Radio Station Annoys Man Sitting In Car

I sat in a parked car for an hour this morning, waiting out the no-parking-for-street-cleaning window, listening to Hot 97. I know they’re basically a top-40 station, dedicated to whatever’s currently most popular in “blazing hip-hop and R&B.;” But, God, I wish they’d expand their playlist. It really seems like they keep to a rotation of the same five or six songs at any given time. (Maybe they’re a top-5 station?) Today, for example, they played Fabolous’ “Throw It In The Bag” remix, featuring Drake, around 8:45, and then again at exactly 9:24. Twice in forty minutes! That’s ridiculous. (The most recent playlist at Hot97.com has “Throw It In The Bag” ranked 5th. Trey Songz’ “I invented Sex,” also featuring Drake, is no. 1. So they’re playing that one every, what 12 minutes? We’re going to run into mathematical impossibility here…) But I don’t even mind “Throw It In The Bag” so much. Much worse is the new Young Money song that’s also playing with great frequency (ranked 9th on the playlist.) Have you heard it? It’s called “Bedrock” and it absolutely plagued my drive back home from Boston after Thanksgiving. (So Hot 97’s counterparts in Massachusetts and Connecticut must share some blame.) Young Money is Lil Wayne’s group, featuring, yes, Drake, but also Mack Maine, Gutta Gutta, Nicki Minaj and, usually, way too much autotune. But the real problem with “Bedrock” is the chorus.

A cooing, cloying melody, sung by middle-grade R&B; vet Lloyd, it goes, “Ooh, baby/I be stuck to you like glue, baby/Wanna spend it all on you, baby/My room is the G spot/Call me Mr. Flintstone/I can make your bed rock.”

First of all, as my wife pointed out, it’s stupid to refer to anyone called “Mr. Flintstone.” Who’s ever known him as that? The guy doesn’t even wear shoes when he’s driving. It’s “Fred.” Secondly, comparing yourself to a Hannah-Barbera cartoon character is gonna get you laid? Maybe it would-I never understood all that Looney-Tunes denim that Iceberg jeans did in the ’90s. But maybe only if you’re already a blazing hip-hop and R&B; star? More troubling though, the wordplay is just so thick and lazy. (Both Wayne and Drake have proved themselves way better than that in the past.) So pedestrian. How about “Call me Barney Rubble/’Cause I’ll rub all over you”? Or “Call me George Jetson/I’ll fly you on my jet, son.” Or “Call me Scooby-Doo/I’ll…” something about “shagging.” I don’t know.

The samey-sameness demise of hip-hop radio, of popular radio in general is old news. The big corporations, Clear Channel and Emmis Communications, ruined everything, blah blah blah. Nor should it be surprising that a 38-year-old man sitting in his car doesn’t like all of the pop music popular with kids today. (How happy young Young Money fans will be to read this!) Especially the hyperproduced, super-futuristic robot-world stuff. (President Obama, another old, doesn’t trust robots either, remember.)

And it’s not like there’s nothing out there for a guy like me. I mean, I listen to Hot 97 by choice, for fun, despite the horrible homogeny. And even within that homogeny, I like some of what I hear. There are three Jay-Z songs in the top 10 of that playlist, all of which I like quite a lot. But one of them is “D.O.A. (Death of Autotune).” Not that this makes it any less good of a song. But it doesn’t seem like the kids are listening to the words.