Let’s address the obvious questions first: why “Sweetest Girl,” a moderately successful pop track that’s three years old? Why Overthink it now? And why is Perich doing it, as opposed to Lee or Stokes or Belinkie or Fenzel or really anyone who knows anything about music?
To tackle those in reverse order: Perich is doing it because no one else stepped up. Although some of the other writers provided some insightful comments; I’ll call those out below.
Why now: because Lil’ Wayne hasn’t put out any new tracks in a while, being in jail. Wyclef might not put out any new tracks for a while, since he’s running for President of Haiti. So this is what we have available.
And why this song: oh, wow. It is just rife with meaning.
First, consider the lyrics.
Some live for the bill, some kill for the bill
Some wine for the bill, grind for the bill
Some steal for the bill if they got to pay the bill
Tonight Wyclef, Akon, Weezy [Lil’ Wayne – Ed.] on the bill
Wyclef makes use of a triple-antanaclasis here with three different meanings of the word “bill.” The first, the most common one throughout the song, is a bill as in currency – the “dollar dollar bill, y’all.” The second is a bill as in an invoice for services, like a water bill – “if they got to pay the bill.” The third is the bill as in the marquee of performers – “Tonight Wyclef, Akon, Weezy on the bill.” [hat tip to Jordan Stokes for the two-dollar word there]
What’s the effect of this identity rhyme? It ties into the theme that we’ll explore later in the chorus – that the presence of cash in the world is inescapable. Every aspect of your life touches on a bill. Wyclef, Akon and Lil’ Wayne are on the bill tonight (the marquee). Why? So they can make the bills (dollars) to pay the bills (invoices). It’s almost as if this single syllable rules everything around them.
High school, she was the girl that make me do the hula hoop around the gym
(Just to get a peek again, she’s a 10)
High school, she was the girl that make me do the hula hoop around the gym
(Just to get a peek again, she’s a 10)
Wyclef Jean demonstrates some real mastery of lyricism here, always one of his stronger suits. He doesn’t just say “this chick was hot.” He doesn’t just say “this chick was hot like [insert halfway clever metaphor].” He describes the behavior she provoked in him: he had to “do the hula hoop around the gym / just to get a peek again.” This evokes clear imagery: a scrawny teenage Wyclef, struggling to keep a hula hoop in rotation as he does a lap of the gym, to get a glimpse of this girl’s … legs? bra? It’s not made explicit, in order to retain the innocent tone.
Never thought she would come and work for the President
(Mr. George Washington)
Now this is an odd one. Wyclef sets up an internal dramatic irony here. We start with the bittersweet disappointment in his voice: “never thought she would come and work for the President.” Wha? Isn’t working for the President a great honor? Wasn’t that what The West Wing was trying to teach us all these years? Something’s not right here!
Then we get the clarification in the call-out: “Mr. George Washington.” Ah – that’s better. George Washington doesn’t have much of a staff in the 21st century, being dead, but his image lives on in the one dollar bill. So the Sweetest Girl isn’t working for the President. She’s working for those dead presidents: a common euphemism in hip-hop culture for dollars.
This is the song’s first call-out to an older and more famous hip-hop track: in this case, Jay-Z’s “Dead Presidents” off of his debut album Reasonable Doubt. One of the sharpest tracks off of Jay-Z’s critically acclaimed debut, it is – like the best hip-hop of the 90s – a tribute and lament to the struggle of earning money. Of course, Jay-Z owes some credit to legendary blues man Willie Dixon and his song “Dead Presidents”:
Hamilton on a ten can get you straight,
But Jackson on a twenty is really great.
And if you’re talkin’ bout a poor man’s friend
Grant will get you out of whatever you’re in.
Of course, talking about the debt that hip-hop owes to the blues would merit a post all its own (or a Fenzel-level tangent). Suffice it to say, “dead presidents” is not an original metaphor.
Which is fine. It’s not supposed to be. “Sweetest Girl” is all about invoking the wisdom of the elders. More on that later.
She had a good day, bad day, sunny day, rainy day
All he wanna know is: where my money at?
Closed legs don’t get fed, go out there and make my bread
All he wanna know is: where my money at?
She ended up in the wrong car, bruised up, scarred hard
All he wanna know is: where my money at?
To keep track of the narrative so far: this girl grew up in Wyclef’s neighborhood and went to school with him. Now she’s a prostitute.
The litany of personal woes and the response of “Where my money at?” evokes a bit of voice-over narration from the 1990 movie GoodFellas:
Now the guy’s got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with the bill? He can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week, no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me.
