Crude & Lewd?

Music is a very powerful and popular art, dating since who knew when, from wordless classics to purely rapped lyrics. Music has been used as a weapon and avenue to convey messages, ranging from sweet emotions to statements promoting activism. If you can’t speak it, might as well, sing it. It has developed and grown through the years and it has changed depending on the times and the way people wanted to use it.
Let’s take the 20th and 21st centuries. What are the popular music of these times? Yes, there’s pop, jazz, but there’s also rock (alternative, heavy metal, grunge, emotive hardcore, poetic, etc.), house, and, of course, hiphop. Hiphop seems to be the most popular. And of course, anyone my age would know Tupac Shakur, Eminem, Nelly, T-pain, Jay-Z, Soulja Boy, and David Banner. We all know that most the hiphop artists release extreme emotions in their singles, like Eminem, who shamelessly disses his own mommah and wife in his songs. These songs are jampacked with emotions and certain experiences written down for sharing. Others, though, talk about useless stuff like cars, parties, food, new dances (read: Soulja Boy*). It sometimes feels stupid to listen to these songs but they have catchy beats and sometimes really cool featuring artists so I stay hooked listening to them on my mp3 player and I don’t have plans of erasing them. But as I listen to my hiphop music collection, I notice a certain trend in every song. 95% of them have one topic: sex. Now we all know that people don’t like talking about sex in the open, considering it lewd since it is meant to be private. That’s why Literotica/Literotika is considered pornography, together with sex videos and other visual androgenators out there. Even certain indie films are banned and are only limited to being viewed in the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) or the UP Film Institute in UP Diliman. People are ashamed to talk about this issue, something which I know, is very natural.
Now, back to music. Anyone who listens to music these days can say that, indeed, the music right now focuses on sex most of the time. I mean, sure, we still have people talking Tortilla Chips, Nikes, Vans, love, but we all know that the popular ones talk about drugs, booze, parties, flirting, foreplay, and sex. And some aren’t very discreet about it. You want examples? Here: Play by David Banner, I’m So Horny by Ashanti, by [even the popular and loved Booty Music] and many more. The examples I sited are a few of the most crude and explicit sex songs that I’ve heard, it’s like someone singing literotica! Music artists are really smart, I have to say. They know that EVERYONE listens to music, and even if there are censors and radio edits, they know that their listeners are still able to grab hold of the originals. Now, people cannot ban music. What’s life without hearing beats and words in tune? I know that many of today’s songs need parental guidance (actually, some have won themselves an XXX rating!) but music, just like writing and speaking is an art. It’s a good thing no one’s banning such lewdity in songs because talking about sex in songs and actually describing it down to the details is a very brave thing to do. Nobody likes talking about sex not because they find it gross (if they found it gross then the production of babies should have stopped ages ago) but rather because they are shy to admit that all those thoughts, moans, and sensations talked about concerning sex are true. People tend to get bashful about these stuff because it’s something very personal (imagine: my reserved CEO knows wild sex?!), usually just talked about in hushed tones because society has wired us to think that this isn’t something to be talked about casually. But, as we all know, the more you suppress, the more people would do it, as the popular Filipino saying goes, masarap ang bawal. Sex is a human weakness, admit it. You cannot control the way your body would react when stimulated because you were created that way. God created sex to be fun. And you can’t help not thinking about it, especially the boys because it was scientifically proven that there’s a certain part of a male’s brain wired for sex. Music artists who talk about sex and describe certain sexual encounters in detail in their art admit such weakness. They’re saying, “Hey, I think about sex all the time to the point of making songs about it!” They aren’t ashamed to sing and write about it because they know that anyone can relate. They may be crude and lewd to many but you have to admit, these songs don’t lie. And no matter how disgusting it may seem, music is still an auditory art.


*note: Soulja Boy is all grown up! Check out one of his latest: Pow.