Welcome to the “Untrained Ear” section of The Show Notes! This is where I give my opinion on things I’ve heard. Could be music, maybe a podcast, who knows?!? I have no formal training in any of this. I’m just a man with some ears and a platform. Enjoy!

During my childhood, society was wrestling with the transition from cassette tapes to CDs. I was going to try to describe a cassette tape for anybody under 30 reading, but it just occurred to me that I have no clue how to do so. It was a plastic contraption containing two wheels where the tape was guided from one wheel to the other and magically produced music while doing so. Even more magical, you could play a whole new set of songs by flipping the cassette over to the B-side.

If cassette tapes used magic, then CDs used lasers. No, really, this is true. Unfortunately, I’m even more ill-equipped to explain how that worked. Disc + laser = sound is the best I’ve got. I was too busy listening to CDs to bother learning the technology behind them.

The first CD I ever bought was Usher’s “My Way.” I believe the store I purchased it from was Hollywood Video. I was 8 years old. I have not broken the news to my mom, but I was too young to own this CD. My favorite song was “Nice & Slow.” The song takes us through the planning and execution of a date between Usher and a young woman he’s interested in. Verse 1 ends with the lines:

I got plans to put my hands in places
I've never seen, girl, you know what I mean

I sang this with passion. I sang this with feeling. I sang this repeatedly. However, while the girl may have known what he meant, I did not. And that’s how I knew that I was too young to be listening to it.

The jury is still out on whether or not I know where to put my hands now, but we can all agree that I’m more than old enough to listen to the song. I am 35 years old. Society has not only completely moved on from cassette tapes but also CDs. Incredibly, Usher has outlasted them all.

I do not have to tell you to watch his performance on Sunday at halftime of the Super Bowl. We’re all going to be tuned in to see what songs he performs, how the hell he’s going to manage to rollerskate, and who will join him on stage.

One Usher collaborator we will NOT be seeing is Plies. That’s because he’s going to be at Colonial Life Arena in Columbia, SC watching the #1 South Carolina Gamecocks take on the #11 Connecticut Huskies in one of the biggest matchups in women’s college basketball this season.

As someone who will also be in the building on Sunday (in worse seats), I want to take the opportunity to welcome my fellow FAMs member by explaining to you the beauty of my top 3 Plies’ songs.

I know what you’re thinking. How are there only 3 songs on this list? Well, it turns out I have a lot of favorite Plies’ songs. My original list was a top 8 WITHOUT considering songs where he was the featured artist. When you see the final word count for my top 3, you’ll understand why I had to trim it to 3.

I hope to eventually break them all down, but this list is the best of the best in my opinion, so let’s get into it!

#3: “Plenty Money” Da REAList

Tim Hardaway would be nearly stationary, surveying the floor, slowly dribbling the ball. A defender would crouch in front of him, eyes shifting from the ball to Tim’s midsection to Tim’s eyes and back again trying to gain any insight into what Tim is about to do. Tim continues dribbling the ball in a slow, metronomic fashion.

The defender starts getting comfortable. Their weight shifts from the balls of their feet to their heels. Their deep crouch becomes a little bit softer. Their eyes are still shifting, but not as quickly. They are mesmerized by the ball’s rhythm and disarmed by the casualness of its handler. They blink.

BOOM!

Their eyelids open just in time to see Tim jolt in one direction. Panic sets in as they realize going from focused to relaxed is a lot easier than going from relaxed to focused. They overreact and lunge after him, trying to make up time and space.

This is exactly what Tim wants them to do.

They realize this, too. Eventually, at least. By the time they do, Tim’s gone again, back in the direction they just came from. By the time the defender fully processed what just happened, Tim is laying the ball gently off the backboard.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the magic of the Killer Crossover aka the UTEP 2-Step.

It’s the same magic Plies uses in “Plenty Money.”

A slow dribble of

I got plenty money 

repeated over a subdued beat. A Gregorian chant for the streets. 

Then, just as you’re entering a trance…

BOOM!

The beat drops quicker than Tim’s first step and you hear

WHAT’S IN MY POCKET, DAWG?!? BIG FACE HUNNIDS! 

It only gets better from there as Plies spends the entire song giving a masterclass in braggadocio. He drops example after example of how rich he is, each more preposterous than the last.

From buying another house because he was bored with his last one to being run out of a store for buying too many plasma TVs to earning a nickname at a strip club, he goes to great lengths to detail his vast wealth.

The genius of it all though is that the biggest flex of them all is simply the phrase, “I got plenty money.”

We live in a society that is becoming more and more unbearable for you and me as we march towards the finish line of capitalism, where corporate greed takes precedence, where the richest among us try to squeeze every last cent out of everyone else.

Think of all the rich people you know. Present day, throughout history, whatever. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Mansa Musa. Think of all the money they have, everything they have done with it, and everything you would do with it.

