In “Post To Be,” rapper Omarion shows the darkness of narcissism. There’s no greater pleasure to him than taking something away from someone else. (Photo courtesy MusicWorks)
In “Post To Be,” rappers Omarion and Chris Brown tell you how the world should be.
And how is that? A world where their narcissism can be fulfilled in any way possible.
Most spiritual paths say that selfishness and acting as if the world should bend to one’s needs is real spiritual failure. And there’s lots of that in this song.
The world is just a desire outlet for Omarion. But the biggest gratification comes from his own ego. There’s no pleasure that’s more enjoyable in the world than feeling powerful, threatening, and admired.
Omarion’s version of hypermasculinity
As with most rap songs in the Top 40, there’s a lot of male posturing and hypermasculinity. But it’s not confidence-building street boasting. Instead, this boasting is transformed into a gangster/thug warning to lesser men who aren’t celebrity rappers.
Rapper Omarion’s money and fame isn’t enough for him in “Post To Be.” He enjoys taking ladies away from “homies” who don’t have his celebrity status.
In “Post To Be,” Omarion and Chris Brown are threats to every man not by their physical power. There’s a power much greater than that. They’re wealthy rappers which makes them able to snag any lady away from any dude.
“If your chick come close to me, she ain’t going home when she post to be,” says Omarion.
The reason? “I’m getting money like I’m post to be.” Omarion is who is because of his money. His wealth defines him.
Omarion doesn’t get off on the idea of sexy women so much. He gets off on the idea of snagging a woman away from another guy. To him, that’s more of a turn on than the woman herself.
And because he’s a celebrity, he’s no longer a “homie.” He’s above it in his own mind and in his status as a wealthy rapper. So now he’s able to take women away from those homies. Any woman who is a girlfriend of an regular dude can instantly be turned into acting like a groupie:
“It’s not my fault she wanna know me,
She told me you was just a homie.
She came down like she knew me,
Gave it up like a groupie.”
Later he brags that he’s about to have sex with someone’s lady and he doesn’t even know her name. And that he’s saved in a girl’s phone under the name “bestie.”
Reinforcement from two other rappers
Jhene Aiko comes up with her own twisted version of Omarion’s narcissism in “Post to Be.” She seems to be another Nicky Minaj-influenced female rapper who plays into male stereotypes of women.
Chris Brown takes a turn and says she can give a lady the best weed possible and that no one can give her as good sex as he can. And if the dude doesn’t like his lady being taken away from him? “We ain’t worried about you,” he says.
In a way I don’t know why songs like this get popular. The wealthy celebrity lifestyle is something that most people don’t live and can’t relate to.
Maybe it’s a fantasy that people have of somehow getting to that status? Or maybe it’s a sexist view of the world where all women at their core are just sexual objects who are easily persuaded by money and status?
What’s strange too is that the female rapper Jhene Aiko is also in the song. But since Nicki Minaj, female rappers sometimes objectify themselves, or try to turn into their own versions of the hypermasculine rapper:
“If your dude come close to me
He’s gonna want to ride off in a Ghost with me,
I might let your boy chauffeur me
But he got to eat the booty like groceries.”
As nasty as this song is, it’s a spiritual lesson.
It shows the narcissistic mentality at its core. And that is it’s not the pleasure itself, it’s the idea of domination, of taking something away from someone else and the power that comes with that.
In many ways rap songs like this reflect the most brutal political and corporate controlling and monopolizing mentality: dominating everything and everyone. This isn’t just a dumb rap song, it shows the empire at work and the deep darkness inside a dominator.
Here’s the music video for “Post To Be”:
