HIP HOP HYPERGAMY: "BUST A MOVE"

by Andy Nowicki

In “Bust A Move,” rapper Young MC gives counsel to those who would today be called “incels,” encouraging shy, awkward, nerdy guys to step up their game around the ladies.

Yet from the very start, the act of pandering to female demands is openly acknowledged as patently slavish and degrading:

This is a jam for all the fellas, tryin’ to do what those ladies tell us/ Get shot down cuz you’re overzealous; play hard to get, females get jealous.

From these opening lines, the game of “game” is clearly exposed for what it is: a desperate effort to tailor one’s masculine personality in manner most pleasing to a woman, in order to “get some play.”

A man must, one supposes, attempt to find a balance between seeming too needy (being “overzealous”) and seeming too aloof (playing “hard to get”); the really crucial thing, Young MC hints, is to learn read between the lines of what “those ladies tell us” and discern what they really want from us, so that we can do our best to embody those qualities and secure female companionship for ourselves, since the option—being alone—is clearly too terrible even to contemplate for a moment (but more on that point momentarily).

“Bust A Move,” then, is indeed a “pussy-pedestalizing” tune. Yet it is also surprisingly “red-pilled” in tone, as will soon become apparent. In effect, it sounds a weirdly schizophrenic series of note under its Flea-bitten groove.

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The refrain of the song, “bust a move,” means, in hip-hop argot, to take action; within the context of the song's lyrics, taking action relates to what pick-up artists would call making an “approach” to a woman. Again and again, Young MC takes the position that men generally (recall again the dedication to “all the fellas”) ought to do their damndest to succeed romantically, even if it means getting rejected, and looking like a fool in the process:

In this city, ladies look pretty
Guys tell jokes so they can seem witty
Tell a funny joke just to get some play
And then you try to make a move and she says, "No way!"

Interestingly, for all of the encouragement he gives to men to engage with the opposite sex, Young MC also displays an unblinkered awareness of the appallingly unrestrained female hypergamy which has emerged in the dreary human landscape of the post-sexual revolution West:

Girls are fakin’, goodness-sakin’
They want a man who brings home the bacon
Got no money and you got no car
Then you got no woman, and there you are
Some girls are sadistic, materialistic
Lookin’ for a man makes them opportunistic
They’re lyin’ on a beach perpetratin’ a tan
So a brother with the money can be their man.

If this is the reality of how women are, then why not go MGTOW? Ah, but that would be the equivalent of committing suicide, Young MC insists. Indeed, the option of opting out of this grisly and wounding process for any reason cannot even be entertained:

From frustration, first inclination
Is to become a monk and leave the situation
But every dark tunnel has a light of hope
So don’t hang yourself with a celibate rope.

No, men must instead stay the course, and keep on making efforts to “get with” women, even if they have become vain, conceited, shallow, vindictive, and nakedly acquisitive. Why? Young MC offers no explanation, but he does insist that it’s best to just keep “bustin’ a move,” over and over, until you manage to forge a love connection, since the alternative, remarked above, is viewed as a fate akin to death by hanging.

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The final verse of the song, portentously enough, involves the occasion of a wedding.

Your best friend Harry has a brother, Larry
In five weeks from now he’s gonna marry
He’s hopin’ you can make it there if you can
’Cause in the ceremony, you’ll be the best man
You say "neato," check your libido
And roll to the church in your new tuxedo
The bride walks down just to start the wedding
And there’s one more girl you won’t be getting.

Note that the second person narrator is so hung up on rejection that even seeing a random bride makes him feel gripped with sadness! Yet quite by accident, he ends up flirting with one of the bridesmaids:

So you start thinkin’, then you’re blinkin’
The bridesmaid looks and thinks that you’re winking
She thinks you’re kinda cute, so she winks back
And now you’re feeling really fine cuz this girl is stacked!

And now, as the reception is jumpin” and the bass is “bumpin’,” the winking waif tells him that she “wants to dance to a different groove.” Is this one a NAWALT, or will this “different groove” she is proposing in time prove to be an all too familiar one, once she meets the next guy who’s taller, richer, and better-looking than you, and opts to leave you behind?

Young MC, as usual, says to meet this moment by “bustin' a move.” A wiser narrator, however, would counsel grave caution. Move-bustin’ might in fact just be a total bust. It's proably wisest, in the end, to skip the dance and assume that "Poindexter" pose by the wall.

Andy Nowicki, assistant editor of AFFIRMATIVE Right, is the author of eight books, including Under the Nihil, The Columbine Pilgrim, Considering Suicide, and Beauty and the Least.  Visit his Soundcloud page and his YouTube channel. His author page is Alt Right Novelist.com