I dunno, I guess a lot.

Play them both at the same time below: 

Of Monsters & Men “Little Talks”

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros “Home”

“The Seed 2.0″ By The Roots f. Cody Chestnutt

I’m enjoying my Sunday tradition of brunch and bloody mary’s with music blaring from my record player today. While cooking breakfast (some sort of healthy pita breakfast sandwich with eggs, cheese, bacon,  greens and fried green tomatoes and potatoes and onions), in order to focus on cooking,  I pluggged my phone into my all-in-one portable picnic player that looks similar but not exactly like this one:

pitiful portable picnic player

Suddenly “The Seed 2.0″ by The Roots clicked on and as I was listening to it I decided to finally google to see if anyone has a SongMeaning.com type breakddown of this song, not that it’s hard to understand, it’s just that it’s so nasty and weird but beautiful.

Cody Chestnutt, who toured with the roots once and I was lucky to see the show at the House Of Blues in Hollywood (don’t know the year, mid 2000′s maybe?), sings with a beautiful voice coupled with some of the most explicit lyrics you can find without curse words and outside of one of the 2 Live Crew records.

Since I googled it and couldn’t find a comprehensive breakdown of the song I will do so here, first watch the video:

Pardon any VEVO commercials. VEVO is the reason why we can’t have nice things.

A few facts about the song before we get started with the line by line breakdown: 

Little known fact, Cody Chestnutt actually produced this song prior to the Roots helping him make it better. The original song (brace yourself) is titled “The Seed” and i’d give it a 6 out of 10 with the “The Seed 2.0″ being a 8.5 or 9 out of 10.  The scant discussion that exists online about this song attempts to say that the Seed 2.0 is about a melding rock and roll and hip hop. While the Seed 2.0 may be about this, almost certainly, the original song is not.  This was an afterthought and a very clever one at that.

To make the claim that the original song intends to say what the remix* goes on to be about would be like saying that Midnight Star intended to make their song “Feels So Good” about the summertime in Long Beach, California so that 20 years later Dove Shack could make their song “Summertime In The LBC”.

That notion is pure nonsense, and instead what is taking place is a faster and more reactive feedback loop: hip hop artists can now use current songs for samples instead of digging through soul and disco jams from decades before because there is enough cross-pollination between contemporary pop, rock and roll and R&B that the beats and sound are complimentary to rap verses. See Dido and Eminem with “Stan” or any other of the many examples.

Add to this that rappers’ styles and abilities have come a long way since the standard and spartan boom boom bap samples from the old soul and R&B songs that allowed for rhymed words to be rapped in between these long pauses between beats. These wide breaks between beats, when the break is very wide, are called fat, which coined the slang term you heard inner city people say for 10 minutes in the early 90′s and then white people continued for the next 10 years, much to the embarrassment of other whites.

With the original song “The Seed” you’ll notice that it is quite a bit slower than the remixed version and you’ll also notice that speeding it up is really the only way to make it work, even though Black Thought sounds only the slightest bit awkward rapping to that tempo. Again, this speaks to the point about rapper’s versatility nowadays– the Sugar Hill Gang or KRS-ONE c. “MCs Act Like They Don’t Know” could not collaborate with Cody Chestnutt in any meaningful or harmonic way.

 Now to the analysis of the lyrics of the Seed 2.0, bold is mine: 

Knocked up nine months ago
And what she’s fittin’ to have she don’t know
She wants neo soul cause hip hop is old
She don’t want no rock ‘n roll
She want platinum, ice and gold
She want a whole lot of somethin’ to fold
If you’re an obstacle she’ll just drop you cold
Cause one monkey don’t stop the show
Little Mary’s bad
In these streets she done ran
E’ry since when the heat began
I told the girl look here
Calm down I’m gonna hold your hand
To enable you to keep the plan
Because you’re quick to learn
And we can make money to burn
If you allow me the latest game
I don’t ask for much but enough to room to spread my wings
And a world fittin’ to know my name, just listen to me

Above in Black Thought’s verse is pretty much a foreshadow of what Cody is about to start singing about, with some hints that the song might be about more than just a guy knocking some chick up, and some pretty standard rap lexicon thrown in there to let you know that you are indeed listening to a hip hop song and not to adjust your dial. 

Cody’s Chorus Begins: 

I don’t ask, for much these days
And I don’t bitch and whine if I don’t get my way
I only want to fertilize another behind my lover’s back 
I sit and watch it grow standin’ where I’m at
Fertilize another behind my lovers behind my lovers back 
And I’m keeping my secrets mine
I push my seed in her bush for life
It’s gonna work because I’m pushin’ it right
If Mary dropped my baby girl tonight I would name her rock ‘n roll

The urge for men to impregnate women is primal and very real and present. The urge to impregnate women with whom they are not married or even acquainted is doubly so. This is a little talked about fact of life, as is the other side of the coin: women want to be the receptacles for these alpha males like the brother Cody, subconsciously, and given the right strength of character in the donor male, the woman may actually agree to naming the child Rock N’ Roll Chestnutt, thus keeping Cody’s legend alive (he gets to that in the next verse). 

