IAN G. STRACHAN

"Let me lick you up and down

"'Til you say stop"

Remember that song? Were those the two unseemly lines by Silk in 1992 that signaled the death of black music in America? Was that the song that put R&B and Rap in the gutter, for good?

Maybe not. Maybe it was R. Kelly singing about "Feelin' on yo booty?" in 2000. No man, can't be; that's too recent. This thing has been going on for almost 20 years. Even this bit of poetry by Kelly in 1995 is too late to qualify:

"You remind me of my jeep, I wanna ride it

"Something like my sound, I wanna pump it

"Girl you look just like my cars, I wanna wax it

"And something like my bank account

"I wanna spend it, baby . . ."

It brings tears to my eyes. When you think about it, such songs make it easier to understand a piece of mastery like Ludacris' 2001 hit, "Area Codes": "I gat hoes . . . in diff'rent area codes, area codes."

But even R. Kelly wasn't the groundbreaker. Nope, it really must have been new jack swinger Teddy Riley's group, Guy. Remember those fellas? They came to Nassau and shot that video, "My Fantasy" on Cabbage Beach? Well in the year I went to Morehouse College, 1988, one of their hits was "Piece of My Love." I remember it vividly because my roommate at the time pointed out a peculiarity of the lyrics to me. The song goes:

"I DO LOOOVE YOOOOU !!!

"Oooooooooooooooh

"You can have a piece of my love

"OOOoooooooh"

(And then Aaron Hall mumbles this line:) Dumb bitch

"It's waitin' for you

"Oooooooooh

"Girl it's true"

How did we get there? How did we go from Stevie Wonder's 1969 masterpiece, "My Cherie, Amour" to bitch, ho', trick, freak, skeezer and chicken head? How did we get to R&B that lacked poetry, beauty, tact, respect, vulnerability, chivalry, humility . . . shame?

Don't get me wrong. I know James Brown sang a little number in 1970 called "Sex Machine" in which he tells ladies to "shake [that] money maker." And The Commodores sang "Brick House" in 1977. I know Marvin Gaye gave us "Sexual Healing" in 1982 and the Isley Brothers "Between the Sheets" in 1983.

Sex has been on everybody's mind a little too much for a little too long. But we seem to have gone over the edge. No more use for innuendo, metaphor, subtlety, discreteness, tongue-in-cheekness. Rappers and R&B artists (who are often one and the same) from Snoop to Ludacris, from B. I. G. to Lil Wayne, from Fi'ty Cent to Jamie Foxx, have gone X-rated. The music has gone porno and gone action flick all at once. Gangsta Rap has made Pushin', Pullin' the Trigger and Pimphood the UnHoly Trinity of black music in America.

Things have really gone down hill; and I don't think that's just because I've gotten older and grayer. Take Ludacris' song "Pimpin' All Over the World." Now, I admit, this young man has churned out some amazing beats and he's funny too. But in this video Ludacris takes us on a journey back to the Motherland, Africa. I think it's South Africa by the looks of it. Here he takes his pimp game, flashes his Benjamin Franklins, and pulls an African honey, like a true Player.

"You know who we are,

"Cuz we're pimpin' all over the world.

"The fancy cars,

"The women and the caviar,

"You know who we are,

"Cuz we're pimpin all over the world."

"Sing it hoes (hoes)

"The world, the world, the world"

Christopher Bridges (Ludacris), a Grammy-winning artist who has sold over 13 million albums, actually ends the video in a Marcus Garvey T-shirt that reads: "A people without knowledge of the past are like a tree without roots." Profound.

Let's get this straight. A young African American man has an opportunity to go to Africa to film a music video that millions around the world will see. The fact that he is returning to the ancestral home of his slave descendants is obviously not lost on him, hence the Marcus Garvey T-shirt. That Africa is a continent raped by Europe for its resources and labor and brutalized by its own leaders and is not a damn imaginary playground for the rich and idle like The Bahamas, does seem to be lost on him. That Africa has just 12 percent of the world population but 60 percent of its HIV/AIDS cases is lost on him. So he takes his crew (his manager calls himself Shaka Zulu by the way) and represents himself to the world as a seller and buyer of African women's bodies. In frame after frame he flaunts his American wealth on a continent America often seems not to care a rat's exit hole about! Truly, rappers embarrass me.

Let me qualify that, because Rap wasn't always so asinine. See, I'm old enough to remember when BET actually started. We had a Sugar Hill Gang LP in our house. I grew up with Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash, Whodini, LL, Run DMC, Fat Boys, Dougie Fresh, Slick Rick, Kid n Play, Young MC, Will Smith, Digital Underground, Jungle Brothers, Poor Righteous Teachers, Cool Moe D, Big Daddy Kane, Public Enemy, Eric B and Rakim, KRS 1, Heavy D, Special Ed and Kwame. Now, I know there was quite a bit of foolishness and "just for fun stuff" mixed in with their lyrics of urban outcry; and I'm not quite sure I can argue that Big Daddy Kane wasn't always just about the ladies. But the music wasn't hateful, vicious, nihilistic, cynical and full of fake and real gangsterism. Being a pusher or a pimp? Well, I might be wrong but I don't remember too many songs extolling those things.

Now, before I get my butt strung up, let me say that Rap and R&B are not black American music in total: there's still Jazz, the Blues, Gospel. And I know there are some serious artists out there trying to keep the fire-burning, like Lauryn Hill, Jill Scott, Alicia Keys, India Arie, Maxwell, etc. But, let's face it, these are not the people 12-year-old boys in Nassau idolize and whose lyrics they spit as they walk home from school. Are we in The Bahamas aware that this is a battle for the minds of our children? What are we prepared to do to protect them from lyrics and images that promote hate, unforgiveness, greed and gluttony, foolish pride, misogyny, and law breaking? Nothing?

Somewhere between Luther Vandross and R. Kelly, R&B lost itself, with Rap's help. The music lost hope. It lost optimism. It's almost as if that generation that was born during the Civil Rights era, that Motown crew and beyond, lost energy, got "old," were no longer appealing to the youth, and America's inner cities started producing young people from a different kind of background, who produced a different kind of art. Art that started out playfully and hopefully (remember Club Nouveau, Hi Five or Soul for Real?) but then started to reflect the blight and pox that were the worst of street life. The black community stopped producing art that inspired. I would argue that it stopped doing that right around the time it stopped producing leaders that inspired.

And the record companies, like true capitalists, always want something new. They wanted to sell an "entertaining" image of black life: a life of violence and death, whoredom and drugs. They started selling a roller coaster ride in a CD jewel case to white kids in the suburbs who couldn't go on vacation. Problem is young black boys are actually listening too and I doubt they fully understand that it's just "entertainment."

Write me at ianstrakan@gmail.com or visit http://ianstrachan.wordpress.com