It”s a credit to the The-Dream”s sweetly smooth vocals that he can deliver lines like “Good loving, the grinding, the bumping, oh yeah, make that bed shake, that next day body ache…. I”m going to get behind it and I”m gonna make that thing shake,” as if he”s the reading Shakespearean sonnets.
There”s lots of little, not-so-subtle clues that this is about sex, if we haven”t gotten the hint that “roc” is a substitute for another one-syllable word- like white icing being spread on a girl”s face; another lovely lady carries around a tray of cherry tomatoes and pops some in her mouth.
[More after the jump…]
All the while, the guys are living out their dream dates: they”re playing shuffle boards in jeans and sneakers, surrounded by ladies in skimpy bikinis and high heels, or they”re playing video games with the babes cheering them on or they”re watching the girls, who are seemingly mute, dance. It”s full of every tiresome trope that”s been featured in videos since the birth of MTV 30 years ago, and yet, here it is once again. Ad infinitum.
The-Dream seems to be singing to one particularly female who rocks his world, but it isn”t until the end that he chooses just one special lady to bed down with.
Anyway, The-Dream has been busy these days: he produced Rihanna”s remix of “Birthday Cake,” you know, the one with her ex-boyfriend/felon Chris Brown on it. Despite the resulting controversy of the two performing together again (on the same day “Cake” came out, Rihanna appeared on a remix of Brown”s “Turn Up The Music”), The-Dream wanted to keep the music and the drama separate: “For me, it’s just music — two talented people doing a record together, doing two records together, and that’s what it was,” The-Dream told Billboard.com. “It wasn’t about an incident that happened. The true thing really is to forgive, and… you want to believe in people.”
He goes so far as to sound like he has no idea how Brown magically appeared on the track: if Rihanna and Brown were in the studio together, if he saw Brown, etc.: “I don’t know how she got the logistics and how it happened — maybe she’ll talk about it one day. I showed up at the studio, and it was like, ‘All right, cool, let’s finish this record,’ which we probably should have finished the first time we did it.” Uh, okay.
Plus, “Roc” is the first single from “Love IV MMXII” (that”s “Love 4 2012, for those of us who need help with the Roman numerals), The-Dream”s new album out this Spring.
On March 7, The-Dream hits the road for a 3-week club tour that ends in New Orleans on March 28 (tour dates are below the video)
The-Dream tour dates:
March 7 Greensboro, NC Greene Street Club
8 Charlotte, NC Amos Southend
9 Wilmington, NC The Soapbox
11-12 New York, NY SOB’s
13 New Haven, CT Toad’s Place
14 Providence, RI Lupo”s
15 Austin, TX SXSW
16 Austin, TX SXSW
16 Boston, MA Wilber Theatre
17 Washington, DC The Fillmore
18 Baltimore, MD Soundstage
20 Philadelphia, PA Theatre of Living Arts
21 Cleveland, OH House of Blues
22 Cincinnati, OH Bogart’s
23 Detroit, MI Masonic Temple
24 Chicago, IL House of Blues
28 New Orleans, LA House of Blues