Boy, Please.

So I messed up and left the house without my iPod (again) and NPR was still playing classical music (which I don’t mind but wasn’t in the mood for) and I can’t stand driving in silence (makes my mind wander) so I turned on… black radio.

And… well, you know where this is going. I make no secrets about my hate for the current state of black music and black radio’s role in force-feeding the filth into our babies’ ears. All these young un’s do (Lord, now I sound like somebody’s mama—my mama, for sure) is sing about things that don’t matter, don’t make sense, and damn for sure don’t ring true. Witness the pearl that oozed through my speakers yesterday, courtesy of Trey Songz:

Verse 1]
Soon as we get started makin love goin harder hear a.. (knock knock) knocking on the wall,
And as soon as I go deep getting it in then again theres a.. (knock knock) knocking on the wall,
Girl your legs keep shakin I swear we breakin our new headboard headboard
And the love we make it feels so good girl you know im proud lookin in your lovley face scream my name you do it so loud

[Chorus]
I bet the neighbors know my name
Way you screamin scratchin yellin,
Bet the neighbors know my name
They be stressin while we sexin,
I bet the neighbors know my name
My name my name
I bet the neighbors know my name
My my my...

Um, really, little boy? Like, seriously: Am I to believe that you not only know what you’re doing but that you can make me break furniture behind your prowess? Even more, that you’re so sick with it that I’m going to think you “invented sex” (another of his songs playing every five seconds on the radio)?

Now, I’m a grown woman, and I got sense enough to know better. But be clear: A 13-year-old? Fifteen-year-old? A tween with barely a bit of fuzz under her arm? Not so much. Not to get all C. Delores Tucker on y’all, but these songs, at best, are desensitizing our kids to the very sacred act of sharing one’s body with someone worthy—at worst, convincing boys they’re sexual gods and girls that if they just lay down and spread ‘em, the boy they’re with will bring them immeasurable pleasure.


Uh huh.

Dead. Fish. Eyes.

Come on now: We all know what the first (and second and third and sometimes even the 100th) time was like: Teenage girls ain't hardly having orgasms, and teenage boys don't hardly have the skills to make their partners do much more than fake it. But thanks to songs like these, a generation of teenagers think they're porn stars.

We can keep pretending like songs and messages and images like this don’t have any impact on our children if we want to. But statistics like those I saw in this New York Times article yesterday, detailing the rise in the teenage pregnancy rate after more than a decade of decline, should ring the alarm on just how all of these hypersexualized music/videos/images/messages are affecting our kids.

Sleep if you want to.

I choose to stay woke.