Pop v. Pop

Let the hating begin: We think Lily Allen's new album is good. Not Stranger than Fiction or Southernunderground good, but hooky pop music good. A relative good. These days, when the artist is a passably attractive 23-year-old progeny of celebrity parents who's signed to a major label, you expect an Ashlee Simpson, a Rihanna...a rhinestone bikini filled with an olive-hued body of some class and topped with a workable face; smother the voice in vocoder, and you're good to go. Allen's image, while quite possibly a calculated label construct, is refreshingly flawed -- she looks like she's done some damage on the cookie dough ice cream recently, and admits to not giving a shit about it.

It's Not You, It's Me is at its essence formulaic, melodramatic pop, but it's done right and avoids monotony -- synth-heavy production ("Everyone's At It") alternates with twangy rockabilly-infused joints (upcoming single "Not Fair"). What sets the album apart, though, is Allen's willingness to address an array of topics overwhelmingly shunned by her mainstream diva contemporaries: Cocaine abuse ("Now I'm not trying to say that I'm smelling of roses/But when will tire of putting shit up our noses"), God ("Do you think his favorite type of human is Caucasian?/Do you reckon he's ever been done for tax evasion?"), sexist double standards applied to nearing-30 women ("It's sad but it's true how society says her life is already over/There's nothing to do and nothing to say"), familial reconciliation ("This is not just a song; I intend to put these words into action/I hope that it sums up the way that I feel to your satisfaction") and emotionless sex ("Now I know you feel betrayed, but it's been weeks since I got laid"). I mean, she's got a track about Dubya (originally written about the white supremacist British National Party) entitled "Fuck You." Can you picture Christina Aguilera standing up in her Fanta-hued skinsuit and waxing poetic on, say, immigration policy? Or trumpeting her inability to get dick? OK, bad example.

Contrast that with one of the more unfortunate songs to come out of BigLabel hip-hop in recent (or distant) memory: T.I.'s "Swing Ya Rag." Never known for lyrical intricacy or topical poignancy, Bankhead's finest has dropped a string of certified trunkthumpers over the last couple years, and he's got a few on Paper Trail: "Ready for Whatever," "What Up, What's Haapnin'," "Dead and Gone," to wit. Five or six other cuts, ranging in quality from "ech" to "blow," have already become radio hits. Swizz Beatz-produced "Swing Ya Rag," however, tops all: The hook, which accounts for around half of the song's vocals, answers the much-anticipated question of "How exactly does T.I dance when he goes to the club?" Well, shocker!: He DOESN'T!!!! No, T.I. "don't dance, no way." Of course not! I mean, who dances anymore these days, really...squares only, I say. Stay sharp. Instead, the rapper "just take my Louis rag out and wave it 'round in the air, take my Gucci rag out and wave it 'round in the air." All in all, T.I. repeats the rag-wave eight times. Then he goes home and reads old Silver Surfers while eating grape gummy bears.

With 11 Gucci and 10 Vuitton references (and a Patron thrown in for good measure, of course) packed into the 3:20 song, dude averages a product placement every nine seconds. Major loot, right? Thing is, nobody thought to actually talk to the companies about, you know, the whole thing, and turns out they weren't all that thrilled. Says T.I. about a video he made for the song: "We did it, and it came out hot, (but) Louis and Gucci started trippin' about it. They were saying we were infringing, in one way or another. They weren't happy about it. They didn't want it to come out. But it's hot, though..." While the fashion companies were probably totally sold after he reiterated that "it's hot" -- just in case they were still wondering -- MTV refused to play the video for fear of getting its ass sued off. So, then: Rapper sets, to our knowledge, a record for blatancy and frequency of product placement in a song, proceeds to lose money for doing so. Brilliant, T.I., brilliant.

Having said all that, we're now on revolution #8 of It's Not You, It's Me since we ripped it on Tuesday, and Allen's, sadly, starting to annoy us. A cute British accent and the cojones to discuss fellatio and abandonment issues can apparently only take a pop star so far.

T.I.: You're not getting paid for this, either. "Esteban the Photog from the Vuitton Ad Department" is actually "Phil the Insurance Salesman from Syracuse." Just go home already.