Da Priest’s anti-sagging song returns with anti-gay lyrics

by Ben Briscoe of Dallas Voice

“Pull Your Pants Up” rapper Dooney Da Priest is back and spinning anti-gay lyrics once again this month in what’s supposed to be a cleaned-up version of his original album.

Last year, Dallas Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway signed the local artist — whose real name is Duwayne Brown — onto his campaign to get rid of sagging pants and exposed underwear as a fashion statement.

Da Priest put out the song “Pull Your Pants Up” with the idea that by delivering the message through hip-hop music, the target audience would be more likely to change. But controversy soon arose, as the song included anti-gay content that had the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation speaking out.

Da Priest claimed that in jails and prisons, sagging pants and exposed underwear indicate that someone is available for sex. That theme was carried through the original song.

“You walk the streets with your pants way down low/I don’t know/Looks to me like you’re on the down low,” Da Priest rapped in the song. In the black community, “on the down low” refers to men who have sex with men but identify publicly as heterosexual.

“I think it’s gay but some of ya’ll think it’s cool/Walking around showing your behind to other dudes,” the song continued.

Da Priest said he changed the word “gay” to “rude” in an edited version, but not before the song was distributed to hundreds of radio stations throughout the country and posted on Caraway’s Web site.

After the homophobic lyrics were reported by media outlets including National Public Radio, Da Priest posted his apology on two MySpace pages and the original song was replaced by the edited version in the city’s campaign.

But in Da Priest’s album “Pull Your Pants Up!,” which came out July 15, the same type of anti-gay langue is still present.

The down-low reference remains in the edited version of “Pull Your Pants Up” and in the song “Pull’em Up for Grandma” Da Priest sings, “Mr. pull your pants up/yeah I’m back up on the block/I started controversy/now they asking me to stop … Ain’t gonna stop/I’m going to tell them what it really means/and make it uncool to sag in their jeans.”

Da Priest goes on to list three explanations for what sagging really means. For the third he says, “Three, the lower that your pants be/the more available your availability”

Da Priest’s record label, MALACO, says the song is not intended to be offensive.

“The verbiage that is used is not meant in any derogatory fashion. It is only meant to more so speak to a certain group of youth,” MALACO Marketing Director Burton Doss said. “This type of audience is not going to listen to a watered-down, cleaned-up version. We need to speak to them in very plain terms.”

While Caraway has not made the same show of support for the new album as he did for the original, it has been reported that he is giving copies out to the press, and “Pull’ Em Up for Grandma” mentions him as “Dwaine Caraway/the ambassador of the pull your pants up movement.”

Caraway did not respond to three attempts to get his reaction to the new album, but in a November 2007 interview with Dallas Voice, he refused to publicly condemn the song and suggested that the LGBT community should pocket the insult in exchange for the greater good of a sag-free society.

GLAAD declined to issue an official statement on the new album. But in commenting on the original, GLAAD officials said, “The city of Dallas must be more responsible in future attempts at public education to ensure that they’re not promoting this kind of homophobic message.”

Pegasus News content partner - Dallas Voice
The community newspaper for gay & lesbian Dallas.