(S)UCKERS

These days, it seems that memes serve as my Willy Wonka, guiding me through the whimsical factory of the internet and showing me what musical dreams lie beyond the sizzling veil of the digital screen. As Charlie failed to understand the business espionage implications of an everlasting gobstopper, so too do I scratch my head at Tik Tok; though in a reversal of roles, Charlie had stepped into the puzzling world of the generation before him, whereas I stare in stupefaction at the generation that's come after me. That is, of course, if the roles themselves stay consistent.

To spice up my nightmare boat ride down the chocolate river, my Instagram feed sent my way a Tik Tok created by Jason Michael Foxly, a man who's got about ten years on me; so I suppose I'm just incredibly behind the times. This individual had taken it upon himself to create a Tik Tok (yes, I was watching a Tik Tok on Instagram—let's let sleeping dogs lie) with the caption "When you [poop emoji] on a fem top." The video consists of him screaming and waving his arm in an outrageously exaggerated camp-gay fashion for which Liberace would presumably sue. Scoring his flap-wristed antics is an electro-jungle beat, replete with she-Tarzan wailing and bombastic drums, not to mention the occasional blat of, at best, a laconic trombone. At worst, it's...well, [poop emoji].

Upon combing through the comments, I found that someone else had posed my prevailing question to the audience of other gay men: What in Cher's name is the song playing in the background of this fecal debacle? Turns out yet another watcher had the answer waiting for me, and so I pulled up Spotify and played the track "UCKERS" by Shygirl. The artist, whose name I had never heard, remains fairly unknown to me; but the song, to use the colloquial neologism, slaps. In the hands of another creative, the feminine screams arcing throughout the track might turn heavy-handed; but Shygirl employs sparse sounds elsewhere, letting her steady stream of croons lead the beat. She knows the way, and the drums follow faithfully.

As I, too, step down the starlit path laid down by Shygirl, "Steady creeping/In the AM," in her words, I'm reminded of a perennial question in the gay community, one echoed in me: What is it about powerful women in music that we find so enticing? Why do we hold fast to the diva? I think there's something to be said for traditional masculinity being closed off to gay men, for the man-conqueror-of-women being an ideal to which we stake no emotional claim. The narrative of women's songs—straight women, anyway—often carries the reflection of a man, defined by his presence or his absence.

"UCKERS" exemplifies an aspect of this, but a fresher, newer aspect, that of the woman sexually liberated; and in yet another reversal, Shygirl is using the men around her for her own sexual gratification. The chorus drives home her detached promiscuity and sexual feats: "I don't give a fuck about you/But I really keep on fucking/Till I fuck all of you/No kissing no hugging." Had I not known the writer of the lyrics nor heard the song itself, I'd have thought it to be penned by a man: fifty-fifty that that man was gay.

There's a larger narrative at play here, the question of gay (mostly white) men "borrowing" (read: stealing) cultural morsels from Black women to nourish their own egos and flavor their interaction with the world around them; and indeed, the comedian who created the Tik Tok, a fairly Aryan-race-but-for-the-fact-that-he's-gay guy, might suggest that phenomenon here, especially if he had neglected to credit Shygirl in the original material. Such arguments I don't pretend to be knowledgeable enough to make; what I do know is that the bit was funny enough to make me laugh, and the beat enticing enough to make me listen.

It's a ten out of ten for me.

"UCKERS" by Shygirl on Spotify