I'm like a dog in heat
A freak without warning
I have an appetite for sex
'Cause me so horny . . .
Ahh! Me so horny!
Me love you long time!
2 or 3 lines covers the full gamut from the sacred to the profane. Our last post was on the sacred end of the spectrum, but this one is profane with a capital P.
"Hip Hop 101" is designed to be a comprehensive survey of rap history, warts and all -- get ready for some warts.
I'm going to be honest with you. 2 Live Crew is a pretty bad rap group, and this song sort of sucks.
That doesn't mean that this post sucks. To the contrary, this post is great -- 2 or 3 lines knows how to make lemonade out of lemons, boys and girls. So keep reading -- watch me do my magic!
If you've never seen the late Stanley Kubrick's 1987 movie, Full Metal Jacket, you need to correct that situation toot sweet.
The first half of the movie is a depiction of the basic training of a platoon of Marine infantrymen circa 1967, and features a tour de force performance by R. Lee Ermey, who had been a Marine drill instructor from 1965 to 1967 and served in Vietnam before he got into show biz.
"Hip Hop 101" is designed to be a comprehensive survey of rap history, warts and all -- get ready for some warts.
I'm going to be honest with you. 2 Live Crew is a pretty bad rap group, and this song sort of sucks.
That doesn't mean that this post sucks. To the contrary, this post is great -- 2 or 3 lines knows how to make lemonade out of lemons, boys and girls. So keep reading -- watch me do my magic!
If you've never seen the late Stanley Kubrick's 1987 movie, Full Metal Jacket, you need to correct that situation toot sweet.
The first half of the movie is a depiction of the basic training of a platoon of Marine infantrymen circa 1967, and features a tour de force performance by R. Lee Ermey, who had been a Marine drill instructor from 1965 to 1967 and served in Vietnam before he got into show biz.
"Me So Horny" was inspired by the notorious scene in the movie when two of the platoon's members are solicited by a Vietnamese prostitute:
Time to shift gears.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is an African-American literary historian and critic who is a professor at Harvard University. He has written a number of books, the most famous of which is the The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (1988). Gates has received 51 honorary degrees and many other honors, including a MacArthur "genius" fellowship. In other words, he's kind of a big deal.
Two years ago, Gates returned home from a trip to China and couldn't get the door to his house open. A passer-by saw him and his driver break a window so they could get inside, and called the police.
The officer who came to investigate allegedly treated Gates rudely, and Gates -- assuming he was being hassled because he was black -- allegedly responded in a hostile fashion and got himself arrested for disorderly conduct.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is an African-American literary historian and critic who is a professor at Harvard University. He has written a number of books, the most famous of which is the The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (1988). Gates has received 51 honorary degrees and many other honors, including a MacArthur "genius" fellowship. In other words, he's kind of a big deal.
Two years ago, Gates returned home from a trip to China and couldn't get the door to his house open. A passer-by saw him and his driver break a window so they could get inside, and called the police.
The officer who came to investigate allegedly treated Gates rudely, and Gates -- assuming he was being hassled because he was black -- allegedly responded in a hostile fashion and got himself arrested for disorderly conduct.
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| Oprah with Gates |
Eventually, an independent panel of experts from across the nation investigated the incident thoroughly and came to the conclusion that both men had acted like major A-holes.
President Obama invited the professor and the policeman to the White House to have a beer and watch a little porn. (OK, OK, I made up the part about watching porn in the White House.)
So what does a heavy-duty African-American intellectual like Professor Gates have to do with a sleazy rap group like 2 Live Crew?
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| Luther Campbell |
The brains behind 2 Live Crew was Luther Campbell, a Miami rapper and record label owner who called his label Luke Skyywalker Records until Star Wars director George Lucas sued him.
In 1989, 2 Live Crew released their most successful album, As Nasty As They Wanna Be. The song from that album that generated a lot attention -- but very little radio airplay (thanks to its lyrics) -- was "Me So Horny."
The conservative American Family Association and others complained about As Nasty As They Wanna Be to every politician in Florida who would take their calls, and eventually a state judge in Ft. Lauderdale ruled that there was probable cause to find that it was legally obscene. The county sheriff warned local record store owners not to sell the album, and 2 Live Crew sued him. But a federal judge ruled that the sheriff was right.