Back to Black Thought: 

Cadillac needs space to roam
Where we headin’ for she don’t know
We in the city where the pro shake rattle ‘n roll
And I’m a god dang rollin’ stone
I don’t beg I can hold my own
I don’t break I can hold a chrome
And it’s weighin’ a ton and I’m a son of a gun
My code name is the only one
And Black Thought is bad
These streets he done ran ever since when the game began
I never played the fool
Matter of fact I’ve been keeping it cool
Since money been changin’ hands
And I’m left to shine, the legacy I leave behind be the seed that’ll keep the flame
I don’t ask for much but enough room to spread these wings
And a world fittin’ to know my name, now listen to me

Above is more rap lexicon, well done sure, but lexicon nonetheless with some hints at rock n roll (Rolling Stones), being street smart and tough (at least formerly, before he began making money from music), and a hint at the legacy Cody is about to discuss. Back to Cody:

I don’t beg from a rich man
And I don’t scream and kick when his shit don’t fall in my hands man
Cause I know how to still
Fertilize another against my lovers will
I lick the opposition cause she don’t take no pill
Oh you know the deal you’ll be keeping my legend alive
I push my seed in her bush for life
It’s gonna work because I’m pushin’ it right
If Mary drops my baby girl tonight I would name her rock ‘n roll.

The implication here is that Cody is a tomcat and a very natural and primal man, and as such his choice is the only one that matters when naming the child, and many would argue (including myself), rightly so. Referring to “it’s gonna work because i’m pushing it right” many studies have shown that a woman is more likely to become impregnated if she has an orgasm, or rather depending on her level of arousal, generally the level of arousal that would come with a new or exciting lover like the brother Chestnutt. 

Oh break it down, down for me
I push my seed somewhere deep in her chest
I push it naked cause I’ve takin’ my test
Deliverin’ Mary it don’t matter the sex 
I’m gonna name it rock ‘n roll.

Here Cody decides that in fact, it doesn’t matter if it’s a boy or a girl he will name it Rock N Roll. Also notice the departure of the word would in exchange for gonna, or going to, as if a certainty. Again, nary a music fan would object to a Rocky Chestnutt (boy or girl) on the music scene in 2020. 

I push my seed in her bush for life
It’s gonna work because I’m pushin’ it right
If Mary drops my baby girl tonight
I would name her rock ‘n roll
I would name her rock ‘n roll
I would name her rock ‘n roll
I would name it rock ‘n roll

Lastly, Cody continues along with the brash and admirably confused (her, it) notion of naming the child rock n roll. 

Thank you please. 

*I am remiss to call it a remix since the 2.0 version is quite a different song but for the sake of making this easier let me refer to it at the remix, I owe you $5. 

If you hate the taste of wine
Why do you drink it ’til you’re blind?
And if you swear that there’s no truth and who cares
How come you say it like you’re right?
Why are you scared to dream of god
When it’s salvation that you want?
You see stars that clear have been dead for years
But the idea just lives on

In our wheels that roll around
As we move over the ground
And all day it seems we’ve been in between the past and future town

We are nowhere, and it’s now
We are nowhere, and it’s now
You took a ten-minute dream in the passengers seat
While the world it was flying by
I haven’t been gone very long
But it feels like a lifetime

I’ve been sleeping so strange at night
Side effects they don’t advertise
I’ve been sleeping so strange
With a head full of pesticide

I got no plans and too much time
I feel too restless to unwind
I’m always lost in thought
As I walk a block to my favourite neon sign
Where the waitress looks concerned
But she never says a word
Just turns the jukebox on
And we hum along
And I smile back at her

And my friend comes after work
When the features start to blur
She says these bars are filled with things that kill
By now you probably should have learned

Did you forget that yellow bird?
How could you forget your yellow bird?

She took a small silver wreathe and pinned it onto me
She said this one will bring you love
I don’t know if it’s true but I keep it for good luck

Emmylou Harris’ voice sounds like a beautiful ghost in this song. Again, on Vinyl. Get it.

If you don’t have this on vinyl, get it.

So basically I was really drunk and went and chatted with Mike Doughty and probably seemed like a total idiot. That’s all that happened there.

I’m going to Mike Doughty’s show at The Bootleg Theater tonight.

I’ve been a big fan of Mike Doughty’s music and blog for a long time.

I feel like Doughty is like a a slightly better looking, though similar looking, and way more musically talented version of me who also writes better and probably has a more happy life. Man, I’m starting to hate this Mike Doughty guy now.

Here are a few songs by him:

Mike Doughty – “The Only Answer”

And:

Mike Doughty (Soul Coughing, Actually) “Janine”