“Shine bright like a diamond,” Rihanna whispers in a song that I loved to dance to and that men seemed to feel ambivalent toward. Rihanna repeats herself sometimes twice, sometimes three times in the song to make certain we have heard her instructions. When I have been onstage for “Diamonds,” it has prompted me to look upward at the spotlights, obeying the command recorded years ago and far away, as if Rihanna were presently watching from the sound booth. It is a romantic song, but I’ve always thought of it as a song directed at a distressed friend by another, assuring her that she is more treasured than she can presently imagine. This is likely because I have used it that way. I would repeat the song’s central command in a deadpan voice to work friends on breaks and after shifts, smoking cigarettes and making grandiose proclamations about the big things we had in store for our impending windfalls. I don’t know if I said these things because I believed them to be true or because I wanted them to be true, but I don’t see those two places as that far from each other anymore.
In one club where I worked, all the girls had to line up on the main stage at the start of the shift and have our names called out one by one as we stepped forward and showed off. It felt like part beauty pageant, part Westminster dog show. It was not uncommon for them to play anthems of empowered womanhood during this interlude, a reminder of how much we all wanted to be there. Songs like “Independent Women II” by Destiny’s Child, “LoveGame” by Lady Gaga, and “Bad Girls” by M.I.A. appeared often, while an occasional lament like “Just a Girl” by No Doubt would sneak in that I took for a gentle nod from the DJ that he knew no one working in the club especially wanted to be there.
Once they played “Run the World (Girls)” by Beyoncé, a song that didn’t get its fair due as a feminist anthem or as a world-class banger in general. The song was met with criticism on its release, mostly because there is a worldwide committee of curmudgeonly old-guard feminists who refuse to accept Beyoncé as a leader or as one of their own. It was critiqued secondarily because of claims that women do not, in fact, run the world. I think often of this song in contrast to “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and how Beyoncé was right, as she often is, even when she doesn’t always mean to be. Girls run the world in the sense that they perform the invisible and unappreciated labors that keep the world on its axis. That is different from doing what everyone wants to do, which is rule the world. We don’t speak of world leaders who run countries but of world leaders who rule countries. Running a thing is to toil in tedious and uncredited roles; ruling a thing is to hold dominion over it enough that little toil is required. I am glad I heard the song only once in the context of the club, so as not to be driven mad by the grim reality of its literal interpretation. In the light of day and off the clock, not surrounded by the glaring differences of who it is that rules and who it is that runs that were made evident by our coarse exchanges, the song is partially salvaged.
“You Be Killin’ ’Em” by Fabolous is the only song I ever cared enough about to request. The upbeat hip-hop celebration of female beauty and power was something of a personal anthem for years. The lyrics on their own might read like a litany of cheesy pickup lines, but accompanied by its urgent and danceable beat, it is a song you can run the fuck out of some errands to. The hook alone contains four compliments to the woman at whom it is directed: “You what’s up girl, ain’t gotta ask it / I dead ’em all now, I buy the caskets They should arrest you or whoever dressed you Ain’t gon’ stress you, but I’m a let you know / Girl you be killin’ ’em / You be killin’ ’em.” This woman whose appeal is so all-encompassing is rare in any genre, but what is especially remarkable is that her ruthless ambition and apparent materialism are considered attractive.
Several small televisions hung from the ceiling playing the songs’ music videos and lighting up the otherwise dark corners of the establishment’s main room. I assumed they were primarily for the entertainment of men who had been dragged to the club by friends and needed refuge in something to look at besides the men they knew being reduced to ATMs by an army of scantily clad women. They were also a helpful distraction from the crawl through the first and last hours of dead shifts. More than just giving us something to focus on when there were no customers, they were windows to a world outside the club made glossy and bright by the commonly used palettes and filters of music video aesthetics. Despite being in heavy rotation on my personal playlists, I saw the video for “You Be Killin’ ’Em” during the one and only time I danced to it for work.
Taking the title of the song quite literally, Amber Rose plays Fabolous’s love interest while living a double life as an assassin. Interspersed with scenes of the two in romantic situations are scenes of Amber wearing disguises and murdering what appears to be an assortment of mobsters of the nouveau riche variety. At the end of the video, Fabolous answers a knock at the door while Amber is in the bathtub and is greeted by several members of law enforcement bearing warrants and pushing their way into the apartment. You’d think they would be discreet and do a sting operation to capture a world-class killer, but the kerfuffle tips her off, leaving Fabolous to find the bathtub empty except for a single red rose and the door to the balcony left open.
The video is wholly absurd from start to finish. For a song so richly colored by descriptions of luxury items and people, the video is shot in black and white to add drama. The plot and styling are presumably an homage to the narrative music videos of earlier decades in hip-hop, but the attempt at film noir, complete with opening credits and a femme fatale, is flimsy when it isn’t downright silly. There is a scene where Amber’s negligee appears red on-screen in contrast to the black and white. It is supposed to be sexy, but it looks like those sepia-toned photos you see on greeting cards, or framed in your aunt’s downstairs bathroom, with little kids dressed in oversized old-fashioned clothing and a boy giving a girl a red rose or a paper heart. Amber inexplicably wears a fur coat throughout an entire dinner date, which is frankly just not that slick. Fabolous cannot lip-synch to save his life. And in the final scene, when Amber escapes, you have to wonder how far she got without someone calling the cops on the woman wearing only a bath towel running for her life. And while I’m overthinking it, what kind of deranged architect puts the balcony off the bathroom?