I posted a rant a few months ago about how a lot of lyric sites don’t seem to give a crap. It was inspired by trying to figure out a name from James Brown’s Santa Claus, Go Straight To The Ghetto.

So there’s a part near the end of the song that I couldn’t figure out. He says “Tell ‘em **unidentified** told you so” but I couldn’t figure out what the name is. Don’t ask why I’m just noticing this after all these years. Whatever it is, the name definitely isn’t James Brown. I decided to hit the lyric sites to see what they say. Not only did they claim that he said “James Brown” there but they don’t even have the obvious parts of the song right.

I forgot to put that name in the original post, but I kept thinking it was “Hank Ballast” or something like that. I looked around today and most of them still have messed-up versions of the lyrics. The one place that seems to have best version is the VH1 site. They don’t have all the botched lines like “Pitch up your reindeer” and admits that even they can’t figure out what that name was. But thanks to VH1, I think I figured out what the name is.

While watching VH1, a rock documentary had a clip from a man named Hank Ballard. I look the man’s up on the electronical intertubes and Google points to a lot of links about Ballard and the Godfather of Soul. They worked together in the late 60’s which was the same time period that this song was recorded in. I’m not a music historian or expert, but I’m guessing that the James Brown lyric missed by most sites is “Tell ‘em Hank Ballard told you so.” If anything, I’m more embarrassed that I didn’t know who Hank Ballard was.

While most people are blaming recording artists for the wall-to-wall foulness in current mainstream Hip-Hop and R&B, people who listen to more than just profit-seeking pundits know what the real deal is. The record labels and media outlets have the most control. You’d think that’d be obvious, but pundits look cooler if they take it straight to the artists instead of attacking the real cause. Really, if any of those artists changed their message, their label would drop them like a bad habit after Viacom would refuse to air their videos. And if you don’t believe that, Bruce Banter from Playahata.com has a story for you about Keke Palmer:

Here’s a few clips from Atlantic records tries to turn Akeelah the Bee into Lil Kim:

Keke Palmer, is the 14 year old girl who played Akeelah, in the movie, Akeelah and the Bee.She and her mother Sharon have a huge problem with the upcoming record deal they signed with Atlantic Records in March of 2006. The problem is that the record label wants to market the 14 year old as a sexpot but she does not want that image.Keke admits “From the very beginning Atlantics A&R representative tried to get me to record inappropriate music, and my parents and I resisted.”

Who’s behind this nonsense? Well the Senior A&R rep, Mike Caren, was the main antagonist, he kept on saying , ” Keke is urban”, so as long as they refused to record the raunchy tracks that he sent them, he refused to pay for the good clean music they brought him.At one point he even stopped Keke from recording by not paying for studio time.

If that isn’t messed up enough for you…

She is only 14 years old, and when she signed the deal she was only 12 years old, “what did they think she would be singing about?” Anyway, they kept their word and did very little to promote her cd. They refused to provide marketing reports, even when Das management kept asking.Then on Sept 14th they received the report, 4 days before her cd release date of Sept 18th.

That’s just insane. You have the kid from Akelah at your record company and you don’t promote it because it jibes more with her image from a hit Hollywood movie than it does typical bass-ackwards urban radio? If the Congress wants to investigate something in the music industry, they may need to look into this. Of course, any execs that want a 14 year old girl to sex-up her image may need a different kind of investigation.