Currently Playing: Snow Patrol-Run.
My sister and I are just too different. Almost complete opposites. If we were to be characters in a movie, think 10 Things I Hate About You. No guesses on which of the Stratford sisters we’d play.
Point in case of our contrasts which already has arisen before: music.
It dawned on me today how much we fight in the car over what to listen to most of the time. Whatever she listens to, I can’t stand. Overplayed and overrated. Whatever I play, she calls either boring, mellow, suicidal, depressing, weird, strange and everything else in between. Granted, there are rare occasions when we relent on each other’s account, but most days I win on the basis that I’m the driver and that is the privilege I’m entitled to enjoy.
Speaking of music, there’s something that’s been bothering me for ages. I’ve realised that lyrics promoting moral decadence has been and is still steadily increasing in recent times. Simply said, songs played as though on loop on today’s airwaves are taking it way too far with raunchy and suggestive words, particularly in the hiphop and R&B genre.
I have no qualms in admitting that these songs aren’t meant to be taken seriously. Hey, who’s going to say that there’s a hidden, encrypted message somewhere behind Beep? There isn’t; it’s just pure, fun music.
But then again, take a step back and take a good listen. Compare the lyrics of the songs of yesteryears, and the lyrics of the songs today. I know that oldies music just doesn’t cater to everybody’s taste, and I accept that. That being that, can anyone remember how the music world was when the lyrics were all the more innocent? Or maybe, better put: less lewd, obscene and sexually explicit?
I don’t know, maybe I’m just overreacting. One thing’s for sure: I’ve come to a point where I’d like to take all the smug rappers and self-satisfied hip hoppers who strut around on their video clips, reducing women to sexual objects and tools of lust, and club them over with whatever our Neanderthal male ancestors used on our female ancestors. A switch. Moreover, I’d like to slap these women silly for agreeing to be portrayed as enjoying being treated as such. What message are we women sending out to the world when we subjugate ourselves to men willingly by free exposure and cheap shows? Honestly, where’s your self-respect, women?!
That said though, I’m to make it clear that I do enjoy some songs from the genre to an extent.
Flipsyde’s Happy Birthday is definitely a must-listen, if not for the music, then for the lyrics.
The words just hit me: the grief, the pain, the REGRET.
Flipsyde-Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday...so make a wish Please accept my apologies, wonder what would have been Would you've been a little angel or an angel of sin? Tom-boy running around, hanging with all the guys. Or a little tough boy with beautiful brown eyes? I paid for the murder before they determined the sex Choosing our life over your life meant your death And you never got a chance to even open your eyes Sometimes I wonder as a fetus if you faught for your life? Would you have been a little genius in love with math? Would you have played in your schoolclothes and made me mad? Would you have been a little rapper like your papa da Piper? Would you have made me quit smokin' by finding one of my lighters? I wonder about your skintone and shape of your nose? And the way you would have laughed and talked fast or slow? Think about it every year, so I picked up a pen Happy birthday, love you whoever you woulda been Happy birthday... All I thought was a dream (make a wish) Was as real as it seemed (happy birthday) All I thought was a dream (make a wish) Was as real as it seemed I made a mistake! I've got a millon excuses to why you died Bet the people got their own reasons for homicide Who's to say it woulda worked, and who's to say it wouldn't have? I was young and strugglin' but old enough to be your dad The fear of being a father has never disappeared Pondering frequently while I'm zippin' on my beer My vision of a family was artificial and fake So when it came time to create I made a mistake Now you've got a little brother maybe he's really you? Maybe you really forgave us knowin' we was confused? Maybe everytime that he smiles it's you proudly knowin' that your father's doin' the right thing now? I never tell a woman what to do with her body But if she don't love children then we can't party Think about it every year, so I picked up a pen Happy birthday, love you whoever you woulda been Happy birthday... All I thought was a dream (make a wish) Was as real as it seemed (happy birthday) All I thought was a dream (yeah, make a wish) Was as real as it seemed I made a mistake!
And from the heavens to the womb to the heavens again From the endin' to the endin', never got to begin Maybe one day we could meet face to face? In a place without time and space Happy birthday... From the heavens to the womb to the heavens again From the endin' to the endin', never got to begin Maybe one day we could meet face to face? In a place without time and space Happy birthday... All I thought was a dream (make a wish) Was as real as it seemed (happy birthday) All I thought was a dream (make a wish) Was as real as it seemed I made a mistake...!
Abortion is never a way out. Not when there are so many mothers by nature out there who are unable to conceive, and who badly want to have children to call their own. These are those who deserve the gift of motherhood. Rasulullah SAW once said that children are the perfumes of Allah.
This is why it makes me sick to read of newborn babies being dumped in trash, being covered in maggots and blood, spending the earliest hours of their lives on Earth by fighting to keep it. Their ‘mothers’ are the ones who are undeserving and unworthy. Would it have been so difficult to have just placed the baby in a safe place? A mosque, a house, a shelter of some sort? If they could have gone through all those months of pregnancy and endured the labour of giving birth, what’s it to just leaving that new life in a place he/she can be alright?
And you wonder why most times I just don’t get people.
Enough said here.
