EWA100 - #99. Luke - I Wanna Rock

99. Luke - I Wanna Rock (Luke Records. 1992. From the LP I Got Shit On My Mind)

Raven Mack: Luther Campbell was some sort of genius. Back when hip hop was nothing but a couple of types of music mostly geared towards record stores that weren't afraid to actually put the posters up advertising the records, Luke was like, "Yo, fuck that, let's make strip club music, and have a bunch of strippers dancing onstage with us, and doing strip club things." And of course it worked, because, you know, it was about and featuring almost naked ladies and that usually does work.
Luke will always make me think of ninth grade and this redneck dude named Ricky Rollendett or something like that I used to roll with, and he would walk around before classes and in between classes and after classes and sometimes during classes just sweating every girl he could sweat because dude was a stone cold pussy-hound, and he was cool, the type of redneck dude that was open-minded and would listen to rap music and would share his bottle of liquor with you if you shared your left-handed cigarette of marijuana with him. Ricky Rollendett or something like that would ALWAYS sing two songs - "We Want Some Pussy" by 2 Live Crew, and "Keep Your Hands To Yourself" by the Georgia Satellites. The first, from Florida, about having sex; and the second, from Georgia, about being forced into marriage for sex. Ricky Rollendett or whatever it was, in that little slice of my memory bank, exemplifies the conflict of the southern redneck at that point (mid to late '80s or so?) in American pop cultural history. I, for one, am glad that pioneers like Luke eventually introduced terms like "baby's mama" to the sometimes over-stifled from traditional values white underclass.
Oh yeah, this song. It's got classic repetitive catchy lyrics, like "Pop that pussy", over top one of those megahyped Florida beats (whatever happened to DJ Magic Mike?) that are perfect for jiggling ass to, if your mama gave you enough to jiggle, which hopefully she did, or else you might never be a baby's mama yourself. This, I guess, is the song that ended up representing, or reppin' as ebonical types might put it, the south Florida hip hop experience.

Mike Dikk: There have been two times in my life when I thought Luke and the rest of the 2 Live Crew were cool. The first being when I was around 10 and they inspired that Explicit Lyrics sticker bullshit, because that instantly made ‘As Nasty As They Wanna Be’ the most sought after tape amongst any grade schooler I knew. The other time was when BET Uncut (Best Rap show ever not named YO! MTV Raps) first hit the airwaves, and the only named artists ever featured was always someone related to the 2 Live Crew.
Musically, I never got into Luke, because I’ve never been a stripper or really into strippers, especially when I was 10. Well, I liked the idea of strippers when I was 10, but no self respecting strip club would let a 10 year old enter their establishment. This song does have the “Pop That Pussy” chants and the “Doo Doo Brown” chants, which from what I can tell, is referring to the butt. Oh, also “Face down ass up, that’s the way we like to fuck!” I imagine most Luke songs have these phrases in them, and this wasn’t the one jackpot song that managed to fit all of them in, so you can probably close your eyes and pick a random Luke song and hear the same god damn thing.
It’s still cool that Luke ended up making the final cut though, since he kind of created a new genre of rap where you didn’t have to be that talented and all you needed to do was speed up normal hip hop beats and say “cock” and “titties” over them. Without Luke, Lil Jon wouldn’t be nearly as successful as he is and for that, we should all be thankful.

Download: Luke - I Wanna Rock

There isn't really a great Youtube video pertaining to "I Wanna Rock" (actually the Doo Doo Brown secret link is some kid dancing to the song.), so here's a video of a high school kid interviewing Luke after the 2 Live Crew finished playing New Edition in a charity basketball game. He brings up the point that the 2 Live Crew doesn't rap about having sex with corpses. No shit.