Bloggin' on Ke$ha is Required

Like it or not, Ke$ha is ubiquitous in the world of pop these days. It’s like it happened instantaneously. Fast forward two weeks and your mother will be all “I really enjoy that “Tik Tok” song, but what’s with the line about brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack?” Well mom, that’s how teenage pop divas cum fragmented electro-hip-hop cyborgs talk on the radio now. Their sexual exploits and hard drinking is commonplace among the water cooler fodder of grade school kids and office workers alike. Extremes of this can be seen as innocently as Miley dry-humping the pole on an ice cream push-cart on the Teen Choice Awards to the Millionaires blatant party antics. If I called it out-of-hand I could also start to call myself old. I actually don’t object to this sort of behavior – women’s rights and all that, but if I had a daughter I might be distraught about the images my kids were seeing day in and day out. In contrast Ke$ha isn’t all that bad, just a bit dirty, a bit of a drunk, a bit reliant on the love of a boy, a bit of a bad speller. Now she’s got a number on hit in “Tik Tok” and a number one album in Animal. But to be fair, I prefer her to the Fergies, Katie Perrys and Lady Gagas of the pop universe, there’s much more pop and innovation in the songs of Animal than one would suspect – that’s likely the work of Dr. Luke and Max Martin, Scandinavian songwriting forces who could resurrect the career of Jordy if that challenge were given to them. As a result, with the prescience that songs like “Your Love is My Drug” and “Kiss and Tell” project, I predict Ke$ha will be around the charts for a while. And words like slut, dick, and Jagermeister will become a staple of pop vernacular. Just you wait. Everyone’s talking ‘bout her, but few will admit there’s some gold in the grit.



But then there’s the case of poor Uffie. I was listening to the Justice/Ed Banger affiliated chanteuse’s body of work this weekend (which amounts to about one good EP of songs) and was floored to realize she’s been kicking around for over five years. There are highlights for sure, but it looks like she’s missed the boat to stardom, ‘specially since Ke$ha has pretty much swiped Uffie’s penchant for raps that don’t rhyme (Paul Barman-syndrome) and bratty euphemisms that make little sense but sound cute under auto-tune (M.I.A./Missy) rolled into a somewhat suburban Caucasian blockhead flow that sounds remotely street-influenced – it’s effective, but it’s Uffie who perfected it first, there’s really no mistaking that. Check out the video below. While I’m digging on Ke$ha these days, I’m still holding out hope that Ms. Uff can regain the throne she never got the chance to sit in. Stay tuned.