Single Awareness: Dirty Boyz – “All I Want for Christmas is to Get It Crunk” (2005)

When I was younger, there was one thing that made December a special month. Oh sure, most of us would be thankful for Christmas or Hannukah, but there was something else that me and my sister came to anticipate with great regularity. The Vandals Winter Formal is an annual concert held in Southern California, more often than not at The House of Blues (I’ve been to one in Anaheim and Hollywood) where they invite a bunch of small bands to open for their Christmas show. It was largely an excuse to play songs from their comedic punk holiday record “Oi to the World” before diving into the regular hits. 

I forget how many times I’ve seen The Vandals, but the majority have been through this event. That’s in some small part because they generally don’t play a lot of concerts throughout the year. Maybe it’s because the bass player is an entertainment lawyer or the guitarist is an artist, but you felt like they packed way more energy into that show because of its rarity. Things would get crazy with crowd-surfing and an encore where the guitarist would dive into the audience (he once accidentally punched me, though no hard feelings). It’s a fun time so long as you’re in on the joke of a bunch of rowdy punks just wanting to celebrate the holidays with a ribald discography.

It was as much a ritual of listening to the bad opening bands and rebelling against the ones who outright sucked. I still remember seeing Versus the World and half of the crowd (including the middle mosh-pit) sat down in protest. They ended by saying “We’re Versus the World, thank you and fuck you.” Another year was some Andy Kaufman-esque band called Supernova who continually got pelted by garbage. The highlight of that one was when they brought a guy in a Chewbacca mask out as they sang “Chewbacca.” I’ll always feel some small pride in knowing that I saw a band who did an obscure song from Clerks (1994) over a decade later. Still, that audience booed them and I kind of loved the animosity.

But I suppose one thing isn’t clear. Why is it that I’m talking about The Vandals Winter Formal for an entry that’s dedicated to a crunk song? To be totally honest, I only know the song because of those events. Few things were as expected as The Vandals headlining and two songs especially that would play during the intermissions. One of the cornerstones of my generation, “Ding! Fries Are Done” was there asking if we wanted apple pies with that. I’m sure there were others that repeated, but for the life of me, the one that me and my sister always remembered because it was so ridiculous and out of place. Despite the rhyme scheme punk and crunk were two very different genres. It’s difficult to suggest that they’d even be in the same section of the record store.

But for whatever reason, these two white kids thought that hearing rappers yell “All I want for Christmas is to get drunk!” was the most amusing thing in the world. When you’re young, before the threats of alcoholism begin to wear on your emotional soul, you think it’s hilarious that Dirty Boyz is on there talking about downing a bottle of booze as if it’s some form of celebration. It makes sense at a place like this if just to move some sales at the bar. However, the energy with which they sang escaped sincerity and sounded like they had just seen a pony, having one of those sensory overloads when you see something cute. A bottle of booze? Sure, that’s cute. Let’s write a whole song about this.

To be upfront, the crunk movement escaped me entirely. I’m not saying that I wasn’t aware of its popular artists. I think that I knew The Ying Yang Twins’ “Whisper Song” though it could just be schizophrenia. There was also Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz who made The 5 W’s of journalism sexy for a few years. Even then, I couldn’t exactly tell you what the signifiers of the genre were other than it was a southern thing, probably involving strippers. In the grand scheme of things, I’m the guy at the start of Ludacris’ “Welcome to Atlanta” video asking the tour guide what it means that their tour is crunk. Yes, I’m hopelessly white.

I’m so hopelessly white that I didn’t realize until writing this that the song wasn’t about getting drunk. When you’re in a crowded room listening to a hundred conversations with speakers blasting, crunk and drunk sound awfully similar. Knowing that the real title was “All I Want for Christmas is to Get It Crunk” may or may not be disappointing to me. I love the shameless vision that I had of the song, where Dirty Boyz followed in the path of Afroman and used the holidays as an excuse for excess. Then again, Urban Dictionary does claim that it’s a combination of chronic and drunk, so there is some hope for my dumb theory.

It’s hard to know what Dirty Boyz really were trying to convey with this song because not a lot is publicly available on them. Even their Wikipedia page has contradictory labeling of them both as Dirty (group) and Dirty Boyz. They’re interchangeable to such a degree that you wonder if they dropped part of their name because Dirty Men sounded like a felony. What is available in their notes is news that they became the first hip-hop group out of Alabama with their 1999 album “Country Versatile.” As far as I can tell, they continue to release music and get it crunk wherever they go. I can only hope they’re doing so with their families safe at home during this pandemic.

