For many decades Jimmy Savile was a celebrity in the world of popular music and was a well-known presenter of Top of the Pops. He was feted by the broadcasting establishment and continually surrounded by impressionable young people keen to be associated with a pop music celebrity. Today the name "Jimmy Savile" has become notorious and he is now regarded as a dirty old man who preyed on young women and raped and assaulted hundreds of young girls.
A leading publicist has been contacted on behalf of several pop celebrity contemporaries of Jimmy Savile who are concerned they will be found guilty by association. The leading publicist tells us that the 1960s and 70s were "a different world" when female groupies would throw themselves at music performers offering sexual favours. The implication is that this sort of thing is not happening today.
Let us now draw a line under these two paragraphs.
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Having drawn a line let us now consider in the same blogpost Can You Hear Me Ayayaya the latest offering by Wiley (Richard Kylea Cowie).
The lyrics include the following:
See the fireworks, celebration, team winning the Grey Goose amazing
Send them Jaeger bombs I got a craving
So many women I don't wanna stop raving
They should know I got tunes for the gyal dem
Once the ladies are there see the man dem reach
They wanna leave there with a number
Check the peng ting she's gonna hang with me
I'm skanking all round the party I'm skanking
I got girls to the left and girls to the right
When we're at the bar we ain't ramping
Notes:
Grey Goose is a brand of vodka, Jaegar is a powerful German liqueur.
gyal dem can mean "gyaldem is like a gang of girls usually about 30 to 50 dat get together everyday to sit around looking bored and glassyeyed on walls cos there really isnt nothing else to do,smoke weed and wait out side schools to start fights" - from Shanna, Urban Dictionary.
peng ting can mean 1) a seriously attractive person, male or female or 2) a high grade of drug, normally cocaine.
skanking can mean a slang term for a promiscuous person.
Alexis Petridis, writing in the Guardian describes the "comically polarised" fans Wiley attracts: "At one extreme, its sonic experimentation has attracted the kind of people who run music blogs... at the other extreme, it is favoured by inner-city teens who appear to communicate entirely in an impenetrable mix of street slang and patois." http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2004/apr/23/popandrock.shopping4
The video for Can You Hear Me Ayayayaya was edited by Sam Ostrove and directed by Rohan Blair-Mangat, and it is not clear whether "Wiley" had any creative input to the production. Music videos are of course highly stylised and mediated works of art. But they are also influential among the target audiences they are aimed at (which is why considerable amounts of money are invested in them).
Let us look at a few scenes:
Above: are these the comically polarised fans described by Alex Petridis?
Above: how old is this young woman? 18? 22? 30? Is she a peng ting? Is she sufficiently conscious of her surroundings to be able to give informed consent to whatever might happen next?
Above: how old are these young women? 16? 18? 22? Are they part of the gyal dem? To quote Wiley Light skin with a beautiful body like Kim so I had to get my Kanye West on She told me she's feeling my jewellery (getting "a Kanye West on" and "feeling my jewellery" may of course be completely innocent remarks and no doubt Wiley would tell us the words should not be taken out of context).
Above: how old is this young woman? Is she inebriated with Grey Goose and Jaegar? Later in the evening will she become the target of various skanking individuals?
The video in full: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbQaCCb_Gzc
A leading publicist has been contacted on behalf of several pop celebrity contemporaries of Jimmy Savile who are concerned they will be found guilty by association. The leading publicist tells us that the 1960s and 70s were "a different world" when female groupies would throw themselves at music performers offering sexual favours. The implication is that this sort of thing is not happening today.
Let us now draw a line under these two paragraphs.
____________________________________________
Having drawn a line let us now consider in the same blogpost Can You Hear Me Ayayaya the latest offering by Wiley (Richard Kylea Cowie).
The lyrics include the following:
See the fireworks, celebration, team winning the Grey Goose amazing
Send them Jaeger bombs I got a craving
So many women I don't wanna stop raving
They should know I got tunes for the gyal dem
Once the ladies are there see the man dem reach
They wanna leave there with a number
Check the peng ting she's gonna hang with me
I'm skanking all round the party I'm skanking
I got girls to the left and girls to the right
When we're at the bar we ain't ramping
Notes:
Grey Goose is a brand of vodka, Jaegar is a powerful German liqueur.
gyal dem can mean "gyaldem is like a gang of girls usually about 30 to 50 dat get together everyday to sit around looking bored and glassyeyed on walls cos there really isnt nothing else to do,smoke weed and wait out side schools to start fights" - from Shanna, Urban Dictionary.
peng ting can mean 1) a seriously attractive person, male or female or 2) a high grade of drug, normally cocaine.
skanking can mean a slang term for a promiscuous person.
Alexis Petridis, writing in the Guardian describes the "comically polarised" fans Wiley attracts: "At one extreme, its sonic experimentation has attracted the kind of people who run music blogs... at the other extreme, it is favoured by inner-city teens who appear to communicate entirely in an impenetrable mix of street slang and patois." http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2004/apr/23/popandrock.shopping4
The video for Can You Hear Me Ayayayaya was edited by Sam Ostrove and directed by Rohan Blair-Mangat, and it is not clear whether "Wiley" had any creative input to the production. Music videos are of course highly stylised and mediated works of art. But they are also influential among the target audiences they are aimed at (which is why considerable amounts of money are invested in them).
Let us look at a few scenes:
Above: are these the comically polarised fans described by Alex Petridis?
Above: how old is this young woman? 18? 22? 30? Is she a peng ting? Is she sufficiently conscious of her surroundings to be able to give informed consent to whatever might happen next?
Above: how old are these young women? 16? 18? 22? Are they part of the gyal dem? To quote Wiley Light skin with a beautiful body like Kim so I had to get my Kanye West on She told me she's feeling my jewellery (getting "a Kanye West on" and "feeling my jewellery" may of course be completely innocent remarks and no doubt Wiley would tell us the words should not be taken out of context).
Above: how old is this young woman? Is she inebriated with Grey Goose and Jaegar? Later in the evening will she become the target of various skanking individuals?
The video in full: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbQaCCb_Gzc
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