This is another classic which would be known to any hip-hop aficionado. Hip-hop in the 90s was 80% Goodfellas, Scarface, King of New York and New Jack City, 15% comic books and 5% Neil LaBute lines about women before LaBute wrote them. Again, Wyclef is invoking common wisdom: the old mythology, the classic songbook, the collective unconscious.
But he’s doing it in service of a different theme. There’s a huge catalog of songs that glorify the job of pimping. Most of Snoop Dogg’s catalog, a good bit of Dr. Dre’s as well, Big Daddy Kane’s “Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy.” Hell, a song depicting the hard life of pimps won an Academy Award just a few years back.
There aren’t as many songs talking about how cruel pimps are to the women in their stable, though. That’s what Wyclef wants to uncover for us. And to break through the generations of pimp-glorification, he needs to touch on references that’ll resonate for a hip-hop audience. There’s Jay-Z and his “Dead Presidents.” There’s Goodfellas. And there’s one more big one.
See I’mma tell you like Wu told me
Cash rules everything around me.
Singin’ dolla dolla bills y’all
Singin’ dolla dolla bills y’all
This refrain is powerful. I could give it another thousand words all by itself.
First off, Wyclef and Akon reference one of the pillars of rap music, “C.R.E.A.M.” by the Wu-Tang Clan, off of Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). I’d have a hard time overstating the importance of this album, and this song in particular, to the last twenty years of the genre. If you’re completely square to the history of hip-hop, let me draw an analogy: it’s about as important as the Book of Exodus is to the Old Testament. It’s that big of a deal.
The giants in the earth, the men of renown.
Of note: this particular phrasing is almost identical to the Notorious B.I.G.’s call-back to “C.R.E.A.M.” on his posthumous track, “Notorious Thugs.” So this reference touches on two of the titans of East Coast rap: the Wu-Tang Clan and Biggie Smalls. Which is noteworthy since only one of the artists on this track is from the East Coast. Akon hails from Senegal, Africa; Wyclef was born in Haiti and Lil’ Wayne represents the Dirty South (specifically New Orleans). Only Niia, the female vocalist who sings a descant over some of the song, comes from the Eastern seaboard: Needham, MA.
So that’s the source of the callback. Again, this ties into the overall theme: teaching a lesson about poverty using the wisdom of the elders. Wyclef and Akon invokes some of the most powerful names in hip-hop – Jay-Z, GoodFellas and Wu-Tang – to hammer their point home.
Second, the nature of the callback. Akon doesn’t just drop another rapper’s verse into his song. He tells you what he’s going to tell you. “I’mma tell you …” Why doesn’t he just say it? Akon is calling the audience to attention: listen close now, he says. Everything else was just setting the scene. Now I’m TELLING you. We see this distinction elsewhere in black culture in the U.S. The phrase “run and tell that” does not mean, literally, “stop listening to me, sprint away and deliver this news to someone else.” It means “believe what I’m saying as you would an urgent truth.” See also the African-American spiritual “Go Tell It On The Mountain,” etc. Before, we were just chatting. I was just describing the unfortunate story of this girl, the Sweetest Girl. But now I’m TELLING you.
But Akon isn’t just telling you. He’s passing on wisdom he received from another source. “I’mma tell you like Wu told me.” He doesn’t need to explain that “Wu” is short for “Wu-Tang,” which in turn is short for “The Wu-Tang Clan,” who were not in fact Mandarin martial artists from the Ming Dynasty but a crew of hardcore rappers out of Staten Island. Everyone knows who the Wu is. This is, again, to add the weight of elder wisdom to Akon’s pronouncement. It’s not just me saying this, Akon says. This comes from The Seat of Power.
Where else do we see that? A didactic declaration of the theme. An invocation of a divine source of creativity. Does anything else in the Western canon do that?
Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, O daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.
That’s Homer’s Odyssey, son. And that’s real.
You'd best protect your neck.
Wyclef and Akon’s verses inherit the most ancient literary tradition of the West: the epic poem. He’s recounting one girl’s odyssey: from high schooler, to newcomer on the streets, to embittered prostitute. And like an epic, the story is about more than just one hero’s journey. Wyclef isn’t just telling one girl’s story any more than Homer was recounting these crazy things that happened to Odysseus this one time. Homer was talking about the ways that fate can screw over a good man’s life: how we’re all the pawns of forces more powerful than ourselves.
And what is Akon saying?
See, I’mma tell you, like Wu told me
Cash rules everything around me.
Singing dolla dolla bills, y’all
Singing dolla dolla bills, y’all
The story of the Sweetest Girl is that cash rules everything around me. There is no escaping the influence of money. Remember the intro to the song and how many times Wyclef repeats the word “bill.” He’s suffusing us with a sense of money. Then we get to the refrain and we understand why. Dolla dolla bills, y’all.
