A Low Down Dirty Shame

By Kimberley Lindsay Wilson

The R&B singer Usher, (no last name please, he's a star) used to be a really cute kid. He danced a little, acted a little and projected an overall charming persona. His songs were inoffensive and most were the Hip-Hop version of Bubblegum Pop music. Well, folks, Usher's all grown up now and it's not pretty.

His new album, entitled Confessions is a commercial success and has received praise from fans and critics alike.

The concept is quite simple. It's a sometimes-torrid look into the young man's personal life and seems to be a chronicle of his messed up relationships and infidelities-- although Usher has since denied this. The album offers moody slow songs and shake-what-you-have-in-the-club songs. In short, it's typical of today's R&B except for one terribly disturbing thing. The remix of Usher's single "Confessions, Part II" advocates violence against pregnant women. The song concerns a cast off lover who is three months pregnant and plans to keep her baby. In the remix, rapper Joe Budden adds these words:

"Pray that she abort that, If she's talkin' 'bout keepin' it / One hit to the stomach, She's leakin' it,"

In other words, the answer to your mistress/sort of girlfriend/one night stand's pregnancy is to beat her into a miscarriage.

I know that someone is reading this right now and will jump to Usher and Budden's defense by saying that they are just "keeping it real." Have you ever noticed that no celebrity ever seems to keep it real by doing or saying something positive? Why is it that "real" in the Hip Hop and R&B world always seems to be mean and ugly? Beating a woman in order to force her to lose her child is about as vicious as you can get.

Other people may read this and will say "Relax, it's just a song." True, but it's a song that advocates violence towards women and unborn children. Day Gardner, director of the pro-life group, Black Americans for Life justifiably calls this remixed song "demeaning" and "appalling" is asking radio stations not to add it to their playlists. So far, a number of stations have chosen to add the song to their lists. Depending on where you live, your sons and daughters have already heard it.

This incident surely won't harm either Usher's career or his current sales. The young man has struck musical gold and has set a record for spending more consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard pop charts than anybody else since 1940. He's sold more than 4 million copies of the album in only 11 weeks after its release.

Clearly the music buying public-and it's not just teenaged girls with too much money--- is devouring what Usher's cooking up and serving to us. So it says something significant about us that there have been no noisy protests, no comment in the major media and not even a whiff of disapproval from black owned or operated media outlets.

Usher is laughing and dancing to the bank. Black women have once again been sung about in a degrading manner and nobody seems to care. It's a low down dirty shame.

About the Author:

Kimberley Lindsay Wilson's guest editorials and book reivews have appeared in over 100 newspapers across the country. She is a contributing writer for numerous e-zines and is the author of 11 Things Mama Should've Told You About Men and the newly revised Work It! The Black Woman's Guide to Success at Work.

Kimberley Lindsay Wilson may be contacted at http://members.aol.com/wilsonhope/aaa/index.html or email clevesdaughter@yahoo.com.