My Humps Gets the Lump Lump
mannybolone
Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
From the Strut's very own Hsulu. Me and Hua debated this for a bit. I thought the song is "so bad it's kind of good." He thinks it's so bad, it's so bad. What would Fergie say?
http://www.slate.com/id/2131640/Notes on "Humps"A song so awful it hurts the mind.By Hua HsuPosted Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005, at 12:53 PM ET"Taste has no system and no proofs"???this much we know. But some 40 years after the critic Susan Sontag made this and other observations on the good, the bad, and the in-between, the times have a-changed: Irony and camp have recast taste as an ethical shell game and we feel no guilt celebrating things that are, in the parlance of VH1, Awesomely Bad. But are there still songs that qualify as "bad"? Consider the Los Angeles hip-hop quartet the Black Eyed Peas. Their current single, "My Humps," is one of the most popular hit singles in history. It is also proof that a song can be so bad as to veer toward evil.The Black Eyed Peas story begins in the early 1990s, when the rappers Will.I.am and Apl.de.ap met as members of a Los Angeles break-dancing crew called Tribal Nation. After a contract with Ruthless Records went nowhere, the duo regrouped with a third member, Taboo, and renamed themselves the Black Eyed Peas. The trio's earthy, post-Benetton aesthetic resulted in two moderately successful but unspectacular albums: 1998's Bridging the Gap and 2000's Behind the Front. In 2003 they added a fourth member, the singer Fergie. Propelled by a more upbeat frat-party vibe, their songs went platinum.For all the brow-furrowing about the precise, Pavlovian engineering of hit singles, pop music is a wholly unpredictable, unstable enterprise. Lazy artists catch lightning in a bottle, bizarre throwaway jingles are greeted as bursts of quirky ingenuity, and puffy bits of melodrama accidentally become the catchiest thing ever. This is the weird appeal of the radio (or however you get your populist fix): Anything???good, bad, or otherwise???can sound genuinely perfect for a summer. If an Awesomely Bad pop song survives a few years and enlivens a party sometime down the line, so much the better.This is what makes "Play MediaMy Humps" such an inscrutable pop moment. It's not Awesomely Bad; it's Horrifically Bad. The Peas receive no bonus points for a noble missing-of-the-mark or misguided ambition (some of the offended have responded with parody videos and snickering anecdotes about how the group uses Hitler-approved microphones). "My Humps" is a moment that reminds us that categories such as "good" and "bad" still matter. Relativism be damned! There are bad songs that offend our sensibilities but can still be enjoyed, and then there are the songs that are just really bad???transcendentally bad, objectively bad.As a piece of music, "My Humps" is a stunning assemblage of awful ideas. The song's playful pogo and coke-thin, ring-tone synth line interpolate Sexual Harassment's 1982 left-field electro hit, "Play MediaI Need A Freak". But where the original trafficked in something icky, sinister, and darkly sexual, the Peas' call-and-response courtship fails to titillate???in fact, it's enough to convince one to never, ever ogle again. The "humps" in question belong to Fergie, who brandishes her "lovely lady lumps" for the purpose of procuring various gifts from men who, one would assume, find the prospect of "lumps" very exciting???one lump begetting another lump, if you will."What you gon' do with all that ass/ All that ass inside them jeans? ??? What you gon' do wit all that breast?/ All that breast inside that shirt?" rapper Will.I.Am teases in response, Play Mediarendering literal what had heretofore been pretty much literal. It's a song that tries to evoke a coquettish nudge and wink, but head-butts and bloodies the target instead. It isolates sectors of the female anatomy that obsessive young men have been inventing language for since their skulls fused, and yet it emerges only with "humps" and "lumps"???at least "Milkshake" sounded delicious.The most fascinating aspect of "My Humps" is that it is widely believed to be the most successful unsolicited single in history, and, as of this writing, it is the most-downloaded song in the country. The Peas achieved all this without releasing a single. Instead, file sharers and intrepid radio programmers were the ones who more or less discovered the song and pushed it toward hit status, eventually forcing the label to respond with a proper single release. (Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me" is another recent example of a song that hit because of radio programmers rather than label strategy.) For now, "My Humps," has become the standard-bearer for the direct-democracy cultural possibilities of the Internet. It will certainly be supplanted. Soon, hopefully.
