What "Hatfields and McCoys" Teaches Us About Family

I've expounded in the past on my complete inability to comprehend song lyrics, so you know it must take a truly memorable song for me to sit up and take notice of how the songwriter and producer must have been insane.

Such is the case with the 1995 Dogg Pound remake of the Stephen Sondheim campfire sing-a-long classic "Some Bomb Azz Pussy."

The cool campfires, anyway.

There is more bizarre in this song than in the rest of my music collection combined.

For the very, very few of you who aren't already intimately familiar with "Some Bomb Azz Pussy," I'll break it down for you as best I can.  And no critical dissection of "Some Bomb Azz Pussy" is complete without two things; first, there is the importance of repeating the title, "Some Bomb Azz Pussy," to always keep it in your mind what an unimpeachable classic track you're discussing, and how worthy of your time and respect it truly is. Anyone could have recorded "Some Zzub-par Pussy" or even "A Generous Helping of Quite Reazzonable Pussy," but only the esteemed duo of Kurupt the Kingpin and Dat Nigga Daz could have the gumption and the drive to push through and deliver to the world "Some Bomb Azz Pussy."

Not bomb azz.

Secondly, we cannot ignore the interstitial skit which leads into the song, as it gets tacked onto the beginning of the track when you rip it from the CD to transfer to an MP3 player. It serves as a fantastic intro to "Some Bomb Azz Pussy," in that it nearly causes a stress fracture in your brain when you try to comprehend that particular day in the recording studio.

See, the guest rapper on this track is none other than Snoop Doggy Dogg, riding high as one of hip-hop's brightest stars following the runaway success of his debut album "Doggystyle" two years prior. We're talking "Gin N' Juice" era Snoop, not the bizarre name-changed reggae enthusiast he's become today.

Pictured: Snoop Lion. Also not bomb azz.

So what do you do with such a fame-spangled guest star on your song? Well, you have him stand at the mic and act like he's having sex with a groupie who's on her own mic, of course!

This is the sort of thing you can glide right past when listening to the album, not even really noticing it amongst the established pastiche of weed, booze, guns and bitches that makes up most of your average mid-nineties gangster rap album.

Or nearly any episode of Perfect Strangers.

Only when you take a moment to consider the logistics do you realize that Snoop Dogg and some actress went into the recording studio, put on headphones and tested the sound levels on their microphones, maybe had a glass of water, and then spent any number of takes panting and groaning as if they were having sex.

And it gives us a frankly hilarious glimpse at what it's evidently like to have sex with Snoop Dogg. Between the assorted "oh yeah"s and promises to "tear that ass up" Snoop inscrutably yells out, "Daz, check this shit out, bring the camera!" because there is nothing I want more during sex than for one of my buddies to run in and start taking pictures. It is clearly among the natural order of things for Snoop Dogg.

Dude lives a strange life.

And maybe it's a cultural thing I'm just unaware of, but Snoop and his ladyfriend enjoy yelling out non sequitur shit throughout the act. At one point she yells "Ooh, you scandalous nigga!" and Snoop retorts "THE BAR IS CLOSED!"  I'm reasonably sure this was Snoop communicating with his home planet through song.

And it's all instantly eclipsed by perhaps the high water mark for all of rap music as a medium, when Snoop loudly fakes an orgasm to end the skit.  I can't begin to replicate in typeface how ridiculous Snoop's attempted simulacrum of his own climax sounds. It will make you feel embarrassment as if you'd been standing at the mic yourself.

To trust this facsimile, Snoop's orgasms sound like a number of seals vying fervently for your attention.

Explains some of his recent albums, at least.

I even went to a few lyrics websites, hoping that someone dared to try and transcribe this magnificent moment in human history. Sadly, none did. Every single one just types "(BOTH CLIMAX)" for those few amazing seconds. Frankly, it's an educated guess, at best, whether the woman fakes her own orgasm during the skit, as we can't hear anything over Snoop caterwauling, but I admire the optimism by these lyrics websites.

Somehow we're expected to come down from this majesty and take in the actual song as it begins promptly after Snoop is done shrieking into the mic.  The lyrics in the first two verses are simple and unremarkable; Snoop is marveling at all of the Bomb Azz Pussy he received while on a recent trip to Japan, while Kurupt weighs in with his own reverie about Some Bomb Azz Pussy he was fortunate enough to enjoy, with several of his friends (several of whom I now have to assume were snapping photos whenever they weren't active participants), in Atlanta.

In Kurupt's defense, Atlanta was the first thing I thought of when trying to imagine Japan, too.

Now the bridge kicks in, in which Snoop appears to have a conversation with a woman who just repeats "Yeah, I got the bomb" over and over between his bizarre comments and critique ("My homeboy told me!", "Yeah, I smell it, can I inhale it?").

Somehow we're only just getting to the heart of the insanity, if you can believe it.

For in the next verse, Dat Nigga Daz proceeds to have a discussion with, and flirt with, a vagina.

I'm not embellishing in the slightest. Evidently Daz can hear vaginas talking to him, and he re-enacts a conversation he occasionally has with them when they explicitly call him by name. And, really, can a vagina speak in any way that wouldn't be described as explicit?

Daz leaves out no details in his attempt to win over this possibly disembodied vagina; his come-hither delivery of "And I smile to the pussy like... what's happenin'?" tells me Dat Nigga Daz is either the most confident man on Earth or that he suffers from cataracts and will be humiliated once a friend tells him what he was talking to at that party earlier.

Regardless, your mind will still be reeling from this conundrum when we reach the chorus which ends the song, in which both members of The Dogg Pound display why they're rappers and not singers, by singing the ridiculous (blessedly rhetorical) question, "Have you ever had some bomb azz pussy that made you want to scream DOGG POUND?"

For reasons which remain their own, Daz and Kurupt sing this question over and over as the music fades out, even as every man who has ever heard the question even once was able to instantly and definitively respond, "No, Daz and Kurupt, not once in my sexual history have I ever been engaged in sexual intercourse and felt compelled to likely end the lovemaking session by scaring the shit out of the arguably lucky lady with me by suddenly screaming "DOGG POUND!" to convey my pleasure. But, thanks for the heads-up as to why so many young men go into careers in animal control."

And, if you're anything like me, you instantly queue up the track again because your mind can barely allow all of the surreal wonderland that it has just been asked to absorb. Then again, if you're not anything like me, you're filled with utter resentment that I just put this out into the world for you to read, and may need to cool down with some music.

Some Bomb Azz.music.