I ♥ ASS said the bumper sticker I saw today while out driving - except, can you believe it, the heart was upside-down, like an ass! It looked just like a nice, curvy bottom! Teehee. It was a message just for me. Religious types say God works in mysterious ways; I just say Well, there it is - a sign that it's time for me to finally do this Kool Keith post.
What's that you say? A girl with high self-esteem and several Women's Studies courses under her belt should know better? A porno-fiend caped rap crusader will only make me cry into my Hello Kitty blanket? He'll eventually find the hips of another woman to get enveloped in, so I should move on? Oh dear, I'm sorry, I'm sure you have valid points but Keith just arrived and I can't hear you over the sounds of our vigorous lovemaking. He's good to me. He doesn't charge me for twice-daily pelvic exams. He wears a cape (rad), and doesn't name-drop even though he is friends with Ced Gee and Doomsy (SO RAD). And he's dependable - Keith's bread and (sexy) butter is brag-raps, conquest-raps, songs about spanking and biting, tales of headstands and whipped cream, lube and rope, Silly String, stripper shoes, librarian shoes, insisting he gets to be both the cowboy and the Indian when we play cowboys & Indians, insisting I ride the mechanical bull while eating frosting out of the can without a spoon, and for putting his left leg in and shaking it all about. He also goes, um, deep when it comes to romance, but nobody seems to notice. He's not known for his emotional-connection raps. After years of listening to him and obsessing, though, I'm telling you: Keith wants to make sweet, tender love to me until the sun comes up, and watch this, I can prove it:
1. You’re blonde and weird; let’s get naked, dollface. You're Dutch/Argentinean, yes? Or wait, no - Persian/Irish? I love you. - “Break U Off,” Diesel Truckers (2004).
“Don't get me wrong now, I like 'em blonde with long hair
They call me Suavere, I like her underwear
She don't mind posin, she don't even care
I like her atmosphere, plus she's out there
The type of girl to break out, yo we outta here
House and closets, model with a lot of gear
She love to clown and pose, spread 'em on the chair
Talk on the rooftop, when she wanna feel some air...
With a see-through nightgown, she got to be Spanish
Brassiere, baby come over here
The mamacita, lick the ice off her back when I freak her
She look Brazilian sometime, her face look unique-a.”
Long blonde hair with an ethnically ambiguous face? UH OF COURSE THIS SONG’S ABOUT ME so it had to start the list. Indulge me, please. She's (meaning me, the romantic lead) blonde, “plus she's out there,” meaning she might just be the type to have a pic of Harold Rhodes for her laptop background and a blog in which she obsesses over rap lyrics. It would also help if she had an absurdly feminine body shape, but this combination of qualities is just impossible to find in an actual human lady. You're dreamin, kid.
Blonde girls are like unusual, highlighted birds to Keith. I get it. He's from the Bronx; blondes are probably rare there. Keith was apparently so smitten he had to take to the microphone and count the ways he loves his fair-haired oddball baby doll space cadet(te?), including her ability to make love to the camera. It is a common theme in sex songs. The big thing on the radio right now is “Double Dip,” an awful/catchy song about repeat coitus. When you texted that pic of your backside to me, the dude says, My reply was like, “Give that right to me.” Points for straighforwardness, sir, but none for romance, originality, or mastery of words that rhyme with “me” (there are about a thousand, for the record). It is boring. Just a boring series of words over an awful/catchy beat. By contrast, Keith somehow makes “spread 'em on the chair” sound fresh and witty, like no other young lady in history thought to pose nakedly for her man, to put her leg like that, open her mouth a little, yes love, just like that - gorgeous! (snap, snap). The fact that he asked me to wear a Hello Kitty onesie and some thigh-highs just before I mounted the mechanical bull and started posing? Just part of the romance, baby.
Basically just a list of all the things he likes about his lady, “Break U Off,” also gets a nod for the lines “Tastes so good, her body like Krispy Kreme” (yum!) and “I love your sweet eyelashes” (aww).