http://www.slate.com/id/2131640/Notes on "Humps"A song so awful it hurts the mind.By Hua HsuPosted Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005, at 12:53 PM ET"Taste has no system and no proofs"???this much we know. But some 40 years after the critic Susan Sontag made this and other observations on the good, the bad, and the in-between, the times have a-changed: Irony and camp have recast taste as an ethical shell game and we feel no guilt celebrating things that are, in the parlance of VH1, Awesomely Bad. But are there still songs that qualify as "bad"? Consider the Los Angeles hip-hop quartet the Black Eyed Peas. Their current single, "My Humps," is one of the most popular hit singles in history. It is also proof that a song can be so bad as to veer toward evil.The Black Eyed Peas story begins in the early 1990s, when the rappers Will.I.am and Apl.de.ap met as members of a Los Angeles break-dancing crew called Tribal Nation. After a contract with Ruthless Records went nowhere, the duo regrouped with a third member, Taboo, and renamed themselves the Black Eyed Peas. The trio's earthy, post-Benetton aesthetic resulted in two moderately successful but unspectacular albums: 1998's Bridging the Gap and 2000's Behind the Front. In 2003 they added a fourth member, the singer Fergie. Propelled by a more upbeat frat-party vibe, their songs went platinum.For all the brow-furrowing about the precise, Pavlovian engineering of hit singles, pop music is a wholly unpredictable, unstable enterprise. Lazy artists catch lightning in a bottle, bizarre throwaway jingles are greeted as bursts of quirky ingenuity, and puffy bits of melodrama accidentally become the catchiest thing ever. This is the weird appeal of the radio (or however you get your populist fix): Anything???good, bad, or otherwise???can sound genuinely perfect for a summer. If an Awesomely Bad pop song survives a few years and enlivens a party sometime down the line, so much the better.This is what makes "Play MediaMy Humps" such an inscrutable pop moment. It's not Awesomely Bad; it's Horrifically Bad. The Peas receive no bonus points for a noble missing-of-the-mark or misguided ambition (some of the offended have responded with parody videos and snickering anecdotes about how the group uses Hitler-approved microphones). "My Humps" is a moment that reminds us that categories such as "good" and "bad" still matter. Relativism be damned! There are bad songs that offend our sensibilities but can still be enjoyed, and then there are the songs that are just really bad???transcendentally bad, objectively bad.As a piece of music, "My Humps" is a stunning assemblage of awful ideas. The song's playful pogo and coke-thin, ring-tone synth line interpolate Sexual Harassment's 1982 left-field electro hit, "Play MediaI Need A Freak". But where the original trafficked in something icky, sinister, and darkly sexual, the Peas' call-and-response courtship fails to titillate???in fact, it's enough to convince one to never, ever ogle again. The "humps" in question belong to Fergie, who brandishes her "lovely lady lumps" for the purpose of procuring various gifts from men who, one would assume, find the prospect of "lumps" very exciting???one lump begetting another lump, if you will."What you gon' do with all that ass/ All that ass inside them jeans? ??? What you gon' do wit all that breast?/ All that breast inside that shirt?" rapper Will.I.Am teases in response, Play Mediarendering literal what had heretofore been pretty much literal. It's a song that tries to evoke a coquettish nudge and wink, but head-butts and bloodies the target instead. It isolates sectors of the female anatomy that obsessive young men have been inventing language for since their skulls fused, and yet it emerges only with "humps" and "lumps"???at least "Milkshake" sounded delicious.The most fascinating aspect of "My Humps" is that it is widely believed to be the most successful unsolicited single in history, and, as of this writing, it is the most-downloaded song in the country. The Peas achieved all this without releasing a single. Instead, file sharers and intrepid radio programmers were the ones who more or less discovered the song and pushed it toward hit status, eventually forcing the label to respond with a proper single release. (Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me" is another recent example of a song that hit because of radio programmers rather than label strategy.) For now, "My Humps," has become the standard-bearer for the direct-democracy cultural possibilities of the Internet. It will certainly be supplanted. Soon, hopefully.
Comments
Also, if I was really drunk and I was single and it was late I might hit Fergie, even if I knew she was a pisser.
"Where's that picture of me wetting my pants on stage??"[/b]
Where's my Burrito? "I'll Always Love My Mama."
yeah word. it aint the piss so much as it is the leather skin that bugs me.
"I want my internet back!"[/b]
I can remember way back when I liked BEP.
NO DIGGITY
She said hey hey hey ya lets go
I can be ya baby, you could be my honey
Let's spend time not money
And mix your milk with my cocoa puff
Milky milky cocoa
Mix your milk with my cocoa puff
Milky milky
Riiiiight...
(In sing voice)
If you are a dj who refuses to play this song, what are your thoughts on
I did enjoy some tracks off Behind the Front. But after that... It's been alll downhill.
=
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=7&entry_id=2036
Champagne Hides Fergie's Bladder Embarrassment[/b]
Quick-thinking Black Eyed Peas star Fergie once squirted champagne all over herself to disguise the fact she'd wet herself during a concert.
The singer was red-faced when she realized she wouldn't be able to hold her bladder onstage at one of her first Black Eyed Peas shows in Australia.
She recalls, "I had a few drinks before the show, but I didn't think to go to the restroom before we went onstage.
"We were jumping around -- it was all very rock 'n' roll -- and my bladder just started... you know.
"Somebody brought out these champagne bottles because it was the New Year, and I basically opened one up and squirted it all over myself, so nobody would notice.
"It was a very memorable Pea experience."
how clever!
now die
Lady lumps sound cancerous.
http://graffitithewritingsonthewall.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/11/29/my-humps-video-review.html
(not for the racially super-sensitive)
"fergie makes an echo with her cavernous snooch"
same site also poses the question:
why did lyndsay lohan wipe her snootch on juelz santana?[/b]
http://graffitithewritingsonthewall.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/12/06/why-did-lyndsay-lohan-wipe-her-snootch-on-juelz-santana.html
by the way, i'm on the "so bad it's good" side.
apples and oranges
This really turns me on.
I disagree: I think the two songs share a lot in common even if they're coming from two different cultural spaces (though intermingling in the same club and radio spaces).
Both songs have candy ass beats and some truly inane lyricism. And I like both for the same reason: they're great pop songs.
SQUIRTER THREAD
I saw this on Leno after Juelz's performance. Hope he got some, she was dancing while he rapped the whistle song.
I even liked it for a minute till i listened to the lyrics, which are definitely the worst ever. Milky Milky riiiight.
He did this same thing about the new young jeezy two days ago.
People in general don't want music that is clever, intellectual, or makes them think at all. He and I have this theory that musicians in general are trying too hard and should just dumb it down a few notches if they want to make a hit.
and i don't understand where this extreme hatred of 'my humps' comes from. well, maybe i do, but not in relation to the fact that folks will let 20 other stupid pop songs pass by unscathed.
Don't take this the wrong way, but that's not a theory: that's more or less how pop music has operated for decades.