In praise of Notorious B.I.G. and Lyle Lovett, and for the same reason
Consider this, at this point, just a theory I’m developing. Lemme work on it a bit more, but here’s the gist: Country music and gansta rap, kinda the same thing.
Like I said, still a theory in progress. I’ll explain a little of what I mean.
Both genres of music are steeped in long traditions that now inform how we listen to the music in the present and allow for some ironic distance between the singer and the song, often for the sake of humor but (in the best cases) also in support of the genre’s underlying theme. For country music, that theme is love. For gansta rap, it’s pride.
I’m a fan of Lyle Lovett, so let’s take this song from Lovett’s second album, “Pontiac.” The title gives it away: “She’s No Lady” (because she’s his wife).
“She hates my momma, she hates my daddy, too. She loves to tell me she hates the things I do. She loves to lie beside me, almost every night. She’s no lady, she’s my wife.”
Hilarious! Of course, I probably shouldn’t have shared the song on Facebook to mark my wedding anniversary. (My own wife, who IS a lady, was not amused.)
But my error, perhaps, was one of timing, not of sentiment. Because Lovett can get away with saying stuff like that in a song like that. In the end it should be taken at more than face value.
Why? Because genre.
We can find it funny because it’s country music. The genre is steeped in this kind of humor. Take this example from Hank Williams Sr. Once again, the title gives it away: “My Son Calls Another Man Daddy.” As the poster of that YouTube video says in the comments, “This is why country music exists.” More recently, you could cite “Drunk on a Plane” from Dierks Bentley as just one randomly chosen example of many. He’s heartbroken and on an airplane and drunk, and he wrote a song about it. Classic.
I can’t vouch for Mr. Bentley, but Mr. Lovett shows some particular skill in pulling off his riff on love within the parameters of the country song. Because “She’s No Lady,” like many songs of its kind, is sung in such an upbeat way, the effect being tongue firmly planted in cheek as Lovett sings about how his bride told the preacher at the altar, “Yeah, he does, too.”
The parallel example of Notorius B.I.G. came to mind because I recently was reveling in one representative (but not too extreme) example of his style, the great radio hit “Hypnotize.”
“Poppa been smooth since days of Underroos, never lose, never choose to bruise crews who do something to us, talk go through us. Girls walk to us, wanna do us, screw us. Who us? Yeah, Poppa and Puff. Close like Starsky and Hutch.”
Now the imagery and sting of a Notorious song, and other gansta rap songs like it, are very different from country music. In this case, it draws on the black tradition of signifying, basically putting each other down in progressively more boastful verbal jabs.
Like, your mom’s so ugly, the government moved Halloween to her birthday.
OK, so I’m a recovering white guy who’s not really good at signifying OR rapping, but anyway …
Gansta rap takes that kind of boasting to an outlandish extreme, which is where the genre’s parameters start to align with those of country music.
I mean, we don’t REALLY think Notorious is serious when he raps:
I still leave you on the pavement
Condo paid for, no car payment
At my arraignment, note for the plantiff
Your daughter’s tied up in a Brooklyn basement
Taken seriously, holy cow, call the cops! But seen ironically through the genre’s lens, it’s actually kind of humorous. I hope. (I mean, Brooklyn basements are scary.)
The video for the song is priceless, too. The authorities are closing in, but Biggie isn’t scared. Instead he does this.
There has been much criticism of this style of rap for being so violent (which it is), for glorifying guns and drugs (which it does), for being degrading to women (which I can’t deny). But such arguments seem a little dated now.
Sure, some people still may hear this music and take the violence and guns and drugs and nastiness to women seriously and try to mimic it, and that would be very bad. And less-skilled rap risks becoming an unintentional parody of itself. The same goes for less-skilled country.
But there’s something else at work in the songs of a more skilled artist like Mr. Smalls. He knew, like Mr. Lovett does, how the genre works. It’s like money in the bank.
“Escargot. My car go one-sixty, swiftly. Wreck it buy a new one.”
If only.