2. Your body! 36-23-JesusChrist. – “Telephone Girlfriend,” The Lost Masters (2003)
“Answer the phone, honey
You lay on my chest like Max Julien, Cleopatra status
Coke bottle shape, Miss Nubian
Watch your sheer nightgown in the bathroom light
With camel toe showin, I can tell you tight
Loose jeans don't work, my job is to convert.”
Never in mah life have I heard an MC who pays such close attention to a woman's sleeping and lounging garments. Keith does this over and over in his verses - descriptions of cotton and lace, silk, that satin thong in “Sexy Girl.” He loves drapey, soft things on skin, and he'll tell you about it over a beat. How sweet. This verse made Top 10 because of that attention to detail, and because of his appreciation of a nightgown, an old-timey garment that your grandma wore, as opposed to one of those lace bodystockings from AA or a corset or something.
I could do without that stupid camel toe part, but the reference to Cleopatra Jones is dope and means Keith clearly likes watching girls with unusual first names who accentuate the waist and wear tight shirts. I also believe Keith has stated his fondness for a mean WHR more creatively in other songs (“Business lady with the Anita Baker haircut and a Coke bottle body” - “I'm Dangerous”), but any lyric about a mean WHR is clearly a lyric about me so it gets a spot on this list. (I'm easy)
3. I like to hear your voice sometimes - not just type messages to you on my phone's tiny keyboard. - “How Sexy,” Dr. Dooom 2 (2008)
“I met you, wanted me to buy porno
girl you had it in your hormones
Last night before you talked to me on the phone
I asked you twice to bite my ice cream cone
C'mon be serious-
this ain't typin a few words back and forth like kids; we grown.”
YES. THIS.
“We've seen each other naked,” says every girl in the world, including the girl whose blog you are currently reading, “can we sometimes talk, please? Hear each other's voices?”
I saw a funny bumper sticker about ass! And I made cupcakes, do you want one? I had a dream that I had a kitten! What do you think French Montana and Push Montana talk about at the annual Montana Family Picnic? That new Jeezy n' Freddie has a lower BPM than I normally like but man when I hear it in the Civic it makes me wanna get back in the narcotics game, like the “Black Betty”/airport scene in Blow! They're having a Dudes Who Will Not be Seeing Logan Naked conference on stage at the Meadowlands! (well, except for Waka. I believe “He could get it” is the expression-?). 9th Wonder adds “Member of the Universal Zulu Nation” to his self-intro (“Producer/teacher/rapper…”); is that true?? Does he still adhere to the 15 Beliefs, or is he a detractor? There's a human who calls himself “Black Cobain,” the fuck is that about! They play Frank Ocean on Power 106; is this dope, or a sign of the apocalypse? Dude oh my god Spader simply killed it on The Office! That story about Pyrex is so interesting, and it's a perfect mix of rap music and science, my two greatest loves! I got ____ and ____ at Amoeba today, and then I brought them home and laid them on my floor and rolled around nakedly on them! Wait, why'd your phone go to voicemail again? Hey boy, let's talk, cuz WE GROWN. I mean, aren't we?
It's not that I'm chatty; it's that the world is amazing. I think about some dope, weird, silly, dumb stuff and I want to lay it on you in actual conversations once in a while. Actually, I think about all kinds of nice stuff I wanna lay on you, conversationally and otherwise. RAWR.
4. You're not boring, even when we're doing boring things. - “Telephone Girlfriend” again
“In the living room, on the couch and sofa
Mature female, you act older
No problem at all when I walk with you to the mall
Circle the parking lot, you park and hot (? I think)
At night you booty call, we order things from Pink Dot.”
Same song, different romantic scenario. Romance doesn't have to be dinner upstairs at El Cid (though the empanadas are so SO good) or getting flowers at work; it's living-room lounging, buying dumb stuff together at CVS on Tuesday after work, then you rolling your eyes during one of my Power 106 dorkout sessions while sitting in traffic (“Racks on racks on racks, LEH'GO”). If the person you’re with is fun even when you’re doing the most mundane things, you’ve got it - a magical, perfect coupling, a lovely picture of relationship beauty - and you should hold onto it. See also: the person you're with embellishing life accomplishments just to make you smile (“First man from New York City housing to have his face on a $30 bill”), and that person also somehow being more interesting than the NBA playoffs (“I turned the Lakers off, you can't stop my afterparty/A fifth of vodka and latex, drink your Bacardi” - “Regular Girl”).
