Ke$ha & The Art Of 'Talk Rap'

Maybe I’ve been out of the country for too long, but upon my return to the United States after five months of travel abroad, I was immediately introduced to songs from America’s new favorite drink-happy mess, Ke$ha, on the radio. It wasn’t much like anything I’d listened to before. Is this girl singing about soliciting sex? Or is she whining? Yapping?

Then I realized: move over, auto-tune, a new musical style is born. Introducing "the talk-rap." It’s easy: just start talking in a sing-songy voice and make sure your sentences rhyme. While you’re at it, throw in some buzz words about booze and dancing and you’re halfway to a hit song.

What’s with the popularity of these sassy, girl-power tunes anyway? With song titles that are purposely misspelled (Katy Perry’s "California Gurls," Ke$ha’s "TiK ToK") pop music is slowly starting to dumb itself down for mainstream. Some of the biggest songs right now are nothing more than catchy beats to lyrics about dancing, partying and getting wasted. But then again, who doesn’t want to have fun?

"The white-girl rap swagger thing is really a little bit of a joke," Ke$ha said in a February interview with Billboard. "I never thought of myself as a rapper. This is just the way I talk."

And boy, does she talk. Below is the unedited excerpt on her MySpace page, sounding trashier than ever.

“I love south. and boys. and boots. and boners. and beer. and babes. balloons. barbeque sause. big balls. bonfires. babes. boobs. butts. bonnie rait. blowjob. BAD TATTOOS…….mmhmmm I sometimes wish I was a man…i would have the siickesT trash-stash….”

The thing is, Ke$ha is supposedly pretty smart. In high school, she was an A student, sat in on Cold War lectures at a local college out of pure interest and scored 1500 on the old SAT. If that’s the case, why the glitter whore, party animal appeal?

It’s all about escapism. Think about it: Lady Gaga videos are so praised because of how out-of-this-world ridiculous and unrealistic they are. We get lost in the music and transfer to a whole new dimension of fantasy. In the latest Ke$ha video for "Your Love Is My Drug," the girl is literally out in a desert wearing denim panties and is later cavorting around dressed in glow-in-the-dark paint. If that’s not trippy, I don’t know what is.

So Ke$ha, keep dirty talk-rapping your way to the top, but you don’t need to dumb anything down for us. We know sex sells, just give us another playful song and run, or rather, dance with it.