Music and Lyrics?
APRIL 14, 2007 Listen to this Story
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In his apology for calling the Rutgers Women's Basketball team "nappy-headed-hos," Don Imus pointed out that language like that abounds in black music. Weekend America Host Bill Radke asked musicologist and UCLA professor Robert Fink about the evolution of lyrics in American music and what that might mean for Imus' use of adjectives.
Notes from Producer Millie Jefferson
The one thing I enjoy when working on stories are all of the cool and interesting facts you pick up along the way. Not all of them may make it into the aired version of your piece but you take them with you none the less. One fact that I learned with this story is that like history, the vernacular of music, tends to repeat itself.
FLY
One of the words that has come up over and over again, as Larry Hamberlin, professor of music at Middlebury College pointed out, is the word fly. He points out that the term fly—meaning cool and hip—can be heard in music as early as the 1890s. I'm thinking wow, way before the Boogie Boys, Queen Latifah and The Big Tymers. There is a 1919 pop song (by pop song he means a widely circulated song, which at that time was sheet music) that riffs on the popularity of the opera "Madame Butterfly," called "Poor Little Butterfly is a Fly Girl Now."
The term re-appears and catches on with amazing popularity in the 1970s, like "Super Fly." From this point on, the word fly cemented itself into American vernacular, meaning cool and hip. By the early 1990s, when Jennifer Lopez arrives on the scene as a Fly Girl Dancer for the television show, "In Living Color," fly is a household word.
Here are some other songs that include the concept of fly (by all means not a totally inclusive list):
"Rapper's Delight" (Sugar Hill Gang, 1979)
"Fly Girl" (Boogie Boys, 1985)
"Fly Girl" (Queen Latifah, 1991)
"Still Fly" (Big Tymers, 2002)
"You Should Be My Girl" (Sammie, 2006)
Dr. S. Reed, music professor at the University of Florida, points out that bootylicious was a little used word back when Snoop Dog first used it in the Dr. Dre hit "Dre Day." In that incarnation, Snoop used the word to mean lackluster, laughable or just simply terrible:
Your bark was loud, but your bite wasn't vicious those rhymes you were kickin were quite bootylicious...When it pops up again in the 2001 Destiny's Child hit, "Bootylicious" means a woman that is curvaceous or voluptuous, especially in the derriere. It can also mean just a hot woman:
I don't think your ready for this jelly, my body's too bootylicious for you, babe.Who knows what the next incarnation will be.JIGGY
Professor Fink reminds us that "jiggy" is another word that originated from jazz musicians; although Will Smith did not invent it he made it wildly popular.
Jiggy can mean a variety of things—to be down with, having sex or messing around, an exclamation that means sweet or tight, all right and to dress really nicely. In Will Smith's song, "Getting Jiggy Wit It," what jiggy means is debatable but most think it has to do with dancing:
gettin jiggy wit it...Music will continue to influence popular culture and vernacular. It will be interesting to see what terms will be around or reincarnated in the future.
With that, I'm audi. A word that in hip hop culture means I'll catch you later. Yes, it is based off of the speed and performance of the luxury sports car by the same name.
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