NYTimes Summer Jam Wrap Up
faux_rillz
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Imagining a Summer With a True Hip-Hop Hit[/b] By KELEFA SANNEHPublished: September 7, 2006This much is clear: ???Weekend Girl,??? by Cam???ron, is definitely not the song of the summer. True, it???s a glorious hip-hop love song, playful and clever and sweetly nostalgic. And true, as one fan noted online, it ???sounds so perfect with ur roof put back and during the night time.??? But here???s the problem: it???s not a hit. In fact it hasn???t been officially released, which means that as far as the music industry is concerned, it doesn???t really exist. And it can???t be the song of the summer if it???s not in heavy rotation on hip-hop radio. Can it?As for the real winner, the season just ended, the numbers are still being crunched, and the not-quite-logical arguments are still being formulated. Shakira???s ???Hips Don???t Lie???? It topped Billboard???s Hot 100 chart back in June, then stayed near the top all summer. Nelly Furtado???s ???Promiscuous???? It spent six weeks ??? more important, six weekends ??? at No. 1. Gnarls Barkley???s ???Crazy???? It???s the kind of likable left-field hit that???s hard to root against, though its audience wasn???t quite as big. A case can be made for all three. (There might be some people who would add a fourth song to the list: Fergie???s late-breaking chart topper, ???London Bridge.??? But ??? since we???re on the subject of not-quite-logical arguments ??? those people are insane.)Those three contenders all have something in common. None of them is purely hip-hop, but each one features a hip-hop veteran. ???Hips Don???t Lie??? has a reggaet??n beat and some laughably inept rapping from Wyclef Jean, who got his start with the Fugees. Ms. Furtado???s song is a collaboration with Timbaland, who long ago proved himself one of hip-hop???s greatest producers ever. And Gnarls Barkley is the quirky but pop-friendly project of Cee-Lo, once a member of the pioneering Atlanta group Goodie Mob. This has been an odd few months, then, for hip-hop, which was the sound of the summer but not, exactly, the genre of the summer. And it???s been an even odder few months for hip-hop radio stations, which had to figure out whether or not to play these halfway hip-hop hits. It???s hard to resist a monster hit of course, but there???s something odd about watching hip-hop radio stations ??? and to a lesser extent BET ??? following paths blazed by pop radio and MTV. Aren???t hip-hop radio stations supposed to stay one step ahead of the mainstream?The problem has been especially acute in New York, where the two main hip-hop radio stations ??? Hot 97 (WQHT-FM, 97.1) and its younger, less streetwise rival, Power 105 (WWPR-FM, 105.1) ??? have been experiencing something of an identity crisis. Hot 97, in particular, used to sound as if it were broadcasting from the center of the hip-hop universe, and something about the station???s frequency sounds especially good when the weather is warm and car windows are down. When New York hip-hop was hot, Hot 97 came to seem synonymous with summertime hits. ???It???s All About the Benjamins,??? the 1997 Puff Daddy single, included a station-specific plea: ???Ain???t nobody???s hero but I wanna be heard/On your Hot 97 every day, that???s my word.???That was almost a decade ago; nowadays Southern hip-hop rules, though New York listeners haven???t fully embraced it. So if you turn on Hot 97 or Power 105, you???re likely to hear lots of R&B, a bit of reggae, the biggest Southern hip-hop hits, a few New York tracks and a bit of mainstream pop. And from time to time this summer you might have heard Shakira, Ms. Furtado and Gnarls Barkley. Their three halfway hip-hop songs are all more than halfway great. But taken together, they helped make New York radio that much duller. Our hip-hop stations are supposed to be pugnacious, brutally competitive, slightly knuckleheaded. And summer is when we need them more than ever.That brings us back to ???Weekend Girl,??? which is precisely the kind of song we needed ??? but didn???t really get ??? this summer. The song doesn???t appear on Cam???ron???s most recent album, a rough-and-tumble (and, if you???ve got the patience, rewarding) CD called, ???Killa Season??? (Asylum/Atlantic). Instead, ???Weekend Girl??? (sometimes known as ???Weekend Love???) started making the rounds on mixtapes and the Web, about a month ago. (It can be