A record store owner then sold a copy to an undercover police officer and was arrested. Three members of 2 Live Crew were taken to the poke when they performed some of the songs from the album at a local club.
Eventually, a federal court of appeals overturned the lower court's ruling that the album was obscene. Helped by all the publicity, As Nasty As They Wanna Be -- a mediocre album at best -- went on to sell over two million copies.
Professor Henry Louis Gates testified in favor of the defendants at their trials. Here are some excerpts from his direct examination:
Q. And you have listened to the recordings of the songs, "Me So Horny", "Fuck Shop", "If You Believe In Having Sex" and "Come On, Babe"?
A. I have. . . .
A. I have. . . .
[Note: You think that the good professor might have been wondering at this point if agreeing to testify in this case was really such a good idea?]
Q. Is rap a form of art?
A. Oh, absolutely, it seems to me it can be defined as art.
Q. Is rap a form of art?
A. Oh, absolutely, it seems to me it can be defined as art.
Q. Does it detract from being art because the words that are used are four-letter words?
A. Oh, no, not necessarily. The greatest literary tradition in English literature, like people such as Chaucer and Shakespeare . . . has always had its vernacular, has always included a lot of lewdity, a lot of verbal puns, sexual puns, curse words, et cetera. . . .
[Note: "lewdity"? I know what "lewdness" means -- never heard of "lewdity."]
[Note: "lewdity"? I know what "lewdness" means -- never heard of "lewdity."]
Q. Are we to take the lyrics literally that we heard on the tape?
A. Well, there is very little art that should be taken literally. . . .
["Me So Horny" and the other 2 Live Crew songs listed above] have taken one of the worst stereotypes about black men, primarily, but also about black women, and blown them up.
Q. What are the stereotypes?
A. The stereotypes that have been most commonly associated with black men in western culture is the fact that we are oversexed or hypersexed individuals in an unhealthy way. . . .
How do we overcome that stereotype? I think one of the brilliant things [is that] they embrace that stereotype.
Q. What do you mean?
A. Well, they represent the stereotype over and over again, in such a graphic way, namely to exploit it. You can have no reaction but to burst out laughing.
There is no cult of violence here. You can't hear any danger at all in the background. What you hear is great humor, great boisterousness. . . .
Everybody understands what is going on. Even if they don't understand it as a literary critic, they understand it on a subliminal level. Their response is to bust out laughing, to view it as a joke, a parody.
Parody is one of the most venerable aspects of any literary tradition. It is certainly very important to Afro-American culture and literature.
Q. If you took [the lyrics] literally, would you be missing the point?
A. The whole point is . . . [t]hey are not to be taken on a literal level. They are to be taken on their figurative or metaphorical level.
I think Professor Gates in certainly correct when he says that "Me So Horny" and the other 2 Live Crew songs that were alleged to be obscene should not have been taken seriously -- the whole album was a big goof.
I don't know much about obscenity law -- I've had some pretty shady clients in my legal career, but none of them have been in the porn business. But I don't think parodies are automatically protected from being considered obscene.
I don't know much about obscenity law -- I've had some pretty shady clients in my legal career, but none of them have been in the porn business. But I don't think parodies are automatically protected from being considered obscene.
The law of obscenity says that a work that depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive manner and appeals to the prurient interest is obscene unless it has serious literary or artistic content.
Does "Me So Horny" have serious literary or artistic content? Hey, I'm as big a fan of the First Amendment as you can find. And I'm a big fan of rap music (a fact which mystifies my children and many of you).
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| MC Hammer |
By the way, 2 Live Crew later recorded a parody of the great Roy Orbison song, "Oh, Pretty Woman." Not surprisingly, the company that owned the rights to the original didn't want to license it to 2 Live Crew, which decided to make a parody of it any way. The ensuing litigation made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1994 that a lower court had erred in finding that 2 Live Crew had violated copyright law.
Here's "Me So Horny":
Here's a link you can use to buy the song from Amazon. (Are you sure you really want to?)
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