Sep. 11, 2007 - Issue #621: Sex in The City 07

Backlash Blues

The merits of sweet potato pie

DJ Assault’s high-powered Sep 1 set at The Starlite Room led me to thinking about the nature of sexuality in music. In the process of dancing my ass off and drunkenly annoying the people around me, I wondered what made this experience so special. Why did his dance music elicit a more sexual response from me than other genres do? I’m beginning to think it lies somewhere within the psychological principle of association.

DJ Assault’s music is overtly sexual. It is based on high BPMs, jittery bass lines and sexually suggestive chants. One song personifies sweet potato pie as a sexual object (“The pie’s too sweet / Gimme a piece of meat / The meat’s too tough / I want that funky stuff!”), while another is merely the words “ass” and “titties” repeated at various intervals.
Perhaps it isn’t highbrow in the traditional sense, but from a programming standpoint, DJ Assault is considered the king of ghetto electro house, blasting out his addictive rhythms at rapid speed. I wondered why I was aroused by music so obviously waving the banner of sex. It seemed similar to going on iTunes and buying that song by 50 Cent called “I Get Money.” I’m usually not an easy mark. My dance boner was a result of my mental association between dance music and previous sexual experiences, not unlike other things in life.

I mentally associate sex with drinking because ever since junior high I’ve been going to house parties, getting drunk and trying to kiss girls. The stimulus of positive reward in these situations created the association. The same goes for dance parties and, as a result, the DJ Assault show.

Incidentally, Akon is playing River Cree Casino on Sep 21. His songs are unabashedly about boning and the circumstances around you, the listener, getting to bone him. His stage show at one point featured him vigorously grinding an underage female fan on the ground to the point of bruising her. The point I’m getting at is that tons of digital kids out there actually equate Akon with a realistic view of sex. Why do people find music sexy? When soft, melodic music is the soundtrack to a make-out session, one can’t help but think of scenes from modern cinema as the reason. But the idea of presenting an associative idea—having sex—through a particular voice—Leonard Cohen, for example—is entirely normal. Consider Justin Timberlake: it is generally considered that he is sexually attractive, based on a combination of his looks, wealth, musical talent and dancing ability. Is it how these factors are presented that makes them trigger a reaction in the audience or is it just a continuation of basic animal magnetism?

Was I more sexually charged in my dancing because I knew Assault was the one playing the tracks? Was I behaving in a specific way based on what I thought was expected of me, the audience member, at a DJ Assault show? That might be a bit too sharp, because people don’t just go around asking random girls to hop in their van and have sex after watching a BangBus video. But I think association can be enhanced by certain circumstances, so sexual association with music is natural. I shouldn’t feel like a guinea pig for thinking about sex when DJ Assault puts on a song called “Hit It From The Back.” V

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