streamed from nobodysmiling.com and hiphopgame.com.) Perhaps every city makes them differently, but in New York a summer song should be hard and soft at the same time. ???Weekend Girl??? samples the S.O.S. Band???s airy 1984 R&B hit of the same name, which was built around a lame ??? but somehow charming ??? excuse: ???I???m a weekend girl/And I don???t have time on the weekday.???To a rapper of course that sounds like the perfect, low-commitment relationship. And in the first two verses, Cam???ron reminisces about puppy love, filling the lines with typically unexpected words and rhymes: No hassle, heifer. Did we battle? Never.We went Easter shopping, copping them pastel leathers.From Gimbels we gained, make it simple and plain:I wanna nibble on your ear, rekindle the flame.He dismisses long-term romance with four words (???Intimate? Not my sentiment???), but there is something sweet about Cam???ron???s offer of a weekend getaway: a man who specializes in one-night stands is proposing a three-night stand. Most summer relationships start casually, but they don???t always end that way; in fact, they don???t always end at all.???Weekend Girl??? also helps explain why an obsession with charts and sales and seasonal superlatives isn???t as irrelevant as it might first seem. Imagine if ???Weekend Girl??? really had been the song of the summer, instead of a mixtape obscurity. Imagine it booming out of cars and topping the charts and revitalizing the local radio stations. Imagine it as the soundtrack to months of blue-sky block parties. (As long as we???re imagining, we might as well imagine a little less rain.) That song, in a totally different summer: would it sound the same?
Comments
Chingy - Pullin' Me Back
Pitbull - Bojangles
Young Dro - Shoulder Lean
Yung Joc - I Know You See It
Jibbs - Chain Hang Low
The Pack - Vans
Wine-O - Pop My Trunk
Lil Keke - Chunk Up the Deuce
E-40 - U & Dat
Lil Jon - Snap ya Fingaz
Cassie - Me & U
and of course Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
worst record ever
My wife agrees with you.
But I like it.
You must have the heart of a milk dud.
that crap got published in the ny times? if there was a point to that article, other than his appreciation of a mediocre (at best) song, than it must have got swallowed by a lot of gibber-gabber.
I have the heart of a Marathon Bar...twisted yet relentless.
And I still can't believe anyone actually likes Promiscuous Girl...aside from 12 year old girls who feel like they're rebelling against their parents by listening to it.
Meanwhile....
Eric K. Arnold has been killing it as of late in the East Bay Express...
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/search/results.php?by_line=Eric%20K.%20Arnold
Seriously, though. That Chingy song is a like a reheated version of the song he made a few years ago. Unlike frozen gumbo, this one doesn't get better when microwaved (no ser.ato).
the search function is not working for me
What's worse is that for a while I also liked Me & U, another song that my wife absolutely loathes.
That is not at all worse.
In a recent interview he defended the song as an example of him defying expectations, "going left, when everyone expects me to go right," which is true if, by defying expectations, you mean making the unbelievably crass move of offering the public a reheated terd.
"Me & U" is a great record...
speaking of crass moves, getting a myspace model type to 'sing' a song about dicksucking, that's right up there with the pussycat dolls.
the tuning processing on her vocals is nearly psychedelic though.
song of the summer no doubt.
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Both of those are merely songs on the radio to me...I don't like either of them enough to want to own them as records.
Shoulder Lean though, I still need to pick one of those up.
"Promiscuous Girl"
"Me & U"
but I haven't heard this Cam'ron song? links?
Power 92 in Chicago is how you say THE SHIT, mostly because of Boolu Master (who apparently used to be a DJ in the ATL)
What's with his fascination w/ that Camron song? It's avg mixtape material really, hardly a "summer jam".
There's a great quiet storm rmx of "Me & You" floating around by some dude who posts on the seratatato board. Dude goes under then name of Stimulated, ayooooo
I am the board's official Summer Jam Scientist.
Coming in October: my "Summer Jamz '07: Early Contendors" post.
Then you should be stripped of your SUMMERJAM SCIENTIST" moniker.