.
It’s the music, little dude. It’s the music that will make you dumber.
Let’s start with their big song from a few years back titled: Let’s get it started. Wow! What a great anthem for dull, lifeless parties. I can imagine that people all over the world have played this at the beginning of their parties, just to mark the beginning of a night of fun. I’ll bet they even played the song a little laters, after everybody’d shown up and had a few drinks in them. And I’ll bet the song came on again after everyone left, and whoever was awake at the time got up to turn it off.
There’s honestly nothing wrong with this song — until you find out there’s a different, earlier version. Yeah, the original version is actually called: Let’s get retarded. Seriously! And it’s easy to find because it’s on the album. The version everyone’s heard, and which you are very likely to hear in the future, came out after the album dropped. More marketing genius from the Peas — you bought the album for the song, only to realize you’d have to go back out and buy the single you actually wanted to hear. I shouldn’t really have to say anything about the inappropriateness of this song. It’s the fact that the word “retarded” gets thrown around about 9-thousand times during its short four minutes.
Sure, the BEPs could say they meant “retarded” as in “ka-razy!” or “Funked-up!” or something as silly, byt they didn’t. They went and changed the lyrics. Know what happened when I told my students at school that the word “stupid” was actually used in place of the word “cool?” They told me that was retarded.
The second song I don’t want you to listen to is: My Humps, which should be followed with a colon and the second half of the title : A Treatife Upon The Womanly fhape — the Topf af well af the Bottomf because it’s funny to see that old English where they made their Ss look like Fs.
Anyhow, some people say this song is an expression of anti-Sexism; it’s Fergie explaining, through lines like:
I drive these brothers crazy,
I do it on the daily,
They treat me really nicely,
They buy me all these ice-ys.
dolce & Gabbana,
Fendi and then Donna
Caring, they be sharin’
All their money got me wearin’ fly
Brother I ain’t askin,
They say they love my ass in
Seven Jeans, True Religion,
I say no, but they keep givin’
So I keep on takin’
And no I ain’t TAKEN
We can keep on datin’
I keep on demonstrating.
that she’s not about to be made into some sort of arm candy. Later in the song, Fergie explains that she’s not going to be beholden to any man, but that she will let them buy her all sorts of nice things and get in fights over her, because, apparently, that means she is control of the fact that she’s used a s apiece of arm candy, void of any personality. I think that message is supposed to be there somewhere, but it’s difficult to find it behind all those commercials placed in the song. More marketing genius! I need to buy some new pants.
So how is this song going to make you dumber? It portrays men as idiots, willing to do anything for a woman, and it makes women stoop pretty low in order to get men to behave that way. It says nothing about the problems behind treating women simply as body parts (and even allows women to do it for the sake of attention and belongings).
And the third reason you should not listen to the Black Eyed Peas? The song Fergilicious. Why? It’s more of that treating of women as objects and men as morons thing that made the last song so popular. It has Fergie talking about how she makes the boys go “loco” with her body. She talks about how she works out, like, all the time in order to get that body. And all the guys do in the song is spell things for her.
That’s pretty low. You should never date a girl who’s only interested in keeping you attracted to her. You need a girl with bigger brains than “lumps.” And if you do succumb to your boyhood hormones and stupidly follow some chick around, for whatever reason, I don’t want you to refer to her (whether you’re with her or whether you’re lying about your exploits with your friends) as “delicious” or “tastey.”
And notice the spelling of that last word in the previous paragraph, little dude. That’s right, I said: “tastey.”
That’s how stupid the Black Eyed Peas’ music will make you. It will make you spell things incorrectly. Because part of the song requires Will.i.am, to spell out two words. He spells “D-to the-E-to the-L-I-C-I-O-U-S” just fine, but he stiumbles on “T-to the A-to the S-T-E-Y” and comes off looking like an idiot. Unless you’re a teenager. Then that’s how you spell it anyway, and this song simply enforces your awful spelling ability.
Their music is everywhere, and it’s part of our culture. They play it on the radio, during tv shows, in movies, at stores, in elevators…everywhere you go, you have the opportunity to hear these three songs by the same group, and each one of them is eating away at the thinking portions of your brains.
Imagine if you were in a room with all three songs playing at once — you’d come out incapacitated!
I never thought it would come to this, little dude. I never did. Never thought I’d warn you about any music — that I’d let you explore whatever you wanted to explore and hear the types of music you anted to hear, but I’ve got to put my foot down right now and say: You may not listen to the Black Eyed Peas. They’ll make you dumb.