To be honest, this is as much as I’d expect from a group that to me is a novelty group. Maybe it’s just how things went when I was younger, but songs like Hurricane Chris’ “Ay Bay Bay” wasn’t designed to inspire a career. It was meant to be a ringtone, a quick joke that you’ll play on the radio. Of course, that’s generally how things go when you write a song that mixes Tchaikovsky with wanting to have sex with Serena Williams. It’s so wonderfully stupid that you can’t take it seriously. It’s not wanting world peace. It’s not like Mariah Carey wanting you. All Dirty Boyz want, as I’ll continue to point out, is to get it crunk.

Which is what’s fun about the song. Say what you will about the lyrics themselves, but the chorus, when backed with “The Nutcracker Suite” and a crunk beat, is addictively festive. In general when a song like this features a woman asking “What you want, huh?” there is a sense that they’re clad in a bikini, waiting for whatever dated objectification these songs entailed. They’re smooth, seductive, and playing the role of somebody wanting to get Dirty Boyz a present. If you want to have some fun with this, imagine that Dirty Boyz are just that, probably around 12, and it makes everything all the more amusing when they prematurely elate “All I want for Christmas is to get it crunk” over and over and over again.

Though to be completely honest, anyone turning to the verses to understand just what crunk is may find themselves a bit disappointed. From here it becomes something more conventional of the Christmas wish list, reminding audiences that Dirty Boyz are just like us: hopelessly devoted to material joy. In this case they want: T-Mobile Sidekick, Gucci Sweater, Soldieries, a fresh black tree, and “mouth full of tooth.” Nowadays they’d probably just get a Kickstarter to pay for all of this.

There’s of course the standard use of “Jingle Bells” sprinkled into the song to show you just how much of a jokester these guys are:

Dashin' through the snow in a stolen Chevrolet

With my broken taillight ridin' dirty all the way (ha ha ha ha)

Sippin Hennessey thinkin 'bout my Christmas needs

Bendin corners while I'm smoking on them Christmas trees

To be fair, Dirty Boyz slowly begin to develop so much more of a conscience as the song goes along, finding the heart underneath the bravado. At one point they rap about making two felonies disappear, peace in the hood, and a Cadillac Fleetwood. I don’t know exactly if this qualifies as crunk, but it’s a sweet moment before the song shifts from material to personal into downright sexual. What starts with kissing Williams underneath the Mistle Toe slowly evolves into having sex with Halle Berry like they’re Billy Bob Thornton in Monsters Ball (2001). Now there’s a fun way to date your song more than outdated technology. It may also be a bit bleak given that the film was about racists and dead kids.

Getting crunk

It ends with the woman giving her own wish list. Given what we’ve heard from Dirty Boyz, one has to wonder what she desires. We’ve heard about their want for clean records and fancy clothes. What do women want? Well…

All I want for Christmas is to kick it with dem Dirty Boyz

Moaning, groaning, playing with my naughty toys

Happy holidays to all my girls up in here

Have a merry Christmas and a crunk new year

That’s in case you forget that this was written in the early 2000s, in a time where one of the hottest discussion points among public intellectuals was “Are women funny?” Oh sure, these women aren’t passing the Bechdel Test, but aren’t you curious what would happen if someone like Megan Thee Stallion did this song? There’d be something more than playing with “naughty toys” and kicking it with men who clearly think that Monsters Ball is a blueprint for sex.

Considering that Single Awareness is going to mostly be focused on goofy Christmas songs this month, I want to say that you should get used to me tackling these absurd, dated antiques. My time with the crunk genre has been fun and brought with it plenty of memories. This song will always take me to that floor in The House of Blues, waiting for the next band to start. In some ways, it’s the best way to hear this because the closer you look, the more you realize how empty it is, like all Christmas songs that aren’t about your sexy betrothed. 

We’re way past the point of writing Christmas songs where we wait for men to come back from war. Now, all we want to do is get it crunk, and it feels like a decent idea for a year like 2020. I want to end by suggesting that if this is your mode of pleasure, please take responsibility and don’t put yourself at risk with public gallivanting. Do it in the comfort of your home with people you know are clean. There’s no need to not make it to New Year’s. As much as we should make Christmas more crunk, we should try to do it for our whole life. Cherish the time you have on this mortal coil and have a wonderful holiday season. Dirty Boyz wouldn’t want it any other way.