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Blake Lively attends the screening of “Cafe Society” at the opening gala of the annual 69th Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 11, 2016 in Cannes, France. Photo by Anthony Harvey/FilmMagic, George Pimentel, Samir Hussein/WireImage
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Blake Lively

can apparently code-switch with the best of them

Clinton Yates @clintonyates

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    12:18 PM“Baby Got Back” is not remotely close to Sir Mix-A-Lot’s best song, but its cultural impact is inarguably off the charts. The track that gave ultimate praise to large posteriors was named as the best one-hit wonder of the ’90s by VH1 and even got a symphony to turn up. The song has been co-opted in many ways over the years, and Blake Lively is the latest to do it.

    “Oh. My. God. Becky. Look. At. Her. Butt” — that sentence starts the song and set the precedent for whom we now refer to rather casually as “Beckys.” Ask Beyonce. “Even white boys got to shout” is a lyric that will forever be screamed on wedding reception dance floors. There are still people getting their lives changed by Mix, even through random chance.

    But there’s one part of the song that is not a lyric, not a sketch, but rather a random portion of a hook, that is extremely important.

    “LA face with an Oakland booty” means one thing: pretty face, big butt. Why are those two things somehow considered mutually exclusive? Well, you can blame that one on our old friend, traditional standards of beauty. Los Angeles, well-manicured and sculpted with Hollywood flair, represents one thing. Oakland, home of E-40, Marshawn Lynch and (ahem) the Black Panthers, represents something entirely blacker and in the face of what we consider refinement, a more raw aesthetic. Or in short, black women.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BFhx9lGR4Jj/?taken-by=blakelively

    The phrase alludes to sort of Kardashian-style “best of both worlds” construct of “beauty” that is both enjoyable and confounding. If you don’t really get that line, it’s a fun one to say. Shouts to Cali! Yatta yatta. But if you do understand it, there’s some internal conflict. Why am I buying into why this even makes sense? Why can’t “Oakland face” be a thing? There’s a lot to unpack in that DJ scratch. There are even T-shirts if you want one.

    Oh, and if you’re wondering, the best Sir Mix-A-Lot jam of all time is this one. It’s not even close.

    Clinton Yates is a tastemaker at Andscape. He likes rap, rock, reggae, R&B and remixes — in that order.