I Love Bad Music: Biggs Got a Two-Way
HT Contributor Eliot Glazer has tremendously terrible taste in music. But he makes everything sound so damn appealing, so we allow him this little soapbox…
The Isley Brothers are the stuff of legend. As pioneers of marrying funk, soul, and rock and roll, the Cincinnati trio has seen its success span decades. Through good times and bad, and in packs of varying number, the Isleys have most certainly left their stamp on the music industry and continue to churn out hits as the shape of pop music endures further shape-shifting models.
In 1995, Ronald Isley took a gamble — what did he really have to lose? — and teamed up with R. Kelly, releasing the single “Contagious,” for which Isley adopted a pimped-out alter ego named Mr. Biggs. Floating through the pop cultural continuum during a time when gangsta rap equated the machismo factor in urban radio, Isley’s career was rejuvenated by his playing an inexplicably rich and powerful man-king whose woman goes astray in pursuit of R. Kelly’s younger, more virile magic penis (I’ll spare you the obvious pee joke).
Watching Contagious is like peering into a crystal ball that contained a future in which R. Kelly would find stunning success with a repetitive, undeniably silly slow jam and a soapy narrative consistently centered around adultery. But where “Trapped In The Closet” manages to take its viewer/listener straight to downtown Crazyland, “Contagious” remains creepy and bizarre, only in the most enjoyable way possible. Read on after the jump to watch the incredible video…
