Khia's new single, “Be Your Lady,” is unremarkable R&B boilerplate with a sluggish rhythm that I can imagine clearing dance floors nationwide. What is remarkable about the song are the lyrics, which are helpfully flashed onscreen in the video below.
The crass materialism and unsexy salaciousness are breathtaking—or maybe I just don't listen to enough new R&B to be inured to this sort of mentality. The Atlanta-based singer's delivery doesn't reveal a trace of facetiousness; she seems utterly sincere when she declares, “if it ain't about that cash, then it ain't about us, honey.”
Maybe a lot of guys dig this sort of attitude, but it seems both toxically retrograde for the feminist “cause” (whatever that is nowadays) and corny (“I wanna meet your mother/I wanna cook your dinner and fold your clothes/I wanna have your baby, etc.”), and, I dunno, devoid of that good ol' romantic whatsis upon which male/female relations have been based for centuries. The lyrics have all the warmth of a corporate business plan (“I'm that bitch that you need on your side so you can run this shit”). But who cares if you can “eat out” Khia while she's fixing you breakfast “butt naked”?
Now, her 2002 club smash “My Neck, My Back” is more like it. Its single-minded, relentless focus on Khia receiving oral pleasure is refreshing in this male-dominated domain, and it has no pretensions other than to get a tongue (any tongue, as long as a man's attached to it) in her groove. Plus, the music's much sexier and, I daresay, cunning, than that of “Be Your Lady.”
“Be Your Lady”
“My Neck, My Back”
