wanna give it a go?

polap   Tue Jan 29, 2008 9:03 pm GMT
Let me hear y'all flow sisters

She said, hello, hey Joe

You wanna give it a go

We come through with the money and the garter belts

Let 'em know we 'bout that cake, straight out the gate

I'm saying, why spend mine when I can spend yours

I'ma keep playing these cats out like Atari

Betta' get that dough sisters

We wanna gitchi gitchi ya ya




I DONT UNDERSTAND THESE!!!!
Guest   Tue Jan 29, 2008 10:27 pm GMT
WHAT DOES "gitchy gitchy yaya" MEAN?
guest   Tue Jan 29, 2008 10:35 pm GMT
That's a SONG dudes!
Lady Marmalade

And Thanks! I've been wonderin' for years what they were sayin'
Guest   Wed Jan 30, 2008 11:31 pm GMT
It's probably the ABBA (?) song from the 1970s. Even though it looks like a word game like pig latin, I'm pretty sure it's French for the song that starts "Voulez-vous coucher..." The ah is probably "avec" and "mooah" is moi.
Guest   Wed Jan 30, 2008 11:33 pm GMT
That ought to settle it for anyone who thinks I lie about my languages, lol.
Russconha   Thu Jan 31, 2008 12:10 am GMT
As previously stated, it is Lady Marmalade, and 'voulez vous couche(r) avec mois' means will you sleep with me. In Englishm this is understood as having sex, but my old French flatmate would repeatedly tell me that it literally means in French, will you sleep with me. Maybe the lyricist was scared of ghosts and ghoulies from the closet.

'Gitchi gitchi ya ya' ia open to interpretation. As the music is a form of art, and in turn art is open to personal inerpretation, the words don't have to mean anything.


<i>an explanation of the meaning of another's artistic or creative work; an elucidation: an interpretation of a poem. </i>
polap   Thu Jan 31, 2008 12:41 am GMT
what about

"Let 'em know we 'bout that cake, straight out the gate"

"why spend mine when I can spend yours "

"I'ma keep playing these cats out like Atari "

"Betta' get that dough sisters "
Guest   Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:34 am GMT
The one who "interpreted"

I'm not disputing that this is Lady Marmalade. I have no idea. I've heard some of those words before. It's just not my kind of music, same thing for ABBA. I simply meant that I think ABBA sang a song like that.

Maybe it was a typo, but "moi" and "mois" are different words.

Moi=me
Mois=month.
Guest   Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:36 am GMT
Polap,

Don't you ever thank anyone?
Russconha   Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:44 am GMT
OK, I'll try but remember this is my personal interpretation and should not be taken as fact.

Let 'em know we 'bout that cake
Let them know we ARE ABOUT that cake. This site is about English. The News is about current issues. I believe in this context, the cake is referring to sex

Straight out the gate
Possibly a reference to horse or dog racing when the animal leaves the trap. It leaves quite fast so if you are not quick, you may miss it.

Why spend mine when I can spend yours

No reference to the previous line. Would you rather spend your money or someone else's money?

"I'ma keep playing these cats out like Atari "

I'ma = I'm going to. Cats = Colloquial term for people. Atari = Old video game system

Betta' get that dough sisters

Betta = Better, dough = slang for money. ie You would do better to get the money than not to.

The overall maning of this song is about women empowering themselves and using sex to get what the want instead of being surpressed.

That's my humble opinion, it could be wrong but hope it helps
Russconha   Thu Jan 31, 2008 2:44 am GMT
The overall maning of this song is about women empowering themselves and using sex to get what THEY******* want instead of being surpressed.
guest   Thu Jan 31, 2008 2:59 pm GMT
Lady Marmalade wasn't an ABBA song. It was by Labelle.

The above lyrics were not part of the original 1974-75 release. They are from Christina Aguilers's rendition (Li'l Kim's lines) of it.

I wonder if "I let him know we bout that cake straight up the gate uh
" (the lyrics do not have " 'bout" but "bout") is not a misspelled "bought"...who knows...
Uriel   Sat Feb 02, 2008 6:59 pm GMT
Excellent song!

The original song was about a man meeting a prostitute, and the common catchphrase prostitutes used to use in the old days for "Do you want to have sex with me?" was "Do you want to give it a go?" That turn of phrase would have been a dead giveaway that the speaker was a hooker offreing her services.

"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi" means the same thing in French, and in the original LaBelle song, "He met Marmalade down in old New Orleans, struttin' her stuff on the street" -- French is spoken in New Orleans, of course, and the song emphasizes how exotic the titular hooker was, from her over-the-top street name of Lady Marmalade, to her skin that was the "color of cafe au lait", which probably made her half black and half white, and therefore doubly exotic to customers of either race, to her "black satin sheets, where he started to freak" after drinking all that "magnolia wine". Not sure you can actually make liquor from a magnolia tree, but the showy white flower is synonymous with the South, so the line cleverly puts you in the intended setting. All this of course contrasts with the man's boring real-life existence ("Now he's back home doing nine to five, living his gray flannel life").

Joe was simply a common name that they used to address men with; it wasn't necessarily the man's real name. (To this day, a prostitute's customer is still called a "john", from the common name John. Same idea.)

The Christina Aguilera, et al, version was remade for the movie "Moulin Rouge", so there were a few line changes, such as New Orleans turning into Moulin Rouge, and the addition of Li'l Kim's break that is quoted above, where the point of view shifts from the customer's one-time experience of great, mind-blowing, paid-for sex to the prostitute's more cynical experience of exploiting male sexual desire over and over to make money (while being exploited themselves, of course) -- a clever switch in point of view.
Guest   Sun Feb 03, 2008 4:23 am GMT
Well, Uriel, you are one of the most interesting and articulate people on this forum, I must say. I disagree with you sometimes, but dang! you write really well in English and clearly!

One post was deleted with "Voulez-vous" and that's why I wrote about ABBA because they had an Album with "Voulez-vous". A couple of years ago, they were still doing the musical "Mama Mia" with ABBA songs and those words appear in it.
Uriel   Sun Feb 03, 2008 6:11 pm GMT
Why, thank you, darling. I can sure over-analyze a song when I want, eh? ;) And don't get me started on ABBA -- another guilty pleasure!