As I officially step into my late thirties later this year, I have accepted that the superpowers of aging will only accelerate with time. In other words, it won’t be long now before I’m tempted to post thirst traps of myself in Under Armour shirts like Tyler Perry and other uncles on the move.
The signs are there. On one hand, a dermatologist tells me I look so much younger than my apparent big ass old age; on another, a different doctor tells me my lingering back problems are sciatica. (If there was any lingering doubt that this is an old man problem, Pope Francis, 84 years old, is having similar problems as me, someone born in 1984.) If you are the praying kind, please ask the Lord above to heal my pains with prescriptions and increased stretching so I won’t be kicked off the Houstonians With Good Knees list that includes Beyoncé, Solange, and Megan Thee Stallion. It’s never fun to fear you’ll need a cane by 40.
While I admittedly didn’t know what a BRS Kash was until it showed up on a Spotify playlist themed around my love of hoodrat tracks — an algorithm that also includes auntie tunes, R&B that’s not just vibes, coke rap, and gospel that could be thrown into a club mix — I listened with an open mind.
But nothing has made me feel older than the video for “Throat Baby,” a BRS Kash song that features DaBaby and City Girls on the remix.
Before I move on, let me say that nothing I write here comes from a place of “back in my day” grumpy-old-manning or moral superiority. I have been cursing since I was a child (and cursing out the elementary classmates who snitched on me to teachers during recess) and listening to the nastiest shit since before all of the aforementioned rapping Blacks have been alive. The point is, very little shocks me. (That’s probably more of a cry for help than a brag, but I digress.)
While I admittedly didn’t know what a BRS Kash was until it showed up on a Spotify playlist themed around my love of hoodrat tracks — an algorithm that also includes auntie tunes, R&B that’s not just vibes, coke rap, and gospel that could be thrown into a club mix — I listened with an open mind.
The hook didn’t waste any time.
Sexy lil’ b***h, sexy lil’ ho
I love the way you walk, love the way you talk
Let a young n***a come play in your throat
Deep stroke your throat ’til I make you choke
Throat babies, I’m tryna give ’em to you
Throat babies, I’m tryna bust all on you
I’m usually the type of bird who follows the beat and is too busy body-rolling to pay close attention to the lyrics, but I ain’t ever heard no shit like “throat babies.”
There are only so many ways to be clever about oral sex, and most people fail at it. I don’t say that as a compliment. Granted, I’m sure the song hits with the folks in Atlanta and Houston still going to the clubs to twerk their way to family massacres when it’s played. BRS Kash is the one living his rap dreams, not me.
I can’t ignore the video, though.
It started off fine. With them dancing in bucket hats like the ones I used to wear my senior year in high school, it felt like a hodgepodge of old Missy videos. (For the record, I have a peanut head, and bucket hats are the only ones that work for me.) What came next, though — so to speak — is when I began to reach for my cane.
When a spaceship flew into the mouth of one of the statues in an all-female mock-up of Mount Rushmore, I should have known things could only go left. They did. Moments later, a woman in a red lip opened her mouth, and what I can only describe as CGI semen cascaded out of her mouth. That’s Da Baby appeared, rapping while he snowboarded across what I guess was supposed to be a tongue. In case you’d forgotten that this was all happening in somebody’s mouth, molars would pass by in the background every few seconds.
That was just the beginning. Later, after doing a terrible two-step on a woman’s tongue, BRS Kash leaped off a springboard and dove down another woman’s throat. By this point, the video was basically the lazy horny ’90s-baby version of Michael Jackson’s “Leave Me Alone.” Meanwhile, the two rappers made use of the least subtle props imaginable, from ultrasound wands to fire hoses, just to further convey the theme.
Naturally, the highlight of the video — and the only reason I even watched this video — was the City Girls. (In my heart, no matter how old I get, I can always be a City Boy.) My expectations for this video had already died by the time they appeared, but I hope their feature rates continue to go up. Once more: If you are the praying kind, ask God to heal me so I can go back to dancing like JT and Caresha without fear of injury.
I knew that No Child Left Behind and the continued lack of funding for arts programs would do some damage, but damn. This might be the stupidest video I’ve ever seen.
Crassness isn’t the problem. For much of 2020, a sizable portion of the world rapped along to a song about wet ass pussy. And without the accompanying music video, which didn’t shy away at sexuality, the song probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the massive success that it did. But those were women commanding their own sexuality with the help of a talented team, including a creative director. In contrast, “Throat Baby” plays into the worst of age-old rap tropes — only somehow more dumb, more callous, and more exploitive.
The stress from the never-ending plague alone is probably aging me beyond belief, but in the coming years, whenever someone asks when I started feeling old, I’m going to tell them it wasn’t the moment I needed treatment for sciatica — but rather when I realized I’d utterly outgrown the intersection of semen and snowboarding.
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