But two things distinguish this chorus from the chorus of the original “C.R.E.A.M.”
First (and credit to Jordan Stokes for bringing this to my attention), Akon puts emphasis on different syllables than Method Man does. Method’s invocation sounds like “CASH rules everything aROUND me.” Akon’s sounds like “cash rules EV’ryTHING / aROUND ME.” There’s a caesura between “everything” and “around” that breaks the line up into two separate sentences. “Cash rules everything … around me.” Why does Akon do this? Sure, it helps the line scan as part of the overall chorus, but he could have achieved the same effect by waiting a beat on that second line. “… cash rules everything around me.” Sound it out in your head; see if I’m right.
The most obvious effect is that it forces our attention to a different spot in the sentence than in the original. Cash rules everything, pause, around me. Akon is showing us something we thought we knew, but in a different light.
Second, Akon doesn’t quote the entire chorus. In “C.R.E.A.M.,” Method chants the following (emphasis mine):
Cash rules everything around me
C.R.E.A.M., get the money
Dolla dolla bills, y’all
Listen:
So Wyclef and Akon aren’t saying “C.R.E.A.M., get the money.” They’re only quoting a portion of this classic verse.
When we consider the added caesura and the deliberate omission, we get a much different statement than in the original song. Method Man is touting the virtues of holding money. He lives in a world ruled by cash; hence, he has to stack that paper. Biggie’s quoting of that song on “Notorious Thugs” fits in the same vein: he’s driven by the pressures of life in the struggle to pursue cash, even through illicit means. Biggie devoted plenty of songs to how hard the street life is, and “C.R.E.A.M.” is not an upbeat song. But those messages have been lost through years of quotation and the glorification of the gangsta lifestyle.
Akon wants to remind us that saying “cash rules everything around me” is not a celebration. It’s a harsh protest of the need to sweat for our bread. Even the Sweetest Girl becomes bitter and corrupt due to money’s pervasive influence. He’s reminding us what the Wu-Tang Clan originally meant by their somber lament, a message that gangsta rap has forgot in the last fifteen years. I’mma tell you, like Wu told me: cash rules everything. Around me.
So what are we to make of the Sweetest Girl then?
It’s easy to think that Wyclef is judging her for taking an easy way out: “never thought she would come to work for the President.” But he’s not. There wasn’t an alternative future in which she wouldn’t have needed to hustle for money. There’s no cash-free world she could have graduated into. Wyclef knows this because he lives in the same world: “some steal for the bill if they got to pay the bill / tonight, Wyclef, Akon, Weezy on the bill.” Wyclef isn’t judging her. He’s mourning her inevitable fate. This is what happens to our children on the street, he tells us. Cash rules everything around them.
There is no escape (or is there?).
Here’s Akon’s verse:
Living got harder, ’cause ho’s got smarter
On the strip is something they don’t want to be a part of
Rather be up in the club shaking for a dub
Get triple times the money and spending it like they wanna.
Here Akon brings up one of the most tragic concepts in economics – the idea of opportunity costs. The real cost of a good, in microeconomic theory, isn’t expressed by the money you spend on it, but in the lost opportunity to spend money on other things. This is also how we measure the cost of time, energy, attention and other things that are harder to quantify in dollar dollar bills (y’all). Going to a mediocre college may save you tuition, but it may cost you the opportunity for a better job down the road. Working a lucrative job may make you a lot of money, but it might cost you the free hours after work to pursue your creative passions. Those are opportunity costs.
The Sweetest Girl is making money by using her body. She’s making money as a prostitute: an illegal, exhausting, dangerous enterprise, for which more than half of her income will go to a pimp. She could also make money as a dancer in a club: not without its risks, but substantially safer than whoring and also more lucrative. So her continued career as a hooker is actually costing her all the money she could be making as a dancer. Even when she’s stacking paper, she’s losing paper.
Maximizing her marginal utility.
(Why can’t she become a dancer? Presumably because her pimp has his hooks in her, either through psychological abuse, threats of violence or drug addiction. Also, she’s been “bruised up, scarred hard,” as Wyclef told us in an earlier verse, which makes it harder to land an audition)
They got their mind on they money, money on they mind
Finger on the trigger, hand on the nine
See everyday they feel the struggle, but stay on the grind
And ain’t nobody takin’ from us and that’s the bottom line
The line “mind on their money, money on their mind” comes from West Coast hip hop. It has several sources: most listeners will recognize it from the chorus of Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre’s party anthem “Gin & Juice.” Tupac also drops that rhyme in that format (up through the “… hand on the nine” part) in a guest verse on an MC Breed joint.
