Easy: Paula DeAnda and Axl Rose

[koganbot]

First in what I hope is a new series of posts about the Department of Dilettante Research (though if my past behavior is any guide, "series of posts" don't happen to me, seeing as I'm more of a convo man than a blog man, hence end up saying more and better stuff on other people's comments threads).

A couple of song lyrics, followed by analysis and speculation.

"Easy"
by Dwayne Carter, Paula DeAnda, Richard "Younglord" Frierson, Nate "Danja" Hills, Nikko, Theodore Thomas
performed by Paula DeAnda and Lil Wayne

Yeah

Yeah
(Yeah)
Paula
(Paula)
Ow
Danger

[Paula]
I might be your young girl, but I know how to have fun
I got them boys chasing me trying to make me the one
When I'm out shoppin', it's like having a gun
Whatever I wanna get, got them boys caught up

I know I'm a hot hot shawty
But you gotta slow down (slow down)
You don't know me (don't know me)
If you in a hot hot hurry
Then you gotta go now (go now), back up off me (off me)

Uh ooh, got them going crazy you see
Uh ooh, head over heels for me oh
Uh ooh, weak in the knees for me boy
Uh ooh, 'cause you so damn easy
'Cause you so damn easy
'Cause you so damn easy

Ooh, I'm much wiser than you think, better act like you know (you know)
Just because I'm a teen it don't mean that I'm slow
I think you're a cutie, boy, but you're turning me off
Sometimes you gotta play hard to get and then it's on

I know I'm a hot hot shawty
But you gotta slow down
You don't know me
If you in a hot hot hurry
Then you gotta go now, back up off me

Uh ooh, I got them going crazy you see
Uh ooh, head over heels for me ooh
Uh ooh, weak in the knees for me boy
Uh ooh, 'cause you are so damn easy
'Cause you are so damn easy
'Cause you are so damn easy

[Lil Wayne]
One Take....Weezy
Baby, tonight's the night
And them girls all on me like white on rice
And I get 'em to the crib, late two or one
I'm already high, now you don't want
Take a jet into the sunset, you won't come
Or sit in my phantom and you won't come
Baby, I can take you to and from
Ice up ya little wrist 'til ya blue hair numb, um
You dealin' wit' a boss lil' mama
Young Wayne, Tony Montana
And for you, I'll tell my homies I'll holla
If your man ain't me, why bother?
I go by the name Carter
I got more plaques than tartar
I'm been just shakin' up them charts on the charter
Number one spot, Wayne and Paula

[Paula]
Uh ooh, got them going crazy you see
Uh ooh, head over heels for me ooh
Uh ooh, weak in the knees for me boy
Uh ooh, 'cause you so damn easy

Uh ooh, got them going crazy you see
Uh ooh, head over heels for me ooh
Uh ooh, weak in the knees for me boy
Uh ooh, 'cause you are so damn easy
Oh no no no

Don't be so damn easy

Don't be so damn easy

"It's So Easy"
by Guns N' Roses and West Arkeen
performed by Guns N' Roses

I see your sister in her Sunday dress
She's out to please
She pouts her best
She's out to take
No need to try
She's ready to make
It's so easy, easy
When everybody's tryin' to please me, baby
It's so easy, easy
When everybody's tryin' to please me

Cars are crashin' every night
I drink and drive everything's in sight
I make the fire
But I miss the firefight
I hit the bullseye every night

It's so easy, easy
When everybody's tryin' to please me baby
Yeah, it's so easy, easy
When everybody's tryin' to please me

So easy
But nothin' seems to please me
It all fits so right
When I fade into the night
See me hit you
You fall down

I see you standin' there
You think you're so cool
Why don't you just
Fuck off

Ya get nothin' for nothin'
If that's whatcha do
Turn around bitch I got a use for you
Besides you ain't got nothin' better to do
And I'm bored

It's so easy, easy
When everybody's tryin' to please me baby
It's so easy, easy
When everybody's tryin' to please me

So easy
But nothin' seems to please me
It all fits so right
When I fade into the night
So come with me
Don't ask me where 'cause I don't know
I'll try to please you
I ain't got no money but it goes to show

It's so easy
So fuckin' easy
It's so easy
So damn easy
It's so easy
So fuckin' easy
It's so easy
Yeah it's so easy
It's so easy
So fuckin' easy
It's so easy
Yeah

The DeAnda lyrics are from the album version, featuring Lil Wayne (the single has both the version with Wayne and one with Bow Wow, and it was the Bow Wow version that got pushed to radio). The intro to "Easy" sounds like it's spoken by Paula and Danja, who, as girlboymusic has pointed out in relation to "Gimme More," pronounces his name "Danger" with at least something of an r.

