Are You Down With OPP?

A while back, I had a house guest for the weekend. It was pretty rainy and we didn't have a chance to get outside and see Ojika in all its sunny splendor, but it was a good two-day rest anyway.

He happened to bring his computer along and we spent a lot of time talking about and listening to music. He, being the awesome guy that he is, copied a lot of his tunes onto my computer. Among all the reggae and rap, he copied a mix of what was labeled "Old School Rap."

Along with everything else on my hard drive, Old School Rap ended up on my iPod right after I brought it home and unwrapped it. It wasn't until recently, however, I got a chance to give the OSR mix a proper listen to while cruising Ojika on my bike on a sunny day. That's when I heard "OPP" for the first time ever. I mean, really HEARD the song. I've hummed along to the chorus about a billion times and vividly remember the video with people all over the city of NYC raising their hands in unison, united together in the club of OPP. I mean that I actually listened to the lyrics for the first time this week and my jaw dropped.

Here are a few lines:

O is for Other
P is for People scratchin' temple
The last P...well...that's not that simple
It's sorta like another way to call a cat a kitten

And then later on in the song:

As for the ladies, OPP means something gifted
The first two letters are the same but the last is something different
It's the longest, loveliest, lean--
I call it the leanest
It's another five letter word rhymin' with cleanest and meanest

Uh... can I just say, "Oh my GOD!?!" I'm not shocked by the lyrics themselves; they're actually pretty timid by today's standards. It's the fact that I used to walk around in my little, white, suburban neighborhood, chanting to myself that I was in fact, "Down with O.P.P." I was twelve.

Ah.... these are constant reminders of how naive I actually am. I'm sure Naughty By Nature was pleased when the song hit the airwaves back in 1991 and became such a big hit. Hearing it makes me wonder how many songs I, and the rest of the world, haven't ever really listened to, but love just the same -- even if they are propagating infidelity in a crude kind of way.

There's something about songs which can cut across any socio-economic line and rest in the heart of any white, middle-class 6th grade girl -- especially something as classically (cheesily) raunchy as OPP.