I was sitting in a board room the other day, looking sharper than new pencils, waiting for…someone or something. I could care less. I mean, I couldn’t have been in a better mood; last meeting of the day, just had a free lunch, I was happy as can be. That was until I heard someone’s phone ring and I almost instantly snapped.
♫Gyal me want fi hold yuh, put me arms all arond yuh…♫
Still my favorite phone of all time.
Remember when ringtones were just a tonal variety of…well, rings? Then we got those Nokia 3210’s and 3310’s where you could customize ringtones; then the polyphonic wave hit, pretty soon, TrueTones hit and now you can have any sound as a ringer. The marketing pitch was hinged immensely on individuality and identity.
By this logic, the array of possibilities should be endless. Each person should have their own individual slant on what they consider an appropriate ringtone, if the aim is to step aside from the norm.
Why then does everyone have Gyptian & Nicki Minaj talkin about holding each other as their tone? Seriously, if I run into one more person with that song as their ringtone, I’m making them eat their phone; battery and all. Consider yourselves warned.
Now I know it’s not your fault; you are victims of Kiss FM. Hate it or love it, they made it cool(not really, but they made it normal) to hear a song 50 million times in 1 hour. They Americanized our radio waves by introducing redundant saturation.
For instance, anyone who commuted in the mornings in 2002-2003 knows “Redeemer” and a bunch of R.Kelly songs better than they know the Lord’s Prayer.
And it’s not their fault, it’s – to a large degree – Kiss’. Those guys will play a song they consider hot so many times that it winds up influencing Kenyans’ tastes for the next decade or so. Right now, this Gyptian “Hold yuh” remix gets more burn than logically sound. And the populations are eating it up, ignoring all the other really dope music out there. Brainwashed musical zombies.
But isn’t this how it always happens. A track is nice; enough people like it, critical mass is attained and now you can’t go anywhere without hearing it. And Radio know this so they do what they do. I’m not mad; that’s their business; I’ll just keep my radio turned off and my iPod charged.
But please, for Christ’s sake, whatever else you may do, please do not have a song like that as your ringtone. Please. Can we get that worked into the constitution? “A song can not be a ringtone melody within 4 months of it being in the Top 5 on any Kiss FM countdown.”
It’s not so much that it reflects the largely gawful taste as much as it’s indicative of the lack of creativity and the sheep mentality of the population at large. The youth at that.
A wise man, Mr. Tupac Amaru Shakur, once said that there has never been a revolution without a soundtrack. I tend to believe this. In a time when everyone is asking for change, begging for something new, praying for breakthroughs, we are all jamming to Nicki saying all she “do is sign boobs and be taking flicks.”
Next time you look around and wonder what’s wrong with the youth, ask them what they’re listening to; should give you a pretty good idea of what’s amiss.
And then tell them to switch their ringtone to something less retarded.
