Finding my inner 2 Chainz….

I don’t know at what point I started to clutch my (figurative) pearls. I think it just sort of sneaks up on you suddenly…like daily glasses of wine and dairy. There comes this weird unannounced moment in your life when you ask someone to turn down the music, it becomes slightly more important to be warm than cute, and you start to evaluate your shoes on whether they will actually be comfortable. It is the worst…but kind of cool at the same time. You start to look at your mother with a bit of resignation, but you tell yourself that you are a 2.0 version though…that is better with technology and definitely more accepting and less judgmental…you tell yourself in a nice soft soothing voice clutching the aforementioned wine.

You start to look at kids and wonder why they need all these electronic devices that you never needed as a kid…you post this question to Facebook and Twitter and wait to see people’s responses. Then you wonder why kids curse so much, I don’t remember cursing that much when I was a kid… fucking kids…where do they learn this stuff from? Then you wonder why female singers don’t wear pants anymore. Is there some type of shortage in pants…no sarong or anything..even women on the beach wear a sarong…

I remember the first “explicit lyrics” album (or should I say audio tape) I ever owned. It was the Adventures of Slick Rick. I think I bought it with my allowance. It wasn’t really a huge deal to me that I had this “explicit lyrics” tape, but it was a big deal that I brought it with me on vacation with my friend and her family to Puerto Rico and she and her older brother weren’t allowed to listen to it. I think it was one of the only times in my life that I was actually cool. I think maybe the worst words on that album were “shit” and “fuck”, rappers were tame back then. Back then it was about the party, the gold chains, and possibly a head-to-toe Gucci suit from Delancey Street…and by suit I don’t mean jacket and tie suit, but rather a leather pants, leather hat, leather shirt, and leather shoes combination with logos EVERYWHERE. I wonder what happened to my Golden Child Eddie Murphy leather hat.

So I like to think I am old school rather than “old”. The most current rap/hip hop album that I had on my iPod (yes I said iPod) is Busta Rhymes, Biggie Smalls…Kanye West pre what-the hell-is-going-on, maybe a little Q-tip, a little Wiz Khalifa (I am ashamed to say that I heard about him because I watch the Voice and he is on Maroon 5’s “Payphone”) …I will admit, I was actually working out to the Strokes and Gnarls Barkley up until a couple of months ago….then every once in a while I would catch a song that I liked when I was getting my paper towels to wipe of the machines at the gym. See the brilliance of still carrying a iPod is that I leave it on the machine to get my paper towels to clean off the machine and I leave it on the machine in plain view…nobody wants it. Try that with an iPhone.

So the mix on the closed circuit TV at my gym is basically that one song by Macklemore, one Lil Wayne song…several Lil’ Wayne featured songs…”Get Lucky”…Nicki Minaj featured songs…some old Mariah Carey song…and a host of new people I learned about for the first time…in heavy rotation. At first it was like that summer I worked at Urban Outfitters and they played Bjork in heavy rotation…Bjork…at full volume…in heavy rotation. Now I can sing along though…with the gym stuff, not the Bjork stuff…nothing against Bjork, she is fantastic…to a lot of people.

So, I was like, I like this song, I should BUY this song. So the first song I bought was French Montana’s “Ain’t worried about nothin’”. Did you know that their are explicit versions and “clean” versions of songs, and that the one that they play at the gym is typically the clean version? Yes anyone under the age of 50 or who has ever used iTunes should know this, but I wasn’t paying attention…bought my song, cranked it up while I was doing the dishes (where the best music listening moments happen…that and on a boat exploring ocean caves in Thailand…take your pick), and all of a sudden I was George Takei….clutching my figurative pearls and thinking “Oh my…” I told my sister that I felt like I was being verbally assaulted through my speakers…who hurt you French Montana? So then I stopped listening to it. Then they started playing another song at the gym by him that I liked, so I said ok, I will just buy this song, BUT I will buy the clean version…but (I thought) what if the nuance is lost and I can’t quite get why he needs to get the “f@#k away from these b@tches”. Maybe I need to know to totally “get” the song. So I buy explicit version…and I listen to it…and then listen to it again…and again…then buy the entire album….then all of a sudden I start to understand why he needs to get away from these bitches…they be stressing him…simple as that.

So now I have myself quite a playlist…2 Chainz (though I thought the CD was supposed to come with a cookbook)…some angry Kanye…one song with Drake on it…one Lil Wayne song…Big Sean (who I incorrectly searched for as Lil Sean)… I put my headphones on and all of sudden this rush of testosterone fills my body and for those 23 songs (exact number) on my playlist…bitches be crazy…n@#as be hatin’ …and though my house is rather large, I still have the same friends, I live in the same neighborhood, and I am not above shooting you if necessary…but I am beast on every machine…and I feel like a bad ass bitch…like the one in that one LL Cool J “I need love” type of song somewhere on one of these albums.