Not sure of all of Wayne's rap, but I checked lots of times and it sure sounds to me like he's saying "blue hair numb" not "blue an' numb" as the lyric sites think (and "blue hair numb" is vastly, surrealistically better).

Paula distinctly sounds an "f" before the word "damn" almost every time she says it, so it's like she's really saying "'cause you so fuckin' easy."

Aly & A.J.'s "Bullseye" ("I'm not an easy target") would also be relevant here: "You didn't ask me for my number. Wait! You didn't ask me for my number? Hmmm. I like the fact that you didn't ask that - 'cause you already got my number. Hnh!"

The Stooges' "Death Trip," too: "Do you care for me? Once I cared for you/Honey come and be my enemy, so I can love you too."

The Paula song: She wants him a little hard to get, not easy, but she doesn't give any reasons why. The lyrics do two things: declare her romantic and sexual power and announce her intention of seeking the same in a guy. So she's giving flirting instructions to potential mates. You could project onto this that in the Darwinian selection game she's looking for someone with character, someone who can stand up to her because someone like that will also be able to stand up for her and for their children in a dangerous world. Another subtext would be she's so young, but that doesn't mean she fell off the turnip truck yesterday, and just because you make a play for her doesn't mean she'll want to play, wham bam, you then leaving her in the lurch. But Paula doesn't explore these possibilities; "don't be so damn easy" is presented as a stand-alone truth, without cause or explanation, and the listeners have to provide the reasons themselves.

The song is beautiful as is, of course, Paula floating with a sweet sexual presence.

The Guns N' Roses song is something else: it's the song of a desperately lonely man, adds extreme existential romanticism, a longing for who-knows-what. You can relate it to Axl's subsequent retreat into isolation, if you want, though I don't know if these lyrics are Axl's or Izzy's or co-writer West Arkeen's. This song is on their first album, written before the band's megastardom, so it's not the loneliness of the top, the top having not yet been glimpsed. But everybody's trying to please him, it's so easy, all victory and no consequence, no speed bumps, nothing achieved, nothing matters. And this is his protest, his call for friction, his demand that the girl fight back, offer opposition, something, anything, real. "See me hit you, you fall down" and "Turn around bitch I got a use for you" are what allow him later to go to a genuine reversal, "So come with me/Don't ask me where 'cause I don't know/I'll try to please you..." which in almost any other context would be useless rote sappiness - not to say that this song isn't sappy itself, but it's meaningfully sappy, a man needing to devote himself to this groupie, needing her to assert her own power so that he can throw in his lot with her venture with her into the wilderness.

The way I relate "It's So Easy" to my pipe dream of the Department of Dilettante Research is this: I want this "department" to take place in what I'm calling "an open space," meaning I want it to be accessible to outsiders and thrill-seekers and revelers and kibitzers, people who can provide us with echoes and with contrary noise. Friction. But this also makes us vulnerable to bullies, babies, and bores, the sort of people who made ilX go sour (though I blame the bores more than the bullies, which isn't to say that the bullies weren't usually bores themselves).

There's a difference between conflict and bullying, of course. Bullies aren't interested in connection, just in getting their power jollies at the expense of someone else. But some online conflict-seeking isn't bullying - or isn't mere bullying, at any rate. While some of it is from lost souls beyond help, like poor Mark K-Punk, not capable of giving back the attention he so desperately wants for himself, some comes from people seeking to genuinely test themselves or others, wanting to strengthen or rethink their own ideas and provoke thought in other people. I don't think you can do this without some conflict, and anyway conflict and competition can add excitement, can have their own value. But this valuable conflict often comes all mixed up, the search for connection and intellectual stimulation intermingling with anger and resentment and vengeance-seeking and bullying and paranoia.

My armchair, dime-store theorizing about why academia is so often bloodless and parochial is that academia doesn't know how to deal with conflict, so it forbids the behavior and withdraws from the life that should be its subject matter. This withdrawal is probably inevitable and necessary, and I wouldn't think of my "department" as being a model for how academia should reform itself. But it's a withdrawal that limits academia intellectually; so my idea for the Department Of Dilettante Research is that the department forgo certain protections, to see what happens.