Let’s be frank: So far, I’ve been picking very easy targets for Videodome. Foreign language pop stars, R&B videos, and the ‘80s are all pretty ridiculous to begin with, requiring only a minimal effort at commentary. Recently, I found myself halfway through another such article, this time dissecting the Ying Yang Twins’ “Naggin.’” This is a video that will make you shake your head like your dad did that time he got disappointed with you for vomiting beer on the carpet in high school. Awesome as it is, though, I had little to say about it that the video itself didn’t say loudly and clearly enough already. I was mired, at an impasse, lacking inspiration for no fault of having plenty of hilarious embarrassments to choose from and no shortage of things to point at mockingly with my anonymous internet fingers. Still, I abandoned my efforts.

Then my girlfriend sent me a link to the video for “Get Down” by b4-4. I was able to put two and two together and deduce that a band name containing numerals and forming a stupid pun was going to be an exploited boy group from the early aughts. However, my initial assumption about the song title was proven grossly inaccurate. Boy bands from this era were all about feelin’ good and partyin’ inoffensively, so naturally I thought that “Get Down” would be a call-to-arms for tweens trying to throw dance parties in their parents’ basements. Time would teach me that any party informed by b4-4’s song and thrown by middle schoolers would be disgusting.

“Get Down” is about engaging in a mutual oral sex exchange. Here are some lyrics:

“I will take you places that you only dream about while you’re asleep at night

Let me take the time to understand and I will set your spirit free”

Aw, okay that’s pretty nice. He’ll probably take her out to a really nice dinner and then after they’ve been dating for a few months he’s gonna blow some stacks on a romantic getaway to Paris. He’s also going to take her places emotionally, not just spatially. He’s interested in understanding her and setting her spirit free, whatever that means. I’m sure it’s a good thing.

“If you get down on me, I’ll get down on you

I will do anything that you want me to

It’s a game of give and take to make it through

So if you get down on me, I’ll get down on you tonight”

Alright, pretty suspect at this point, but not really enough to charge ‘em with anything serious. You could just replace “get” with “go” and have a very different song, but it was the early 2000s and people talked differently back then. When something was cool, you got down on it. When you went to freshman dance, you went to get down. Right? That could work, couldn’t it? “It’s a game of give and take” just describes all relationships, and “I will do anything that you want me to” is just something you say to people. No harm, no foul. Then it happens.

“I wanna know exactly what to do

So that you’ll never get me off of your mind

(So tell me what you’re thinkin’)

Communicate, and I’ll go undercover

Gonna make you come tonight

Over to my house”

Uh. Hm. Well. Maybe…no, that doesn’t make sense. Huh. That settles it. This is definitely about giving some dome. Hide it with that “over to my house” nonsense all you like, it’s not working.

“I’m not the type to change your mind

If you wanna take it slow

No pressure to go all the way

There’s other places we can go”

Yup, definitely about giving some dome. At least he’s not going to pressure her to do anything she doesn’t want to do.
“I wanna know every inch of your body

So I can set your spirit free.”

So, when he was saying the gushy stuff about understanding a woman and setting her spirit free, he was just going to get her off with his tongue. And when he was singing about taking her places she’s only dreamed about, he’s planning on taking her to Orgasmville. Chill.

What disability must a person have to not understand that this song can only be about oral sex? And not just that: more specifically, this is tit-for-tat brain. b4-4 is on some you-scratch-my-back-i-go-down-on-you shit. There is absolutely, positively no other possible interpretation for the lyrics of this song.

All of which brings me at long last to the music video itself. What does anything going on here have to do with the subject of the music? What is with this haunted Viewmaster that allows people to watch themselves lead lives that are way cooler than their own? How are b4-4 a part of this small child’s fantasy world? What are those stupid half-vests they’re wearing at the end? Isn’t the child doing the homeless man a disservice by giving him the Viewmaster, almost certainly engendering an addiction to alternate, non-existent realities and self-images that ultimately deters the user from striving to achieve things and improve themselves in real life? How much longer must homelessness go on?

But the biggest question is this: How did “Get Down” happen? The song presents a fantastic mystery, as music like this just doesn’t exist in a vacuum. So I started doing some research, and this is what I was able to find out:

b4-4 were a Canadian trio consisting of twins Ryan and Dan Kowarsky, and their friend Ohad Einbinder. The story goes that they waltzed into Sony Music’s offices in Toronto and sang for the CEO, who signed them almost immediately. Then, somewhere between getting the deal and releasing the album, someone wrote this song. Unfortunately, I cannot find any information on the internet regarding who is credited with writing “Get Down.” I’ve searched Allmusic, Amazon, Wikipedia, and everywhere else I could think of. So I decided to try and call Sony Music’s office in Canada and ask a real person. The short version of the story is that nobody at Sony knows who wrote this song. They are at least aware that at one point in time they had a contract with a group called b4-4, but the two representatives I spoke to could find no available records documenting the production of “Get Down.” I was asked to send an email form of my question to the woman I spoke to on the phone; she also asked that I specifically cite the reasons for which I’m requesting this information. She sounded pretty suspicious of me. I would too, if I were her. How often does she get dudes in their 20s calling to ask about an obscure boy band’s song from 2001? I guess it should occur to me at this point that the amount of time and mental energy I’ve spent trying to get information about this song is really, really weird. But I digress. As of writing this, I’ve received no response from Sony.

