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In what I think may be a unique event in the history of Now albums, we get two consecutive songs about the moral questions surrounding women who need to turn to the adult entertainment business in order to make ends meet. Indeed the connections go further because Wyclef co-produced this track and makes a cameo appearance in the video.
The sleeve note quotes them as claiming that they "talk about issues that occur in everyday life... without preaching". If so, I'd hate to think what they'd sound like if they were being preachy. This song always rubbed me up the wrong way, and listening back now I think part of the problem is that the seriousness of the subject matter sits uneasily with the often gimmicky production, including an odd chunk of Dr Dre's 'The Next Episode': this song first appeared on the soundtrack to the 1999 movie Life (me neither) but presumably without the Dre element. The edited version featured here doesn't help matters much by dropping not only the swearing but some of the drug and sex references as well, thus making the lyric barely comprehensible (the official video I liked to above is less sanitised).
And then to cap it all, at the end of the song they all go "Mmmm" in a way that I've always found insufferably smug and self-important, as if they really want to hammer home that they've been all challenging.
Also appearing on: Now 51
Available on: Ultimate R&B
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