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It's clear that, given the name of this blog, I'm not above a lame, semi-erotic ice cream pun. However, the last decade's catalog of ice cream music is disturbingly pornographic, and always manages to bring race into the mix as well. Here are some lyrics from one example, "Ice Cream Man" by Nicki Minaj:
Can i lick your, can i lick your icecreamcone
Do it like E.T. i make a ni–a phone home
I really like vanilla, but my favorite color chocolate
chocolate, chocolate, gargle it and gargle it
and then later:
Just put a lot of nuts, imma lick it off the tip
Am I the only one blushing?
= 
?I remember when my best friend Sofia and I first heard Wu-Tang Clan's "Ice Cream," she was extremely keen on it because she got a shout-out as a "butta pecan 'Rican" (she was half Puerto Rican). I was bummed because there was no lychee flavor shout-out or green tea or whatever I thought a half Chinese person deserved (although a "colored Asian" features in the video and lyrics). It is also an excellent song, although the use of ice cream flavors as a racially exclusionary rhetorical device is at best questionable. Of course, at the time, we were all of twelve so these questions weren't weighing too heavily. But in retrospect, I find the overt sexualization of an innocent treat to be pretty questionable; as I reported in last week's roundup of ice cream news, it's not beyond the realm of the possible for the ice cream man to have his eye (or his hands) on little kids.
Apparently this tradition dates back several decades. In 1975, "Hokey Pokey (the Ice Cream Song)" was released by Richard Thompson. Its lyrics include the following:
Girl on the corner with the tight dress on
You know she don’t know nothing so fine
Feels so good when you put it in your mouth
Sends a shiver all down your spine
Sends a shiver all down your spine
In retrospect, these are pretty tame. But still!