This track also includes massaging, a thing that is both a classically romantic gesture and a thing that dudes are deliciously skilled at because they have more upper-body strength than women. It's science. “Baby oil on your toes while you get wet to my flows” gets an honorable mention as well, simply because I love it. Hi Mom!
Until he says “I love your purple onesie” or “Darling you look spectacular when we're in apt. 680 and you poke your hip out like that,” I will have to settle for “I see a packed house in different color bodysuits” (“Don’t Crush It”) as the best lyric Keith wrote with me in mind. That cover model, by the way, is Spantaneeus Xtasy. She has starred in Crimson Thighs, Butt-nanza, and The Boobcage 2, which is poorly made and does a terrible disservice to the first Boobcage (don't even bother with it, I'm serious).5. Wack rappers be quiet. The world is wondrous and so strange and I'd like to tell you about it with my patented colorful and stylish narrative technique. – “Plastic World,” Sex Style (1997)
“As I do see...(??) wack beer commercials
Some rappers are bought and puppeteered like the Ninja Turtles
From Manhattan I heat up, yo light up Times Square
I make noise like open high hats on your cheap snare
No promotional shows, girls wear cornrows
People with hooded sweaters on crack keep me on my toes
I walk with straw hats, fake glasses in the projects
Bring my ghost image so tense on the line of scrimmage
Playing my numbers, waiting for the 5 to come
Spaghetti out the window, people acting dumb
Fire hazards wake the neighbors, your family's nosy
I come and go as I please on blockhead MCs
You bought new sneakers, no car, scrambling on the corner
I'm not the star you are, the city's fallen far
By mechanism, you're on my tip
Stay off my penis, you've duplicated me for years.”
Go weird or go home, that's what I always say. Keith lost that nice bouncy “Poppa Large” flow somewhere along the way - spring of '95, I believe it was - and goddammit if he didn't made up for it with lyrics like these. References to a drum kit, terrible MCs who are inexplicably successful, and the weirdos prowling the city: this song is romantic because to a lady English major, interesting, well-written rhymes are the sweet love-nectar of life. Also, good storytellers are the highest form of human. Good storytellers get women naked, if they storytell in a way that is romantic yet non-corny (a tricky mix). Sex Style was dope stuff, late-'90s weird-hop, streamofconsciousness-sex-hop, and Keith had no challengers, really (except RA, maybe? at times? Slick Rick and Too $hort, no - they ruled the '80s sexrap industry but mostly they put out plain old intercourse verses, free from BDSM and mechanical bulls and other Keith-ish weirdisms). Just wait til 2009, though, when a scrappy young buck from the Bay will stroll in and announce he's Paris Hilton and his chain look like lightning - he'll polarize the Internet! Anyway, Keith is the rap Trav Bickle, describing NYC as cluttered and greasy and sin-filled, but instead of making me recoil in disgust when he talks about how dirty it is, it makes me want to go there. (This also serves as a metaphor for our sexual life together.) Oh and “stay off my penis” is just funny; no two ways about it*. Romance cannot survive without some humor thrown in.
*I should do a post about mentions of penis in lyrics over the years; seems like a good use of my time but I have a feeling I'll just keep putting it off. I should also listen to more Gang Gang Dance and finally read The Executioner's Song but that is probably not happening either.
6. Brokest rapper you know (hi Sean P!) - “Let Me Talk to You,” Masters of Illusion (2000)
“I respect you for going with me to Burger King, riding with me in my lil jalopy. Stickin by me, through thick and thin. Goin to White Castle and stuff...ridin around in like a little '65 Chevy. Can't afford them Benzes, we can only fantasize.”
