And a Britney Song Was On …

Still Processing

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Arts

4.8 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2022

⏱️ 19 minutes

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Summary

"This Is How We Do It" by Montell Jordan is an unforgettable hip-hop relic, a jam whose opening six words alone make you want to party. Wesley has heard this 1995 hit countless times since he was a teenager, but it wasn’t until hearing it recently at the gym that he had an epiphany: It’s a country song. It belongs to a long tradition of country music that expresses love and respect for one's hometown. Wesley explores other songs that have changed in meaning for him over the years (like “Losing My Religion” by R.E.M.), and he considers what happens to music’s meaning when the culture around it changes — the way it did with Britney Spears and her hits, in the aftermath of her yearslong struggle to end her court-sanctioned conservatorship.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Last summer I went for a run and I do not run with any music.
0:09.9	I run musiclessly.
0:12.4	So I get to the gym and I for once don't have headphones while I'm exercising.
0:17.2	And I heard a song that I've heard, I don't know, two million times probably.
0:26.2	This is how we do it.
0:27.2	This is how we do it.
0:30.5	By Montel Jordan.
0:32.5	And somewhere at the beginning of this song after I have gotten all of the groove establishment
0:48.4	thoroughly in my system again, I started to hear this song in a completely new way.
0:57.2	There's this great line in the song where he's saying it feels so good in my hood tonight.
1:04.0	And the summertime skirts and my guys and can I and all the gang bangers forgot about
1:08.2	the drive by.
1:10.2	He lives in South Central Los Angeles, which in 1995 when this song comes out is well
1:16.8	established as a particular pop culture zone from poetic justice and boys in the hood
1:23.7	and menace to society.
1:25.8	It's a violent place where people could die at any minute.
1:30.2	And there is just something so moving about the idea that because this party is happening,
1:37.5	somebody is going to live tonight.
1:40.8	And it's way it is celebrating life in the most subtle and I don't know at the same time
1:50.1	mundane way.
1:53.0	And I was really picking up when Montel was putting down and the fact is that he put it down
1:59.8	a long time ago.
	...

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