Which Is A Worse Piece Of Garbage, Ray J's Song About Kim Kardashian Or Brad Paisley And L.L.

Which Is A Worse Piece Of Garbage, Ray J’s Song About Kim Kardashian Or Brad Paisley And L.L. Cool J’s Song About Race Relations?

This week, hip-hop presents us with an interesting problem: Which is more horrible, a song from a second-rate publicity whore rehashing his biggest claim to fame, which happens to have been making a sex tape with a woman who has gone to become far more successful and famous than he has? Or an extraordinarily clunky country-rap hybrid that makes a great mess in its attempt to tackle the difficult subject of race in America. We’d all be better off ignoring both these things — each, from all appearances, created in a cynical effort to drum up otherwise undeserved attention. But their coincidental arrival has me curious. What is worse for the world? It’s a challenging question!

Here’s Ray J’s “I Hit It First”:

If you don’t keep up with the hip-hop gossip side of Twitter (which, if this is the case: Kudos) you might not know that Ray J, Brandy’s younger brother, has said that the song he released last week is not about his old girlfriend Kim Kardashian, the reality television star who was married to the New Jersey Nets Kris Humphries for 72 days in 2011 and is now pregnant with Kanye West’s child. That is a ridiculous lie. The cover image he released to accompanying it is a pixilated version of a famous picture of Kardashian in a bikini, and the chorus of the song is, “She might on to rappers and ballplayers/But we all know I hit it first.” And the opening words of the first verse are, “I had her head going North and her ass going south but now the bitch chose to go West.”

It’s hard to feel bad for Kim Kardashian in a situation like this, because if anyone has ever engineered herself into the position in which she resides, it is her. But still: taunting an ex-lover and her new boyfriend is piggish, piggish, piggish behavior. Never mind the the future feelings of the future kid. And never mind what the expression of such sentiment, in the belief that it will look like some kind of “winning,” says about ones fucked-up sexual politics and the status of women in general. Never mind, even, how badly this song would suck even it were not about such disgusting subject matter. Ray J is a big pile of yuck. It would be nice if he went away forever.

But is that song worse than Brad Paisley and L.L. Cool J with “Accidental Racist?”

No. It is not. “Accidental Racist” accomplishes the seemingly impossible in being worse!

Everything about this is incredible. Really incredibly bad. The melody, the singing, the rapping, everything. Laughably terrible. “The red flag on my chest somehow is like an elephant in the corner of the south,” sings Brad Paisley, mixing all sorts of crazy metaphors crazily. And then, while you’re still trying to figure that out, he says, “And I just walked him in the room!”

The chorus begins as follows: “I’m just a white man/Coming from the/Southland/Trying to understand what it’s like not to be…”

That last part is the best. Again, labyrinthian lyrics, very difficult to follow. First you think there’s something else coming. He’s trying to figure out what it’s like not to be a… But there’s not. So for an instant, you wonder if Brad Paisley is considering his own death, that this song is about deeper existentialist questions than it might have seemed. But then, no. He’s trying to understand what it’s like not to be just a white man coming from the Southland. Good luck to him, but I’d guess he’s set himself up for failure. I would argue that that is an impossible goal for anyone. And judging from the way he writes words, I think he might have a harder time than the average guy understanding anything at all.

Then the L.L. part comes on.

Why L.L., why would you do this? You used to be so great! You were the best!

And you have so much money and all these other things — make movies, and host award shows, and beat up intruders who break into your house. Why make records? It’s been so long since you’ve done anything but embarrass yourself on this front?

“I wasn’t there when Sherman’s March turned the South into firewood,” L.L. raps. “I want you to get paid, but be a slave I never could…”

And

“If you don’t judge my doo-rag/I won’t judge your red flag…”

And

“If you don’t judge my gold chains/I’ll forget the iron chains…”

And then

“The relation between the Mason-Dixon needs some fixin’.”

Yes it does. But this song will really, really not help fix anything. This kind of bullshit, feel-better, teachable-moment nonsense can only make the world worse. Never mind the highly questionable notion of equating a doo-rag with a confederate flag, or forgetting about America’s history of slavery ever under any circumstances. That kind of stupid, garbage rhyming, delivered in such breathy, lick-lipping, self-important tones… Jesus Christ! This might not just be the worst song to come out this past week; this might be the worst song to come out all year. This might be the very worst song ever recorded by anyone.

In that way, I guess, it is important?