We forget Keith’s a real person sometimes because of his superb, otherworldly brain, the fact that he was so spacey Thelonious stopped taking his phone calls and he got kicked out of both the Cosmic Echoes and the Arkestra*, and the fact that his overall demeanor is like that of an alien doing an impression of Al Goldstein doing an impression of a dude asking for change in front of the 99Cents store at Willoughby and La Brea. But if Keith’s cut, he bleeds. He likes waffles for breakfast (oh god Keith me too! Me TOO we are meant to be togetherrrrr). He turns up “Owner of a Lonely Heart” when it comes on the car radio for a life-is-wonderful rockout sesh just like everybody else. And he likes his partner to appreciate him for more than his money, because he is huuuuman and he needs to be looooved/just like everybody else doessssss. Keith likes playing games but only the sexy kind, and if you are a lowdown dirty female thinking that you can manipulate him into catching feelings and paying your student loan bill, well, you will probably get a mean-spirited rap song written about you. He wrote groupie-decimating “Dolly and the Rat Trap,” remember. We're all aware that when the feelings are real and the love is true, cash is often a nice supplement to a romantic relationship (thanks, Jay-Z and Fabolous songs from 10 years ago!). But when cash becomes so terribly important that romance needs it in order to stay alive, why, that's not romance at all! Love don't live here anymore!, say all the other songs by Jay-Z and Fabolous.
Again, the details of a sexy courtship are what Keith is so good at, uh, nailing (har) - “Bringing extra underwear to the picnic,” “Drinkin cups of tea by the fireplace,” the importance of doing certain things to her in certain places with care and enthusiasm (I cannot describe these actions or these places here, as I am a lady). And reciprocity, darling: “When a woman loves a man,” he says, “she'll clean the grime off your feet.” This is true. And when a man loves a woman, he makes a cute cartoon video to accompany one of his most romantic songs. PS, Keith! Benzes are cornball and I like you better without one. I'd rather bob my head in a ragtop (preferably a monkey-green one*) any damn way.
* This is something I just made up and found amusing. So it stays in the post.
7. I did this for you, and that for you, because I’m a nice person. Oh and did I mention I have a Seville? – “Supergalactic Lover,” Black Elvis/Lost in Space (1999)
“Diamond rings with roses, I put pearls in your noses
Put you in heels, paid your school loans and tons of bills
I ripped eight thousand threw a stack up in the fireplace
You couldn't believe it, your mom was there with a sad face...
I walked in with cape, with jewels on, you know I'm the captain
Outside by the Cadillac three brothers rappin, soundin wack and
I kept on steppin, legend status, you know my rep and
I see you at 8, turn your pager off, don't be late...
Supergalactic lover
Comin from the projects on the hill
Supergalactic lover
*In my monkey-green ragtop Seville”
“Darling let me tackle that Chase bill for you, and here’s some Phillip Lim stripper-librarian heels in a pretty oxblood color. I'll pick you up at 8:01 PST in my Detroit-made sedan.”
“OH NO, I couldn’t possib—AW DAMN. WELL, OKAY KEITH, if you insist.”
“OH NO, I couldn’t possib—AW DAMN. WELL, OKAY KEITH, if you insist.”
I can pay my own way but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the offer - even though a supergalactic lover will always take a back seat to a superman lover in my heart.
The student loan hustle is one of the greatest ever concocted by the federal government. What a pain. I need relief. I'm willing to accept cash aid as a form of this relief. I also like pretty, overpriced shoes. And it's my dream to be able to stop my days of worryation. And I like Cadillacs. And even though I do not even give a tiny bit of a fuck that Thom Yorke sometimes shows up and spazzes out at the Low End Theory, because he is boring and because it's not the year 1997, '98, or '99, I do give a big huge fuck about everything Keith still does even though it's not '97 or 8 or 9. The captain put spaceship pictures up on the wall and paid my student loan balance, so if he tells me to turn my pager off, I'm doing it. Being bossed around by someone with more money than you adds an interesting power dynamic to a relationship, and can manifest itself in some pretty intense ways in the bedroom. Or, um, so I am told? (Hi again, Mom!). This one also contains the best mention of “ragtop” since “Bombs Over Baghdad.”
