By Piper Ruth
Photo courtesy of Creative Commons
I’m a 2003 baby. I was born in the era of embellished camo and fedoras being socially acceptable, but I grew up an onlooker of the 2000’s-2010’s party music scene. As I navigated elementary school, I wanted to know how to shuffle like LMFAO did in the “Party Rock Anthem” music video. I listened to a 95.7 The Party, a pop station in Colorado, adorably oblivious to the sex-drugs-drink-party themes that hip-pop music focused around on the drive to the little Catholic school I attended. Of all the artists in that era, one specifically sticks out to me, and that is Miami’s darling boy, Mr. Worldwide, Pitbull.
My first run-in with Pitbull was seeing the music video for “Calle Ocho (I Know You Want Me)” on some TV music video station. I was young – like, too young to be watching a Pitbull music video – but the song stuck with me. It wasn’t until SCAD Radio announced they were going to be celebrating a week of Pitbull that I realized just how often Mister 305 had been a major part of my life. Even into high school, multiple homecomings were celebrated by jumping up and down and screaming the lyrics to “Timber” with my friends.
Let me break the magic of these formative, nostalgic moments from my childhood and youth. I was not cool. I played Warrior Cats on the playground with my four friends in elementary school, wore space leggings and matching Converse in middle school, and was in theater for all of high school. I wasn’t sneaking out every night to go party and damage my lungs and liver at a never ending Pitbull karaoke party. Yet, through all my eras and interests, I allowed myself Pitbull, a small “coolness” that I went back and forth on, feeling either as if I didn’t deserve it or was too cool for it. He isn’t necessarily my most listened to artist, but his music is a constant in my life, something that plays on the radio that makes me go, “oh, okay, it’s Pitbull. I remember this guy. Love this guy.”
Here I am now, a college-aged girl near Miami. I am in the Pitbull danger zone, and I am at high risk. I may not be the beautiful, bodacious women with overwhelming sex appeal that Mr. Worldwide and his many featured artists sing and rap and dream of, but I am able to imagine myself as one. I’ve never been cool in the way I see other people as cool, but I am nothing if not confident. Confidence is something that took a very long time for me to learn. Of course, I lose confidence and I get too cocky, but would Pitbull not be proud of me for simply being? Aside from the themes of women and parties his music tends to encompass (which I covered heavily in my Pitbull horoscopes article), there is this constant feeling of confidence and satisfaction in all of his lyrics. Pitbull woos women, works hard, and knows he is good at it. I might successfully flirt with my boyfriend on a good day, but aside from that, I resonate with the feeling of pride that comes with doing something that takes a long time but yields spectacular results.
Who is Pitbull’s target audience, anyway? Casanovas? Beautiful girls? I say that he makes music for the confident; those who have come from a place of 2010’s awkwardness and grown into stable, strong, and self-assured adults.