I mentioned before how the first verse and the chorus establish this song’s debt to the images of East Coast hip hop. Now in the second verse, we cross to the West Coast. Wyclef and Akon have cast as wide a net as possible for their imagery. Fans of either Brooklyn or Compton will recognize something in these lyrics. Again, that effect is deliberate: they want a message that any rap fan can recognize. All that’s left is the Dirty South.
Speaking of …
… sorry to let the beat drop here, but I must confess to something that longtime OTI readers know already: I don’t think much of Lil’ Wayne. I don’t think he’s a very talented performer, I don’t think his lyrics are very good, and I think his level of hip-hop misogyny transcends what we can normally tolerate. This has earned me no end of grief in the Overthinking It clubhouse, lodged in the branches of Yggdrasil (the highest tree in the Hundred Acre Wood), but I stand by it.
I bring it up here because I just cannot find anything to Overthink about Lil’ Wayne’s lyrics in this song. Nothing doing.
Damn. I just got told.
But Lil’ Wayne’s presence does complete the circle of hip-hop between the East Coast and West Coast. By incorporating the Dirty South, this song now touches on every major faction of hip-hop. The story is universal.
So we have our complete lyrical picture. Wyclef, Akon and Lil’ Wayne are telling the story of one girl in particular – the Sweetest Girl. But in doing so, they’re recounting the epic journey of every young woman hustling on the streets. It’s a story of institutional abuse and opportunity costs. It’s a story that most of hip-hop – a genre dominated by males – has overlooked. It is, as the Grandmaster said, the sad sad song of why they live so fast and die so young.
But it’s not about a prostitute.
Now let’s consider the video:
Before the song even begins, there’s a prologue of Wyclef receiving a Mission: Impossible-style briefing on a Sony VAIO handheld. It’s the UX490N – cutting edge in the fall of 2007, comically large in 2010. Note the perils of using cool new technology in your videos, hip hop producers.
It’s never made clear whom Wyclef is working for. It’s clearly an organization (they assign “missions”) with some international interests (they’re taking interest in a girl who might be deported). The speaker has an accent that’s difficult to place, but they don’t sound conventionally American. And we don’t know what importance this refugee girl has to the organization. All we know is that Wyclef has been working for them for a long time. “Your mission is a difficult one,” the anonymous patron says. “It always is, sir,” comes Wyclef’s reply. He’s seen a lot of how the world treats immigrants. He’s cynical.
We then cut to a cinematic opening: a long tracking shot through the fences of an Immigrant Transition camp, somewhere on America’s borders. Interspersed in other corners of the frame are aerial shots of the camp: tents dwarfed by seas of humanity. Wyclef has already inserted into the camp, disguised as a refugee. He narrates his thoughts in his head while jotting down notes.
As the song begins, we see shots of life in the refugee camp. People hang laundry on improvised clotheslines. Young men gamble a currency they’ll no longer need over cards or dice. Immigrants eat, horde or trade cheap rice. It’s hot, crowded and confusing, but still humanity goes on.
Note that we see Wyclef’s face every time he delivers the line, “Where my money at?” The first time, it’s accompanied with this sidelong glance – a callback to the cynicism Wyclef displayed in the prologue. The second time, Wyclef uses the thumb-and-index gesture that signifies folding money the world over. The third time, one of Wyclef’s neighbors (who has no other role in the video) turns around and delivers it to him. One’s reminded of a musical, where the lead acknowledges a nameless member of the chorus who aids him in the refrain. We’re all part of telling this story.
As the chorus comes up and Akon takes over, Wyclef sets his guitar down and steps outside his tent. He watches Aya, the girl he’s been sent to rescue, as she waits in the food line. Though it’d be well within the bounds of cinematic tradition to have Wyclef (the special agent) watching his target at the same time as Wyclef (the singer) sings a song in the background, the video doesn’t go that way. When Wyclef’s singing, he’s not doing anything else. When Wyclef’s doing something else – taking action – he’s not singing.
This tells us that the song is not merely a soundtrack to the story – but that the song is the story.
(But I thought this was about a prostitute who couldn’t be saved! Not an immigrant who can. Stick with me)
Akon takes his verse next. Though these lyrics are largely about strippers and their pimps, the imagery is far different. A crowd of protesters crush the fence outside the Immigrant Transition camp. Presumably these are relatives of some of the imprisoned refugees. Or maybe they’re just concerned parties. The camera focuses specifically on a few faces, though: an old woman, an old man. This isn’t civil disobedience by rowdy youth: these are people with a lifetime of experience behind them. It’s the wisdom of the elders all over again.