8. ROAD TRIP. - “I Want You to Be,” Lost Masters, Vol. 2 (2005)
“You made me who I am now, my mind is under all different types
of enjoyin weather in the deep relation
Your feelings are ready for elevation
I need you now to meet me at the station
I need you nowww to meet me at the station
You gotta be there on time...
I can't think no more, I cry to myself by the bed
I can't sit by the sink no more
Your perfume lingers in my room with the overjoy and pain
I think about you even when it doesn't rain”
People who don't like road trips are soulless, like Republicans and Serato users. Jot that down. Remember it always.
There's lots of “let's run away together” in Avett Brothers songs, Band of Horses songs. Fleet Foxes. Bon Iver. Elliott Smith. My Morning Blitzen Trapper Drive-By ugghhh too tired to finish the list. I have numerous bearded boyfriends with albums full of white girl swoon-y road trip classics. And then there are songs that just make you feel like running away with someone when you hear them (Flying Burrito Brothers, The Band, Bill Callahan, Cass McCombs, side A of Anodyne). You'll notice that there are no rap groups, or individual MCs, among the musical persons I just named. Keith steps up in this case, though, courting me by tapping into my deeply feminine need to leave it all behind. Even though this song has some horrible singing and Keith kind of phones it in lyrically - lazy cliches about riding horses, analogies about love being like a car or like the road on which you're driving a car, and he even rhymes wife and life (a wack '80s R&B move, a lazy cliche) - in the end he saves the day with the “let's run away together” lazy cliche. Because it works, that's why. Responsibility and the daily grind are not romantic (grinding daily, however: very romantic). The whole getting-the-you-know-what-outta-Dodge/Echo Park life plan is a cliche for a reason, people: the laydeez love it. I am a lady, and I'm telling you it's a fact.
That “I can't sit by the sink no more” line is so sad and touching too. Shit just got really real; DAMN. (All her lady-things are there, you see. Her lotions and perfumes. Brings back memories for the kid. Aw Keith.)
9. Your face appeals to me, as does your commitment to your education. Also I have a rescue fantasy. – “Fine Girls,” Black Elvis/Lost in Space (1999)
“I like your pretty eyes
Tell me where you get your hair done, your face so clear
With fourteen carat diamonds in your ear
He beat you up, I'll eat you up, reheat you up
Come fix your life, make you my wife, improve in time
No wine and dine, don't waste my time, mature your mind...
You're that fine girl from high school, college graduate
Lady always on my mind, girl can you imagine it?...
Come here girl, I wanna talk to you
I wanna tell you a lot of things”
“Come here girl, I wanna talk to you” is standard game kicked at the bar/club/grocery store/DMV (or so I've heard about and seen in movies; dudes don't talk to me, unless they're at Amoeba, over 55, and looking for that same Mighty Diamonds record as me and keep bumping into my ass in the aisle. Or unless they're married. Or a cop). But when it comes to Keith and that Bronx lilt of his, such a line is extraordinary and not at all standard. I wanna tualk to you. He's so specific about what he likes about this particular lady, too - the eyes, the nice skin, the college degree. This song is like his version of “Ice Cream” but without the part complimenting the girl's rude, crabby demeanor. Keith likes 'em sweet. It all ventures into cliche territory, and because it's Keith he's still able to triumph, showing up at my door with some In-N-Out, a nice handwritten note, and something water-based in order to reduce friction between body parts. Horoscopes are a big collection of cliches too, but that doesn't mean they don't make me feel good (today for Aries: “The one who recognizes that there is something special in you will capture your heart.” AWW).
10. No means YES. - “Sexual Intruder,” Personal Album (2004)
I had to honor Personal Album somewhere in this post just on the strength of its song titles (“I Do What I Want”; “A Black Kid Who Think He’s White”; “Girl Wanna Kill Herself”). I would not have been able to live with myself otherwise.
“Lead singer up front, you feel me like The Temptations
The way I gave you the world
Send you to learn about the (M)oments, on a thousand vacations
With you sick in the hospital, I bought you the flowers
They were (B)lack (I)vory, they made you cry with heavy (E)motions
Your back and night was rubbed down professional
with sweet cucumber lotion, with all my time and devotion
You cried about the bills your ex-man had left you with
Throwin rocks into the ocean
I heard your (W)hispers all the way to my ear, on a foggy night
You walkin with one of your Pomeranians, 3 Dog Nights
With Pitts comin you was in shock
I couldn't let 3 dogs fight (I couldn't let 3 dogs fight)...
