Brian McKnight's "Dirty" Music

I have always been a huge Brian Mcknight fan. I remember the days when I used to plug headphones into the computer and jam out to his self-titled album on Windows Media Player. His voice was unique and soulful and the lyrics to his songs were always deep and conveyed a depth of love that was seriously lacking in many other song lyrics. A fact that I was not aware of was that Mcknight has had 16 Grammy award nominations over the20+ year span of his musical career, but has never won. I'm baffled by this fact. He has won one Soul Train Award and one Image Award.

However, most recently McKnight's music has taken a very "awkward" turn as he has started singing songs with sexual slang words describing female anatomy, and has set his sights on making an adult mix-tape. Many loyal fans have been seriously taken aback by this change in McKnight's music and lyrics which are definitely on the raunchy side. With lyrics like, "show you how your p**** works" I'm pretty taken aback myself. I can't help but think that Ashton Kutcher is going to pop up on a track at any second and reveal to us how it is all one big joke and we will all give a unison sigh that McKnight has not in fact flown over the cuckoo's nest. I do believe that McKnight is attempting to garner some attention because as he was receiving negative backlash from fans for the songs, he also simultaneously started lashing out on his Twitter pages about other male musicians who are famous for their tainted personal lives and for singing about sex and women in almost every lyric.

This attention seeking attempt by McKnight reminds me of Joaquin Phoenix's eventually revealed "mockumentary" entitled I'm Still Here. Phoenix had announced his intention to retire from acting in late 2008 in order to pursue a hip-hop career allegedly managed by P. Diddy. Joaquin's appearance took on a drastic change and he kept up the character in public and on interview shows like Late Show With David Letterman. He reiterated that his career transition was no joke. Director Casey Affleck revealed that the film was a hoax in fall 2010 and a clean shaven Phoenix once again appeared on the shows also revealing the truth. I sincerely hope Mcknight's musical change is just a joke, but unfortunately for an artist to never have received a Grammy for his awesome musical accolades, I can't see this attempt bringing him much but negative backlash and loss of fans.