RnB And Us And Girls

I was PowerHouse at St James on Saturday at the invitation of Say Wee and Choon How. They were there earlier because the former had tickets to a Sports Council event at the same place. I got there 11-ish and things got interesting, for better and worse.

The music was purely RnB, old and new. Lots of rap, lots of sing-along. The DJ didn't respect the old school stuff much though - he cut that off quickly. Disappointing. Anyway, I was amazed by 2 things - the way Singaporeans have taken to rap and RnB, and the majority of the people that filled up the place were girls.

Singaporeans taken to rap is like white Americans putting on hoodies, baseball caps, jangly gold chains and going "yo, yo, yo, it;s like this y'all!". We haven't gone that far, just the hoodies and caps. Rap and RnB seems to be spreading like wildfire with artistes like Nelly, Diddy, Chris Brown, Rihanna, Mary J Blige and Beyonce tell boys and girls where to stick their asses and what to say. There's a lot of reference to sex and relationships and more sex in all these songs, especially from the guy rappers. The lady rappers/singers seem to take their opportunity to sing and be in front of millions as a platform for female emancipation - "you go girl" and "I can buy my own diamond ringsm thank you very much." Their songs are definitely more singable. Ahem.

Now the girls bit. They came in hoards. And hung out among themselves, as show of force of sorts. They drank by the jug and danced in closely-huddled bunches. They seem to love the beat of RnB, shaking their booties and jiggling all the jiggly bits. Goodness.



Apart from all that good news, here's some startlingly bad. I nearly got cheated by the bar. Yes! They overcharged me for drinks at promo prices. 20% difference I tell you, not a trivial amount my children. And the bar guy didn't even flinch or say sorry when I asked if the bill was right. And it took another bloody 10 minutes just to fix the problem. As a dutifully miffed Singaporean, I have complained.

In the end, we were all tired. We three ended up at Geylang (!) Lorong 17 to eat Teochew porridge. It was quite yum.