As Akon auto-croons the words “… finger on the trigger …”, the guard squeezes off a blast of water from his fire hose.
Then Aya’s dragged into an office tent.
ICE Officer: Have a seat. Passport.
(she hands it over)
ICE Officer: Aya Bongo?
Aya: Yes?
ICE Officer: You’re being deported.
Aya: What?
ICE Officer: Transportation will come and pick you up in 24 hours.
Aya: What do you mean?
ICE Officer: Gather your belongings …
Aya: What? There’s no way!
ICE Officer: Hector, get her out of here.
Aya: No, no, no! No!
ICE Officer: Done. Next!
Obviously, this exchange doesn’t take place on the album track.
As Aya is being dragged out of the tent, a chant rises up in the background – not necessarily in connection with her fate, but not out of place at a refugee camp: Libertad! Libertad! Libertad! This is another reference that every hip hop fan should place immediately:
Again, this is part of the song’s trend of calling back references to hip hop classics. Every gangsta wannabe from 1986 to the present knows the story of Scarface: how Tony Montoya climbed to the top, lost everything he had and died in a hail of gunfire. Wyclef’s video evokes that story with the refugee camp and the chants of “Libertad! Libertad!” Every hustler wants to be the guy who makes it out of the refugee camp. No one wants to think about the women left behind.
After learning that she’ll be deported, Aya takes a desperate action: she torches the HQ tent inside the camp with a Molotov cocktail. Such an act won’t keep her from being deported. In fact, it might upgrade her status from “deported” to “arrested.” But she has nothing else in her life. The hostile country to which she’s going to be sent back holds nothing for her. The U.S. won’t have her. She intends to go out in a blaze of desperation. After throwing the improvised firebomb, she sinks to her knees, ready to be arrested.
But that’s not her fate yet. Wyclef swings in and scoops her up. An ICE guard tries to stop them, but Wyclef overpowers him, as well as several reinforcements. He grabs Aya by the wrist and flees with her in the night. To be continued … the video promises.
So what’s the story here?
The song “Sweetest Girl” and the video for “Sweetest Girl” are both narratives about women trapped in no-win situations. The prostitute described in the song has spent her whole life on a losing proposition. Aya, in the video, has no recourse to defend her from being deported. But in the video, the “Sweetest Girl” gets help. Wyclef and his secret agents have been watching her all along. They descend from the darkness to save her.
So is the “Sweetest Girl” at the mercy of benefactors? Does she have to wait for a patron to come down out of heaven to save her?
Not necessarily. And here we have to key in on Lil’ Wayne’s one good lyric:
And so she runs to the pastor
And he tells her there will be a new chapter
But she feels no different after
And so she asks him: ‘where my money at?’
“Sweetest Girl” promotes the philosophy of existentialism – the idea that there is no supernatural reward waiting for the just or eternal punishment for the wicked. All we have in life is what we do and what is done to us.
The “Sweetest Girl” can’t trust her pimp to protect her: all he wants to know is ‘where my money at?’ The cops won’t protect her; she keeps getting pressure from them. She’s not going to find a man who’ll lift her up out of the struggle, not as bruised up and scarred as she is. And Jesus, frankly, ain’t coming. So her only alternative: violent action that upsets the existing power structure. Set fire to the ICE tent.
Note that Wyclef only dashes in to save Aya after she’s thrown the Molotov. Wyclef knew that Aya was being deported at least as early as that afternoon. He could have taken her out then. He’s been keeping his eyes on her the entire time: he had to notice her emptying a bottle of vodka, filling it with kerosene, lighting a rag, and walking toward the command tent. But he only saves her after she’s thrown the bomb. Why? Because the narrative requires Aya to take action. Wyclef doesn’t save her. By her action – a symbolic act of destruction – she saves herself.
“Sweetest Girl” was the debut single off of Wyclef’s album Memoirs of an Immigrant. Wyclef and Akon are both immigrants themselves – one from Haiti, the other from Senegal. Lil’ Wayne, though a New Orleans native, saw his homeland washed away in the aftermath of Katrina. He’s very much a refugee in his own land. So these three refugees assimilated themselves into the dominant culture of their new land and borrowed imagery from as many sources as they could: Brooklyn hip-hop, the West Coast sound, Dirty South hip hop, the films that inspired gangsta rap and, of course, the Odyssey. In doing so, they painted a picture of one of the forgotten figures in hip-hop: the women hustling on the street corner. The single mothers working and conning to feed their children. The immigrants working demeaning labor to build a better life for the next generation. Every woman without hope.
Of course, they also made a song that earned them a good bit of revenue. Cash rules everything around us, after all.
