Tiga – ’Hot In Herre’

One of the things a good cover version can do is take elements that were already present in a song, however deeply buried or not, and make them textual rather than subtextual, so that the listener comes to appreciate the original in a whole new light. ‘Hot In Herre’ was already camp. It was already almost disco (The Neptunes’ beat is the sound of them well on their to ‘Rock Your Body’). It was already saucy in an almost English way – think Carry On films, or Nelly as Benny Hill, chasing girls round the room… but not in any way that carries threatening or predatory overtones. There’s nothing aggressive about ‘Hot In Herre’, sexually or otherwise. It’s impossible to feel threatened by a man called Nelly, and that plaster on his face has always looked more like a flamboyant affectation (in the best possible sense) rather than a reminder of violence. His most famous song is playful to the point of being absurd – the “I’m just kidding… Unless you’re gonna do it”, the back-and-forth of Nelly inviting the object of his lust to disrobe, and her telling him, basically, that she was going to that anyway… This may not sound particularly reconstructed behaviour, but there’s a gentleness to Nelly that marks him out from other, tougher, more macho emcees – sometimes just boyish, sometimes almost dandyish (not to the extent of someone like Andre 3000, but think about that moment in the ‘Work It’ video with Nelly and Justin Timberlake wearing silk dressing-gowns and talking posh – sure it’s a pisstake, but can you imagine KRS One doing that?).

And there’s the thing. When Nelly drew fire from KRS One, it demonstrated the specific ways in which hip-hop that considers itself any variety of ‘real’ or ‘underground’ – from backpack-laden college campus to ‘the streets’ – always hates hip-hop that crosses over into pop. Hip-pop, for want of a better term, isn’t the right kind of masculine. It’s not manly enough in an overly testosterone-filled, so-heterosexual-it-hurts way (which of course always starts to shade into camp itself, but that’s another story). It involves letting women sing on your records, dancing around, having too much fun, doing it for the kids. (I sometimes wonder if Nelly recording with N’Sync was a deliberate middle-finger gesture of defiance – collaborating with a boy band must be the ultimate act of sacrilege in the eyes of the ‘underground’ – and of course The Neptunes were involved, clever little scamps). To sum up the difference: it isn’t “grrr!”, it’s “good gracious!”.

So don’t let anyone tell you that Tiga is ‘subverting’ the original of this song. He’s not: he’s just showing you a side to it that you might not have considered. Of course, this would all be a little academic if Tiga’s version didn’t have its own merits: that oh-so-casual but word perfect delivery, the beat that makes you dance in spasms like… well yes, a puppet on a string, boy. But the thing I like most about Tiga’s cover is how obvious it is that he loves the song. The cover version as a form of karaoke has given us as many travesties as triumphs (‘Heroes’ by Oasis, anyone?), but when someone pulls it off, it becomes impossible not to be infected by their enthusiasm. This track is a tribute to the shiny, silly brilliance of pop music that in the process becomes the thing itself, rather than just an homage. And that’s why I don’t see it is as a gimmicky novelty record, or just as a way for white hipster kids to enjoy the song without having to admit they like Nelly, even if it becomes those things with wider exposure.

It’s scorchio in London right now, just so you know.