Conscious rap is for gays

A couple of years ago there was this special on VH1 about the plight of the video ho. Perhaps you've seen it. I may have even written about it at the time, but I can't remember.

I do remember finding it rather silly back when I first saw it, but then I've tried to catch it whenever they rerun it, because even though it was presented as some sort of feminist screed against misogyny in rap videos, its main purpose was obviously just an excuse to show a bunch of clips of women with their asses hanging out of their pants and their boobs hanging out of their shirts. It's explicit enough that I'm pretty sure they can only show it at night, which has been hell on my sleep habits over the years. Those bitches, I swear.

One of my favorite parts, which I only came to notice after having seen it a few times (the first couple of times, I may have turned it off about two and a half minutes in, if you catch my drift), is the part where they show a clip from the video of that song Common did with John Mayer, from BE, and then have Common explain how it's possible to make a video that's sexy without hiring a woman with an exceptionally large rack.

Um, sexy for whom? Because I've seen that Common video before, and, at the risk of letting you fruits in on more than you need to know about me, I think it may have actually caused my joint to crawl back up inside me. (Nullus for talking about my unit on the Internets.) If we're going by the definition of sexy that means arousing or tending to arouse sexual desire or interest, then that Common and John Mayer video was, by definition, not sexy in the least bit.

If anything, I couldn't help but be reminded of that one song from the first dead prez album, which Noz the Cracker mocked here a while ago, where they extol the virtues of taking a broad back to your house to eat croutons with her rather than sticking your dick in her. Granted I think the point of the song is that you would eventually have sex with the broad, but I'm at a loss for how eating some greasy dried up-ass toast could enhance the experience.

And I was reminded of all of this the other day when I saw the video for that new Talib Kweli record, which is a take-off on those HP commercials, like the one Jay-Z did. Where as the Common video showed some woman you wouldn't want to have sex with anyway sitting on a couch or whatever (probably about to eat some croutons), the Kweli video mostly eschews featuring images of women altogether.

I mean, there's a few fleeting glimpses of women in the little video screens he somehow manages to spin out of thin air using his hands (yay for technology), but most of the clip's runtime consists of a shot of Talib Kweli's crotch dancing back and forth. Crap! This despite the fact that "Hot Thing" is supposed to be a sexy love song. What gives?

I don't wanna come down on Talib Kweli too hard, because I'm sure he was presented with the idea for the clip by some low-bid contractor and he just didn't have the balls to be like, "Fuck no. That's an awful idea. Why would I want to do something like that?" He just doesn't strike me as the kind of guy that's gonna go there with somebody like that. Plus, for what it's worth, I've heard Ear Drum is doing at least somewhat better sales-wise than the new Swizz Beatz album.

Still, I can't help but find it unfortunate that so many of these so-called conscious rappers are making these teh ghey-ass videos and trying to pass them off as sexy, when the truth of the matter is that they're often anything but. In fact, you have to think that one of the reasons that LCD is that much more appealing to the masses is because at least there's pussy in it. To think what these d-bags could accomplish if they actually had any balls.

Newsflash for Common, dead prez, Kweli, and the rest of them: Wanting to stare at images of women with ridonkulously large cans doesn't make you a misogynist; it makes you a man. On the contrary, wanting to eat croutons and sniff incense and do any number of things with a woman other than shove your weenie in her doesn't make "conscious;" it makes you a fudge. Learn the difference.