Singing about Love in the Black Community: From Barbershop Quartets to Making ‘Truffle Butter’

Warning: This post contains images and descriptions that you will not be able to mentally unsee. Please continue with caution…or not at all.

I had the ‘opportunity’ to watch a rerun of the 2015 BET Awards this week. It would be more accurate to say I was obliged to watch it, since my cousin provided me with the option of watching “Black Sparrow”, “Black Poison” or “Black Scorpion” On Demand. I stared at the title choices in disbelief, so she decided for us.

“BET it is!”

She wanted to watch Diddy take that infamous swan dive through the bowels of the stage. I never tire of seeing it, so I didn’t object. I’ll grudgingly admit that I was glad we watched it. Smokey Robinson was being honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award, and it gave me the opportunity to revisit some of his greatest hits, including Tracks of My Tears and Tears of a Clown. I came up in an era when Motown’s power was just beginning to wane after defining not just Black music, but pop music for decades. It was nice to see a face and hear a voice that I associated with happier childhood times. In that segment, I discovered that Smokey Robinson was credited with writing over 4,000 songs, many of which form the basis of a hip hop hook or two or have been remastered by prolific R&B crooner such as D’Angelo. Cruisin’, Ain’t No Woman Like the One I Got, Baby Come Close to Me, Get Ready, My Girl…the list is endless.

Dudes that set a thousand hearts aflutter!

It was a beautiful tribute, but it got me to thinking about themes in popular music. Above all, Smokey wrote about love. Love –either in the religious, erotic or filial sense – has always been a strong theme in Black singing, but I sense a shift…a change in the tide if you will. There are no more “love songs”. There are only porn anthems. How did this happen?

Let’s be honest: All music about love has at its core the end goal of getting to sex, but there was a certain beauty in the dance. When the Four Tops sang baby I need your lovin’, got(s) to have all your lovin’, it was implied that at some point, there would be a meeting between the sheets after the proper protocol had been executed. A woman and her beaux might go for a walk, talk about this n’ that, dare to tell her how stunningly beautiful she was, and enquire if he could call on her again.

R&B and pop music have its roots in Barbershop Quartets. Allegedly, Black men who would find themselves spending a leisurely afternoon waiting to get their hair cut would entertain themselves by singing and harmonizing in groups in the barbershop while they waited for their turn for service. This culture was then bastardized by white entertainers who used the technique and its elements during minstrel shows. From Barbershop, doo wop and singing under street lamps was born. Rock was just emerging as a force. Barry Gordy seized the opportunity to bring some order (and to profit off of) to the chaos when he created Motown Records. For the first time, Black artists had more control over their craft than they had previously under white owned labels and management. The foundation and formula for making pop culture hits (and profit) was solidified. There hasn’t been any looking back sense. The only thing that has changed is the heart of the music. In less than 100 years, we’ve gone from expressing hopeful, wistful love with the desire to be together forever to the expectation that one’s encounter with the object of the song’s lyrics will last no more than 10 minutes in the back of the club…or at best, all night long.

Ooooo… All NIGHT long, you say?! How’s that for longevity? Please; people have had yeast infections that have lasted longer. Oh, speaking of crotch yoghurt… The lyrical concoctions in today’s most popular urban music (as they relate to relationships and love) range from amusing to flat out disgusting. They describe sexual acts and/or fantasies that the singer has either played out in real life, or expresses a desire to inflict upon his/her sexual partner for the duration of the encounter. If you’re unfamiliar with these terms I am about to share, please know that there’s no easy way to serve this up to you, Dear Reader, and for that you have my most sincere apologies.

• Superman Dat Hoe: The act of pulling out at the point of climax while in the lower mammalian procreative position, spraying the female participant with one’s semen whilst laying a sheet upon her back, thus creating the appearance of a “Superman cape”.
• Strawberry shortcake: After performing fellatio, the female participant in the act will eagerly and unsuspectedly look up at the recipient after he has discharged in her mouth. He will then punch her in the face, as hard as possible. The mixture of blood and semen will create a crimson and cream mix, known as a “strawberry shortcake”.
• Bucking Bronco: Two “dedicated” lovers must find themselves in the act of sexual pleasure, again in the lower mammalian procreative position. As they near their romantic peak, the male will grab his partner by the waist while purposefully call out the name of another (unknown) woman, much to her irritation. In the moments after, she will undoubtedly twitch and attempt to wriggle away from his grasp, but he must hold firm and continue to “plow”. Bucking bronco.
• Making Truffle Butter: While in the midst of anal sex, the person in possession of a penis (or a replica thereof) will withdraw from the anal cavity and re-penetrate his partner through the vagina. The tan, buttery substance created in the aftermath is known as “truffle butter”.
• Spiderman Dat Hoe: Are you still reading? Gosh, you’re a trooper! This one’s not so bad. A man merely gratifies himself, ejaculates into his palm, and flings the stringy substance into his partner’s face…like Spiderman blinding the Goblin, I assume. Who knows? I’m just waiting for someone to create series of maneuvers named after all the Marvel comic heroes and destroy my adolescent memories forever.

I admit I have a certain level of nostalgia for olden days and the music that defined my parent’s era. In a time when men were not ashamed to plead with a woman to not take away her affection after he’d committed some egregious act or when crooners sang of forgiving their lovers even though “s/he done did me wrong”. That there would be an intimate make up session to follow thereafter was always implied, but never explicitly explained. There has been freaky sex in private and public spaces for as long as human beings have procreated – but there has also always been a certain mystery to it. You could speculate, but never say conclusively what two people were doing in their private pleasure time; but now folk will just walk up to you and tell you what they cooked up on their 300 thread count sheets. Mmmm mmm! Truffle butter!

I am most forlorn because there is so much emphasis on sex  – and culminating that act in violence towards women – and hardly on love at all. Like, there are 15 year old girls and 20-something men who equate being given gonorrhea or a vaginal rash with “love”. They’ll never experience the wistful longing of waiting for love to bud and blossom, of cultivating a lasting relationship, because they’ll have been too busy sitting in the gynecologist’s office getting that buttery butt seepage checked out…and that’s a tragedy. That’s not love. That’s a UTI.