By Ryan Broderick
The following is a play-by-play analysis of the remix of “If I Was A Girl” by “Trapped In The Closet” music wunderkind, R. Kelly.
It opens up pretty straight forward. Beyonce’s singing, sounding very nice; I mean, a little more pissed off than usual, but I’m digging it (for further Beyonce analysis go to page B5). If any extra mixing of the song was done, it’s subtle. Oh, and then there’s R. Kelly singing around one minute thirty. And here’s what he says!
“If you were a boy / then girl you’d understand / you need to stop listening to your friends / love, respect and trust your man / So I go to clubs with the guys / and sometimes flirt with the girls / I should be able to roll out / as long as I’m coming home to you / and give you the world / But you are not a boy, / so you don’t have a clue (ey) / How I work and pay the bills / girl and everything I do is for you (eh eh).” Funny, right?
What I like the best about R. Kelly is the fact that he’s finally taking a standpoint that few men these days are courageous enough to take: the plight of the male superstar. I mean, so what if he and his boys roll like eight deep into a club and get wasted and pay a bunch of strippers to get naked? Everybody knows that it’s perfectly acceptable for men to force women to stay indoors all night and wait for their boyfriends to come home. Women? Being respected? What is this, France?
No longer will men be forced to cook and clean and have babies for their wives! Thanks to R. Kelly, men, after centuries of oppression, will be allowed to sleep with mistresses and get drunk in public. Guys, R. Kelly freed us. It’s okay now.
My favorite part, though, is around three minutes when R. Kelly just flat out sings, “Girl, you know that’s wrong.” This remix needs to be celebrated as a solid victory against all the social restrictions keeping men down.
What R. Kelly is so good at is attacking and taking down social paradigms. Of course, he’s always been known for his progressive lyricism. Like this gem from “Girls Go Crazy.”
“Pull up in the whip and the girls go (crazy) / Been to the club and the girls go (crazy) / A sip of hypnotic and the girls go (crazy) / Put the cut on and the girls go (crazy) / Pull down the pants down and the girls go (crazy) / Roll it around and the girls go (crazy) / A stroke of the — and the girls go (crazy) / All I wanna do is make the girls go (crazy).”
I’m not too positive what the “–” is, but I’m sure it stands for something totally awesome, like “revolution” or “fight the power” or “Ron Paul.”
So in summation, R. Kelly is awesome. Women are objects. Courvoisier is awesome. Most fourteen-year-old girls deserve getting covered in urine and next time I have sex I’m gonna ask my friends to watch and cheer me on. “What The F**k: R. Kelly”… more like “What The F**k: Is Women’s Rights?”