Booty Call

If somebody calls a press conference to protest St. Louis rapper Nelly, does anybody hear it? And if you arrive 5 minutes late, did the protest even happen? More to the point, what the hell ever happened to Captain Murdock from The A-Team?

All good questions, to be answered in order of importance.

First, it turns out that Dwight Schultz, the man who played “Howling Mad” Murdock, happens to be doing voice-over work and Star Trek conventions. He is married and lives quietly in Los Angeles.

Second, the protest allegedly happened at the Uptown Theater last Tuesday, though when I arrived on the scene, all I found was some dude in a Cardinals hat waiting for a ticket to Nelly’s private show that night.

“Do you know where the protest is?” I asked.

“Huh?” Cardinals Hat replied.

“I … uh … heard there was going to be a Nelly protest here?”

“Sheeeeeit. What they protesting?”

“Um, his ‘Tip Drill’ song and his Pimp Juice drink.”

“Fuck, the energy drink? Sheeeeeit.”

And so on. I had my doubts, but I was armed with a press release — two press releases — so something had to have happened. And something had.

Alonzo Washington.

The community activist and comic-book creator (see KC Strip, page 9) had announced the protest to call attention to the misogyny and pandering stereotypes in Nelly’s “Tip Drill” song and video, his Pimp Juice energy drink and his Apple Bottoms clothing line. Washington had also issued a challenge to Mike Carter, head of Carter Broadcasting, the company that oversees KPRS 103.3, the radio sponsor of that night’s exclusive Nelly performance.

“They say that Hot 103.3 cares about the community,” Washington said later in a phone interview with the Pitch. “But all we hear on urban radio and see on BET are these negative stereotypes of the inner city. Everybody went crazy about Janet’s breast, but then we click over to BET and see much worse. They should call it Booty Entertainment Television.”

Has kind of a nice ring, doesn’t it?

But Washington has a point. “Tip Drill” is an ode to a woman pretty enough to gang-bang but too ugly to bring home to mom. To be fair, a female’s rebuttal in the song’s third verse suggests that the suitor is pretty enough to fuck for cash, cars and jewelry but too ugly to bring home to dad.

The lesson, kids, is that sometimes mommies and daddies don’t have that special, warm feeling in their tummies for each other anymore. Oh, and that it’s OK to buy and sell dignity or poontang when the price is right.

Yes, the song is rife with misogyny (Nelly runs a credit card through a woman’s ass crack in the video), and, yes, Pimp Juice is an awful name for an energy drink. Partly because it reinforces negative stereotypes but mostly because it sounds like one of two ingredients in a jism-and-vodka, um, cocktail.

But isn’t pinning the rap on rap getting a little old?

“I’m sophisticated enough to know there are different levels of rap, but thuggism sells,” Washington said. “50 Cent is a superstar, and his whole premise is that he’s been shot nine times, he’s been to jail and he wears a bulletproof vest. That’s a dangerous image to be promoting. But the media just shrugs it off as ghetto niggerism.”

Fair enough. But we’re also talking about Nelly. The guy slurrs his wurrds like Daffy Duck after a fifth of Night Train while rapping about cruising (“Ride Wit Me”), clubs (“Hot in Herre”) and kicks (“Air Force Ones”). Is he really the right person to pick up Washington’s gauntlet?

I went to Nelly’s show to find out. The “Budweiser One Night Stand” attracted a diverse and jovial crowd — certainly one less inbred than the Slipknot fans at Memorial Hall the night before and less pretentious than the Strokes fans at the Uptown the night after.

Were they concerned about Nelly’s reinforcement of negative stereotypes?

“We ’bout to get drunk in this muthafucker!” shouted a man holding four beers.

What about the lyrical degradation of women?

“Damn! They’re some fine-ass white bitches in the house tonight!” another guy intoned.

Huh. Well, at the very least, maybe Washington’s protest would have some effect on Nelly himself.

The curtain opened, and Nelly launched into his first song of the night: “Tip Drill.”