I was recently played a Kanye produced track on which Lil’ Wayne spits the lyrics “My ice is so albino white/ I hope your vagina tight”, and while it would perhaps be a slight to actual victims of sexual abuse to say that I felt like I had been raped, I did feel a small piece of me die. To be clear, I have no problem with the sexual nature of the comment, or with risqué content in general (I myself once told a joke so vulgar that a girl threw up in her mouth a bit), no, I felt violated by what I took as symbolic of the long and cruel death of nuance in modern r&b.

And while I did feel like assuming the fetal position in the shower until the water ran cold, I instead cleansed my soul with this easy ballad by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. Harold obviously knew something Lil’ Wayne never could, that the only truth in song lyrics comes by way of a well-told lie. It doesn’t take a genius to decipher the sexuality behind “You Know How to Make Me Feel So Good”, though it perhaps takes a certain caliber of woman to understand that the girls who went home with Harold after a show probably had a much better time than the ones who go home with Wayne.

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes (feat Sharon Paige) – I Hope That We Can Be Together Soon 5:16 mins/ 320 kbps/ 9.33MB