Rihanna's "Rude Boy"

DISCLAIMER: I am in no way blaming Rihanna. She and many other girls are being exploited like this by executives in the music industry in order to make money. They are the people to blame for this tragic cultural norm.

Secret Education:

Sex is all that matters, listen to the lyrics and check out that objectifying shot at 2:57 where the camera zooms in on her chest. Its almost like a subliminal message... except the whole video supports that one shot will full conviction.

Rude Boy is the title of the song. The lyrics for the hook are as follows:

Come here, rude boy boy
Can you get it up?
Come here, rude boy boy
Is you big enough?
Take it, take it
Baby, baby
Take it, take it
Love me, love me

These lyrics get repeated verbatim 8 times... and a few more times with variation.

The fact that the boy she wants is "rude" seems to reinforce the stereotype of girls going for the arrogant alpha-male a.k.a. "rude boy" let me know if you know that "rude boy" actually means something else, or if you have different interpretation.

Also, these lyrics seem to reinforce the cultural importance that a man's penis is large, while at the same time speaking as a metaphor for the idea of being a "big man" or being "the man" as far as physical size and strength goes and additionally the attitude that is associated with men who are physically strong. This definitely leads to, and maintains, sexual as well as physical and psychological insecurity in boys with body types that aren't valued in our culture.

I think its important to realize that this video is one of many texts that simultaneously show one gender what they should want while showing the other gender what they should want to be.

after a couple of quick youtube searches it turns out that Rude Boy is a title of a Bob Marley/Wailers song... and the same situation occurred with various other Rihanna hits.

Rude Boy - Bob Marley/Wailers

SOS - Abba (not to mention the music is tainted love... exactly)

Rihanna's SOS - Soft Cell's TAINTED LOVE

(and the Jonas Brothers released a song with the same title)

Shut up and Drive - Chely Wright (music is blue monday by orgy... exactly)

Orgy's BLUE MONDAY - Rihanna's SHUT UP AND DRIVE

Paranoid - Black Sabbath (The Jonas Bros have a song with the same title as well)

I totally understand that Hip/hop is a sample based genre. But it takes no creativity to search back and find a hit song, grab the music from the chorus, change the snare sample, put it on loop and call it a day. The argument that this is original or expressive is a cover up.

So what does this have to do with teenagers and the media?

-The majority of mainstream music is tactical and psychological, and not creative. It is used as tool of control to maintain the status quo and as a tool to generate profit.

Some tactics include but are not limited to:

-Taking old song names to increase exposure via internet searches.

-Taking the old song names that someone already took in order to piggy back on their success and increase "accidental exposure"

-Using the music from a previously popular song to increase familiarity with a new song, which makes the listener immediately more comfortable and happy, which translates into conscious thought as "I like this song"

-Using Sexual images, lyrics and sounds to associate a song or artist with pleasure in order to boost popularity and therefore sales.

-Repetition. The world of popular music is so rampant with repetition that one 4 minute Rihanna song (as in SOS) can be boiled down to a repetition of a 4 second musical phrase. Easy math. 100 times per song you hear that same hook(melody) directly taken from Soft Cell's Tainted love. She could be talking about making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in her kitchen and you would still come away from the song feeling as though you liked it. This allows for songwriters to put out any message, bad or good, and it will be accepted and loved by the majority of people, in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK along with several other cultures around the world.

Like advertisements, the music industry has capitalized on the advances in psychology for selfish gains at the expense of the self-esteem and individuality of teenagers as well as adults. An important part of Media Literacy is a critical approach to music. I think it is important for us to look at lyrics of pop songs and see the secret education and how music is being used to drill it into the subconscious minds of teenagers. Just like it is important for us to approach Disney's Beauty and the Beast critically.

I could talk all day about this stuff. Sorry if its too long, I tend to get on these rants for a while. In any case, let me know what you think.

See you in class.