Waitin in the emergency room for your mild concussions
You knew your heart always and forever
Through the (H)eatwave, your body was rushin
You had to get to your own apartment, you didn't want to say with your cousin
Your mom always fussin, takin a train from the Grand (Graham) Central Station
When I was on stage, nothin could stop you from faintin
Grabbin my hand on the spot, you was scared under the shy (Chi) lights (Lites)
With apple bottoms on, jeans fittin tight
Beggin me to put on your direct light, in love like a sex slave
Sippin red Alize under the purple light, sexual intruder
Sexual intruder, I'm your sexual intruder...”
Weird-hop! Can't get enough! This song is a big collection of WTF, but sometimes you need that in a relationship. Boredom kills, you know; keep me guessing and I'll be yours forever. The whole storyline Keith lays out here, for example - huh? Was she attacked by dogs? Is her medical prognosis good? Did she and Keith do it in her hospital bed? I'll be thinking about all that later (I'll probably call you, since a text can't capture the raw emotion), but for now I want to swoon over the fact that KEITH MAKES CUTE PUNS OUT OF OLD R&B GROUP NAMES. It's romantic when someone uses a song to talk to you - in this case, Heatwave's “Always and Forever.” I can't believe Keith really flipped it and bounced it like that; I mean, it really is just like a dream to me that somehow came true, and I know tomorrow will still be the same, because Keith and I? We've got a life of love that won't ever change, and every day (I'm hoping) he'll love me his own special way. Keith's mention of the Temps' lead singer speaks to me as well, for I believe my feelings about the god David Ruffin are well-documented. Cloud Nine-era Temptations were fantastic. Puzzle People, yes of course. Psychedelic Shack, great. I like it all. But c'mon - nothing beats coked-up-Ruffin-era Temptations in my book/heart/soul.
Back to the song. Keith calls himself an intruder, and there's a clear element of Keith as the bawss here (because sweetheart that's what you signed up for as soon as you replied to that first MySpace message from him), but this song tells the story of a relationship between two willing grown-ups. He wants to dominate but not shame you, plus you can agree on a safe word ahead of time! A fulfilling erotic life can often involve expressions of submission, consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy role-play. Or, if you're still just 19 or 20: it more frequently involves staring, fantasizing, daydreaming, trying to distract yourself from daydreaming, writing rap songs, and being mad at the girl while also wanting her to put on a sundress and run away with you (“Usually I just stalk you and masturbate” - Ty). The power differential between Keith and his lady is only a pretend one, and besides, he could never scare anybody - he's got this innocence to him that's always there, even though he says rectum a thousand times on his albums. Sometimes it seems like Keith's talking sexy when he's really just trying to battle (“I roll wit globs and I come real sticky”), but for the most part he keeps it pretty straightforward (“Take Off Your Clothes”; “Take Off Your Panties”; “Girl Let Me Touch You”) and a lady has to respect that. Plus that lascivious, good-natured way about him, coupled with an NY borough accent, sorta makes him the Tracy Morgan of rap-?
The Temptations, “Since I Lost My Baby.” Written by Smokey R.!
mp3.
Bonus romance:
11. Kindness, hand-holding, compliments, etc. - “Let Me Talk to You” again
“My name is Keith
We got some nice things for the ladies...
Go get the ladies some flowers and stuff
Other people don't love them like we do. We care.”
Gentlemen, your crew is soft, Keith says. You take the industry too seriously. You live at home with your mom. You're wearing a cheap suit from Men's Wearhouse and I do NOT like the way you look. But your life's biggest tragedy, he says, is that you don't love your girl like you should. Start, immediately. Tell her (nicely) to kneel down to her kitten bowl, for starters, then shout sexy girl a bunch of times. Does she look sexy eating popcorn? Tell her! Take a lesson from the captain. (With your bitch ass.)
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