Khia – “My Neck, My Back”

Released: 5.2.02

Peak: #42

Since hard boys get skeeved way too quick when body parts get squishy, leave it to a woman to give us hip-hop’s one genuinely filthy sex song of the decade. The title, I hardly need say, rhymes with “Lick my pussy and my crack,” and if I regret that Khia had to instruct her man (men?) as though cunnilingus were an exotic request, rimming skeeves me a bit myself.

Any other reservations about “My Neck, My Back” are easily overcome. Though I doubt that, as a hard-and-fast rule, “the best head comes from a thug,” there’s no reason why it couldn’t, and I admire Khia for nudging her boys in the right direction–at-risk youth really do deserve some positive reinforcement. Khia’s advice on technique may iffy (“put your neck into it”? really?), but, you know, diff’rent strokes and all that. And though I wish she sounded like she enjoyed having orgasms as much as she enjoyed giving orders, well, progress comes slow, my sisters.

If I wanted to be all cult-stud about it, I’d say Khia makes the passive state of receiving head into an positive sexual act, but there’s no need to dress up a “duh” observation like that in theoretical duds. The track itself is pro forma Dirty South–unpredictable stutter-snare punctuated by bass bump an high-end synth. It’s the only credit I can locate for Tampa hacks Michael “Taz” Williams and Plat’num House, and there’s no question that Khia’s calling the shots here.

By the end of the decade Khia surfaced on VH-1′s “femme C” contest Miss Rap Supreme, where some called her out as a ringer before she disqualified herself by passing off a previously recorded rhyme as a freestyle. There seemed more desperation than deception in that cheat, just another reminder of how many lives are ground to pulp to give us the one-hit wonders we need.