Kanye West (feat. Mos Def) -- "Drunk and Hot Girls" (2007)

Driving around town looking for the best spot

For the drunk and hot girls

Up in the club -- looky here what we got! 

Some drunk and hot girls

Stop dancin' with your girlfriend 
And come dance with me

Stop talkin' 'bout your boyfriend 
Since he is not me

Stop running up my tab 
'Cause these drinks is not free

You drunk and hot girl

Call up the Guinness folks, boys and girls.  We've just set a new record for the fewest times 2 or 3 lines heard a song before writing a post about it: one!  Actually, it's more like 0.7 -- I never got to the end of the song until after I had started the post.

Here's the deal.  I'm riding my bike today, with my iPod on "shuffle," and suddenly I hear Kanye West sing the opening line of this song: "We go through too much bullshit/Just to mess with these drunk and hot girls."  

At the Rubicon

He pretty much had me right there.  By the time Yeezy got through the second verse, I was saying to myself "Alea iacta est!" -- "The die is cast!" (As my fellow classicists will know, that is what Julius Caesar declaimed when he crossed the Rubicon River and entered Italy proper at the head of the 13th Legion, violating Roman law and precipitating the bloody civil war that ended with Caesar prevailing over Pompey's forces and becoming the dictator of the Roman empire).

My son gave me Kanye's Graduation CD (which sold 437,000 copies the very first day it was released in 2007) as a Christmas present.  I immediately put a few of the singles from the album on my iPod and I've listened to them a lot.  But I don't think I ever listened to the entire album.  So although I've owned this song for several years, I think today was the first time I had heard it.

Musically, "Drunk and Hot Girls" is a waltz performed at a sluggish tempo -- almost as if the singer is a bit drunk or disoriented.  It samples a song by a German progressive rock band that includes the phrase "drunky hot bowls," which Kanye claims he thought was "drunk and hot girls."



The song tells a cautionary tale of a young man in a hurry.  Like so many other young (and some not-so-young) males, Kanye is trying to cut to the chase here and bypass the usual courtship rituals.  

Drunk and hot girl

Instead of going to a club and plying a young hottie with alcohol, Kanye goes looking for a hottie who is already loaded.  That is often an effective strategy, saving time and money.


This time, it doesn't work out.  The drunk and hot girl that Kanye zeroes in on  annoys him by talking too much about her boyfriend.  And she's not drunk enough -- he has to buy her more drinks.

Hot but not drunk girl

Things soon go from bad to worse:  

I don't wanna drop your friends off, I just want you

You drunk and hot girl

You wanna sit down but we hit the drive-through

You drunk and hot girl

Please don't fall asleep, baby, we almost back

Please don't throw up in the car, we almost crash

Oh now you sober, how'd I know you'd say that?

You drunk and hot girl

In other words, things quickly go from bad (she wants Kanye to drive her friends home and then stop at a restaurant before getting down to business) to worse (it looks like she is going to throw up in his car) to worst (she sobers up before he can close the deal).  Quel désastre!

Drunk but not hot girl

Before I bring this post to a close, permit me to share an anecdote about an old girlfriend of mine who was also drunk and hot -- a little more drunk than hot, I will admit.  

On New Year's Eve 1972, I was sampling the nightlife in my hometown of Joplin, Missouri, with a good friend and our dates when my female companion -- who was a bit of a binge drinker -- urgently instructed my friend to pull his very nice car over to the curb.  Fortunately, he was able to stop the car in time for her to open the back door and ralph into the gutter rather than spewing all over his back seat.  My friend was not a fan of this young lady either before or after this particular incident took place, and I will never forget him saying to me "Pard, you've got to do something about her" later that evening.

Here's "Drunk and Hot Girls":

Here's a link you can use to buy this song from iTunes:

Here's a link you can use to buy it from Amazon: