Too Short

The R&B song “Nothing Feels Better” off Too Short’s new album Blow the Whistle will make the average female listener swear off blow jobs for the rest of her life. Nothing in the world make a nigga feel better/Than when you’re suckin’ my dick goes the appetizing hook, sung by Atlanta rap crooner Jazze Pha.

These cheesy turn-off fantasies might lead you to believe that Short is at cross purposes with himself, and perhaps he is. The rapper’s songs are so joyously over the top that it’s hard to tell if he believes what he’s saying, whether he’s spitting out moral messages, or trying to sound creepy and misogynistic.

Short offers a disclaimer in his opening track, “Call Her a Bitch,” snapping, Bitch ain’t nothing but a word to me before saying bitch about 500 times. He pens the (relatively) inspirational song “Sophisticated,” about a stylish prosecutor chick who’s come up from the ‘hood and done right for herself. In a more sinister moment, he raps, You used to get your ass beat for listening to Short/But now she all grown with a dick in her throat.

Returning to “Nothing Feels Better,” Short praises a woman’s magical dick-sucking powers by suggesting that she must have won a gold medal in “the Dickolympics,” and then adds, with a child’s glee, This is won-duh-ful! Better yet, “I Want Your Girl” has guest rapper Mistah F.A.B. trying to join the course of barrio lotharios but inevitably slipping back into dorky schoolbus-driver mode: Do me cuz I’m-a sho do you/What it dooky?Yadadabooboo! Surely no ho can resist the enticements of “goo-goo-ga-ga” hyphy speak coupled with the salacious pick-up line “What it dooky?”

Blow the Whistle is a compendium of gross-out, club-friendly numbers set up to advance a very simple argument: “You hos need to suck my dick.” The rapper has virtually become a caricature of himself, but you’ll secretly like this album because it has the same appeal as NC-17 grade-school humor, even if Short is almost old enough to have grandkids that age. Talk about cross purposes.