What’s the one thing that DIDN’T come to mind? The one thing you’ve never heard any of them say. The one thing you can’t do with money.

Have enough.

Unless, of course, you’re Plies. The only man in the history of the world to look at his bank account and say, “I got plenty money.”

#2: “Hypnotized” Ft. Akon The Real Testament

I worked in youth sports long enough that I no longer work in youth sports. During my brief but long time doing this, I was on a project that involved the creation of a manual to help teach toddlers how to play soccer.

Having never met a real-life toddler, I worked way too hard at this and quickly completed a comprehensive guide on how to teach a sport to a thing that is just learning to recognize itself in the mirror.

Do you know how ridiculous it is to try to teach a toddler how to play soccer? There’s a movie in the “Air Bud” series called “Air Bud: World Pup” where Air Bud aka Buddy the Golden Retriever plays soccer.

And he doesn’t just play soccer. He’s good at it! So good that…

SPOILER ALERT 

…he scores the championship-winning goal for his owner’s high school soccer team, and he goes on to help the UNITED STATES WOMEN’S NATIONAL SOCCER TEAM WIN THE FIFA WORLD CUP! 

Again, this is a movie about a dog playing a pivotal role in helping win the greatest soccer competition in the world. I love dogs very much, but let’s be real. This is a ridiculous premise. Some might say it’s far-FETCHed (sorry). 

But still, someone pitched this idea, it was written, it was produced, and it was released (straight-to-video). You might think it’s stupid, but we can go watch it right now if we want. 

You know what we can’t watch? A movie about a toddler doing the SAME FUCKIN’ THING! We can suspend disbelief enough for “Air Bud: World Pup” to get made, but there’s not enough crack in cocaine for us to pretend a toddler could do it. 

So my dumbass turns in this guide thinking I did a great job, and my boss looks it over while I sit there anxiously awaiting positive feedback like man’s best friend toeing the goal line as Norway’s star striker lines up to take a potential World Cup-winning PK.

My boss looks up from the mass of papers and says, “Where are the pictures?” 

How someone could read a manifesto for these imaginary soccer-playing toddlers and that be their first question? Also, I clearly worked hard on this so compliment me. 

Regardless, I needed an answer, and fast. Thinking on my feet as though I had four legs (sorry again), I blurted out, “I like to paint a picture with my words.”

Which is EXACTLY what Plies does in this song.

In the chorus, Akon sings about bodies rollin’, booties bumpin’, and titties bouncing in a hypnotizing manner. I’ve seen all of these actions take place individually at various times and locations, but there’s only one place where all three will happen at the same time.

So right off the rip, we know the setting for this song is a strip club.

Plies fills in all of the additional information we need in the first three lines of Verse 1:

It's two o'clock in the mo'nin'
I'm 'gnac'd up and I'm ho'ny
All I need now is some moanin'

Alright then. This takes place in a strip club at 2 a.m. Plies has been drinking cognac, most likely Hennessey, and it has resulted in vasodilation that can seemingly only be relieved with certain physical activities.

It would appear that one of the workers at this particular establishment has caught his eye, and lucky for him, the feeling is mutual. He details the hijinks that ensue in a way that only he can, featuring such words as monkey, jonin’, swole, and foamin’.

#1: “Shawty” Ft. T-Pain The Real Testament

If you got this far and were expecting a deeper cut from Plies’ catalog to be #1, I’m sorry. I certainly set out to pick something different. He’s put out more than enough material for me to do so.

But I kept coming back to this one. His debut single. Why?

It is standard operating procedure for male rappers to include at least one love song on their albums. “Something for the ladies,” as a late-night DJ might say. Strategically, this makes sense. The biggest artists in the world have fanbases that consist of mostly women.

Even the most hypermasculine, testosterone-fueled rappers recognize this, so we get the seemingly oxymoronic subgenre of rap that is gangsta love or thug love. It combines a catchy hook that skews more R&B, oftentimes performed by an actual R&B artist, combined with rap verses that land somewhere between romantic and vulgar.

It works so well because the dichotomy that we think we’re appreciating is actually an illusion. In its purest form, these songs shine a light on how the hardest among us still need softness, and how romance and vulgarity can go hand-in-hand (in places I’ve never seen, girl, you know what I mean).

It’s a beautiful expression of nuance. We prefer to think of things in black-and-white terms for simplicity’s sake, but almost everything about us that gives us our humanity is a shade of gray.

This song captures the essence of that complexity perfectly. I love how it makes me feel.

This is the thing about music that is more inexplicable than how cassettes and CDs work and more constant than Usher Raymond himself. It enters your ears via magic and/or lasers and conjures up all these emotions inside of you. Emotions that you may not have known resided within you in the first place.

The ability to do that is more important than beats, lyrics, features, whatever. To me, this is the Plies song that does that the best. And that’s why, like the South Carolina Gamecocks women’s basketball team, it’s ranked #1.