A disturbing new trend is happening beneath New York City’s streets.
Well, I’m sure it’s happening above as well, but isn’t it more dramatic this way?
I’ve gotten used to hearing the music from other people’s headphones. Remember that “gotten used to” does not mean “love wholeheartedly”. When I’m feeling mischievous, I’ll dance to the foreign music and sometimes that’s enough to make the other person turn the music down.
That’s what we call passive-aggressive, and you only do it to certain people. I can’t do aggressive-aggressive unless I know how to dodge the fist coming my way.
Jeez, people are touchy.
So now the new thing is singing along to your music. I don’t mean a soft going along with your song because you happen to like it a lot. I mean singing at the top of your voice, snapping your fingers, and grooving like you would in a club. Not caring if anyone hears you – in fact, you want to share the joy of slappin’ bitches and fuckin’ bitches and treatin’ bitches right. Or it could be shootin’ up the place cause some nigga looked at ya funny while you was wit ya bitch.
You get the point.
Which brings me to the questions of this trend – is it that people who listen to this music are the ones who know they can get away with it (i.e. they’ll get in your face for giving them grief)? Is it that people who don’t listen to this music think they can’t get away with it? Are the people who don’t listen to this music embarrassed to sing out loud? I’d sing “Smack my Bitch Up” by Prodigy or “The City With Two Faces” by Goldfinger, but the first doesn’t really have any lyrics and the second (as well as the video for the first) is supposed to be ironic, which would probably go over most of these people’s heads. Look ‘em up, readers, if you don’t know the tunes. They’re both from the ’90′s.
This isn’t necessarily about the music. It’s about the fact that I never hear anything else sung out loud, so I have no basis for comparison.
Some might say I don’t have a very good opinion of people who choose to share this type of music. Some might say they’re not giving me a very good reason to respect them.
Some might be right.
April 25th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I believe that the reasons why some people play their music waaaay loud and sing out loud, isn’t just because they enjoy their music – some of it my stem from “Look at me – I have an IPOD, aren’t I cool? Oh, you didn’t see the white headphones? Let me call attention to myself so you can see that I’m cool”
I do believe people like that want to be apart of something, anything, that shows that they are in the IN crowd. The IN crowd used to be walkmans, then cd players, now – portable mp3 players –
Now, there may have been times where I listened to my music loudly, but I never listen to it so loud that I can’t hear what’s going on around me, that’s just dangerous imho. – and also you can find yourself alone on the train with everyone getting off, because you missed that announcement that it was going out of service, down another track, etc.
And if those reasons wasn’t enough – it’s usually those people, who sign outloud, or play their music that loud – call out to the muggers out there that you have an expensive music player on you, why is it expensive? It must be – it’s LOUD!
April 25th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Ah, but these are not expensive iPods – they’re the cheap knockoffs. Frankly, I would have gotten a cheap knockoff if I didn’t care about getting service when there’s something wrong with it. The cheap knockoffs aren’t going to be stolen. That, and if I were a mugger, I wouldn’t bother with the guy who’s flailing around, I’ll stick with the person who (ignorantly) leaves his/her expensive iPod in a back pocket and is standing still.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:32 am
they might not be cheap knockoffs, there’s lots of good competitor players out there now…
but then again, there are cheap knockoffs and so maybe they are 