From what I can tell, then, one of two things happened. Scenario #1: Some corporate whore composer who’s got Sony’s diamond-encrusted leather leash twisted around his scrotum decided to have a good laugh, pull a fast one on the company, and write a song that was really dirty to anyone over 16 years old who was paying attention, but not dirty enough to lose the teenbop sheen. Executives were too busy smoking cigars stuffed with California Kush to notice what was going on with their artists, and “Get Down” slipped through the cracks. It falls to the poor schmucks in b4-4 to sing the damn thing, but they’re cool with it cause they’re gonna get paid, and they’re into oral anyway. Or, they don’t speak great English, and just flashed a thumbs up and nodded their heads whenever anyone floated a song idea to them.

Scenario #2: b4-4 are some slimy bros who are into babes and flexing. They can sing, and they know that they can use their natural talent and some hair product to score some ass. They write “Get Down” because it’s how they really feel about dome. Executives were too busy blowing pure Colombian white through hollowed-out ivory elephant tusks to notice what was going on with their artists, and “Get Down” slipped through the cracks.

Personally, I hope it’s Scenario #2. If these guys are singing about their own feelings, then that makes them selfish opportunists that like lying to girls in order to get a blowjob. Take the chorus: “If you get down on me, I’ll get down on you.” Girl, I’ll take you places you ain’t never been before, but only if you do it to me first. I don’t care about your orgasm unless I get mines. What girl would buy this line? We all know what happens after a blowjob: It’s time for a nap, not reciprocation. Any girl actually expecting to get hers second needs to join the 21st century. b4-4 is straight up lying. They’re fake-tan, frosted-tips, Jersey Shore-lookin’ boys who’re tryna get a number from a groovy girl at the beach. It’s also interesting to note that several comments on the youtube page for the video refer to the boys as “guidos” despite the fact that all three guys are Jewish (one being a bona fide Israeli) and they’ve got Polish and German last names. They’re definitely not Italian, but it’s an unfortunate circumstance of our culture that, for some people at least, “guido” is now an appropriate slur for anyone sleazy and horny.

b4-4 put out only one more album. It was called “In Your Face” (which could easily be the title of a sequel to “Get Down”) and was only released in Germany, for some reason. Ohad is now pursuing a solo music career and doing some modeling in Los Angeles. Ryan and Dan have started a new band; they first flexed their creative wings when coming up with their group’s imaginative name, RyanDan. Surprisingly, their self-titled album, released in 2007, has song titles such as “The Prayer” and “Tears of an Angel,” which sound like inspirational tunes, rather than odes to cunnilingus. This only serves to thicken the plot: Are these the same guys that wrote “Get Down”? Maybe it was Scenario #1 after all, and they didn’t write it or didn’t understand what they were singing. Now they’re a little older, and can’t be marketed to little girls, so they changed up the format and started writing adult contemporary and religious songs for these bros.

I’ve spent a lot of time speculating on the circumstances of the existence of “Get Down.” Still, for all my reasoning and investigative reporting, I haven’t arrived at a suitable conclusion that explains everything about this song and these guys. I honestly don’t know how this could have happened: whether it’s a joke, or a mistake, or the label was actually cool with it, or what. The only lesson we’ve learned for certain today is that the music industry is a horrible, horrible place where you’re likely to get pimped out of your ass by any- and everyone. Nobody knows how anything happens and there’s an egregious disconnect between writer, performer and product. Weird shit happens and record labels barely even know that an artist they represent exists. Nothing makes sense. It’s an awful circus where trained bears are shaved and made to sing while sucking the monstrous tits of a bearded lizard-woman who’s constantly burning portraits of Nelson Mandela and chanting the Star-Spangled Banner in Sanskrit. There are no answers and no justice, but I can’t look away. Similarly, I’ve watched this video about 20 times in the past three days, and it still hasn’t gotten old. It’s a disgusting disgrace of a freak show, and the myriad contradictions of the band, the song, the video, and the history give me migraines. Shame on you b4-4. Shame on you Sony. May God have mercy on us all.