Jason DeRulo is quickly becoming the most popular porn rapper. The world doesn’t need another Top 10 song from him. (Photo courtesy Warner Bros.)
You can probably guess what the worst Top 40 song this month — “Wiggle” by Jason DeRulo— is about.
DeRulo — and his down-and-dirty bro Snoop Dogg — stare down a woman and see one thing: booty.
“Damn baby, you got a bright future behind you,” Snoop Dogg says. And it gets worse. This is a truly hateful sexist song that could be a page from a nasty porn novel.
Is porn rap a new genre now? Guess so.
Feeling the summertime blues
And maybe the summer is a bad time for music the same way another summer means lame blockbusters like another Transformers movie. There were lots of terrible songs in the Top 40 this month. “Wiggle” edged out some other awful songs.
The worst three offenders?
More than any other rapper, Snoop Dogg may be most responsible for what could be called pimp rap or porn rap. So it’s no surprise he’s part of Jason DeRulo’s “Wiggle.”
There’s Chris Brown‘s “Loyal” which has been smelling up the charts for a while. Its message: women are sex objects ya can’t trust. Then there’s Trey Songz’ “Na Na,” a crude sexist hookup song that was hilariously “translated” for older people on a recent episode of “The Jimmy Kimmel Show.” But the second worst song was probably Tinashe’s “2 On,” which features a nasty and vile rap by Schoolboy Q too explicit for me to even type here.
There’s something so depressing about these songs.
They’re examples of a decadent consumerist culture. In this society everything is commodified — even bodies. Women are objects to be conquered without romance. Sex is an experience to be consumed.
But like a obssesed shopper, the biggest thrill is the anticipation of consuming the product. And there’s a lot of that here. The conqueror admires one part of the woman’s body. In “Wiggle” it’s pretty clear what’s been commodified the most:
“Hot damn, your booty is like two planets,
Go ahead, and go ham sandwich.
Whoa, I can’t stand it,
‘Cause you know what to do with that big fat butt.”
Sex in this song is just the details of the act from the male point of view. Like someone going in for the kill. There’s a lot of male domination here — and it’s disturbing. There’s also a lack of human emotion here — which makes it seem a lot like pornography.
I want your body parts, not you
The admiration of body parts of the opposite sex isn’t new. Just check out “The Song of Solomon” from The Bible and centuries of poets.
Uh, does this look a little too “Blurred Lines”? Yup. DeRulo, Snoop Dogg pimp it up with some of the ladies in the “Wiggle” music video.
But these songs are much different.
There’s a depiction of specific body parts associated with the sexual act. Nothing else. No information on her eyes, her hair, her smile. That’s just too human in today’s commodification culture.
There’s also a detachment in the song that seems to come from pornography. The only emotion comes is in the anticipation and hunt for sex.
Since the Internet revolution, there have been several books documenting the mainstreaming of pornographic imagery into contemporary culture. And the statistics on porn and the Internet are staggering.
Porn sites get more visits each month than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined. Seventy percent of men use the Internet to view pornography. And 30 percent of all data transferred on the Internet is pornography.
That’s a disturbing trend with far-reaching effects. Pornification has now invaded the Top 40 with songs like “Wiggle.” And unfortunately, there’s probably more of this to come.
What may be most disturbing of all is the acceptance of this by mainstream media — as if it’s all just fun. Jason DeRulo recently performed “Wiggle” on “Good Morning America.” So you can now have your pornification with your morning coffee.
Here’s the music video for “Wiggle”:
Very sad. I find it deplorable that the record companies keep releasing these filthy songs as singles to be played on the radio. It would be one thing if these artists put these songs on their albums (and we could have a discussion about that, too), but to make these the hit songs that everyone knows!?! I had a 7 or 8 year old boy come up to me as I was DJing a wedding last weekend and requested this song. I’m glad it wasn’t in my library, because I might have foolishly put it on (I wasn’t previously aware of how bad it was) if I had the “clean version” but there are some songs that just don’t need to be played even if it’s a “clean version.” Oh, and this boy also asked for Anaconda, but I knew better.
Thanks for your comment and sorry I didn’t catch this sooner!
I’m disturbed by the mainstreaming of these kinds of songs. They’re all over the place on TV as well as the radio. It’s as if the media is deciding that this explicit sexual content is acceptable and that’s all that pop music can be. Anything that’s more spiritual or thoughtful or political is marginalized.
At some point the musicians themselves have to take responsibility for these songs and the influence they’re having. Isn’t it interesting when musicians say that songs have a lot of social impact when they’re singing about something positive? But they refuse to believe they’re having impact when it’s a song like this that’s sexist and exploitative? I guess all we can do is keep pointing out the damage these songs have. I try to do that every month in my own small way by having a worst Top 40 song of the month.
Thanks again for the comment!