MixTape Friday

No matter how many times I pressed rewind and listened to it again, it still sounded like Hendrix was singing, "Excuse me while I kiss this guy." I spent a lot of time when I was kid rewinding my favorite parts of songs and listening to them over and over until I learned the lyrics, but the meanings of certain lines escaped me at the time. Nonetheless, I sang along, though now that I take a look through my old tapes, I know I didn't understand half of what they were talking about.

A-Side

Salt-N-Pepa "Shoop"

"Mmm mmm mmm, for the smell of it." When I was little, I knew every word to the guy's part in this song, probably the first rap I ever memorized. In retrospect, there's something quite creepy about an eight year old singing, "They want my bod, here's the hot rod/ Twelve inches to a yard and have ya soundin' like a retard." First of all, in third grade, my hot rod wasn't more than a Micro Machine, and I certainly didn't have anyone making any wailing noises. The part of the song that always confused me was his vague reference to the "smell of it." The smell of what?

Naughty by Nature "OPP"

Certain songs were more considerate of their younger, more naïve listeners and offered an easy-to-understand explanation of their true meanings. "What does OPP stand for," I wondered to myself. Naughty by Nature explained it to me: "O is for Other, P is for People (scratch ya temple)/ The last P, well, that's not that simple." Hmm, the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, but what about that last P? The song continues, "It's sorta like another way to call a cat a kitten/ It's five little letters that ya missin." I was still unsure what he meant; I wished I could buy a vowel.

B-Side

Nirvana "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

What attracted me to Nirvana in the first place certainly wasn't Kurt Cobain's lyrics, but instead the reckless wall of noise that came with songs like "Tourettes." In terms of lyricism, Cobain preferred the abstract and incomprehensible, which conventional record industry wisdom says doesn't make for great choruses. It's hard to have a radio-friendly catchy chorus when you can't understand a single word.

As a result, Cobain had a difficult time getting a record deal at first. Eventually everyone from Seattle to Boston was singing, "Here we are now/ Entertain us," and then mumbling through the next few lines of apparent gibberish. I remember laboring over the hidden meaning of Cobain's unarticulated words: "A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido." The problem with being a little kid is that you can never know when something actually doesn't make any sense. I figured his words were euphemisms for something else, probably something juicy and bad. As I got older, I eventually learned about the details of OPP and its distinct aroma, but the meaning of Cobain's jabberwocky remains a mystery to me.