Aaron Hall’s “Don’t Be Afraid” — When Sexual Assault Had a Catchy Beat…

For all intents and purposes, “Don’t Be Afraid” was a catchy little rape ditty you could dance to. Matter of fact, in the video for the song, we see Hall, dressed mostly in a suit, tie and a pinky ring, serenading us with tales of Class A felonies in front of a metropolitan landscape (possibly Manhattan; possibly Rapeville. Who knows?) while four Cross Color-bearing women dance around him, killing it in that late 80s/early 90s, bouncy hip-hop sort of way. The song was very reflective of the New Jack Swing era, which began to merge traditional R&B soul singing with the more grittier Hip Hop sampling and aesthetic. Those elements together made for the perfect cover to hide such ambiguous lyrics like:

“The lights are off and I close the shades, so kiss me baby I say. So one more time for the road baby, I’m rising again. Give me a sedative baby, don’t be afraid…”

So not only are the doors locked, thus trapping this poor girl inside, but the lights are off too, which makes it impossible for our heroine in this story to see from which direction her attacker is coming from. I swear, if I had a rape whistle I would blow it every time this song came on. The crazy thing is that I didn’t notice just how predatory this song is until many years later when it happen to come the radio during one of those “throwback” hours. Suddenly the R Kelly comparisons really started to make sense. To my credit (as well as the credit of all the rest of us who were youngsters at the time), we were teens still learning to establish personal boundaries. However Hall was a grown A$$ man, old enough to know better, which makes him (at least in the song) kind of worthy of admission onto state sex offender list.

Then again maybe he didn’t know better. Maybe he too is a victim of a culture, which long believed that men were supposed to be sexually aggressive, even if it meant crossing over the line to sexual assault. And that is why it is important to point out this things out in pop culture, which remain problematic. Sure it is just a silly song with fake characters, locations and scenarios (we hope) but it is also reflective of a culture, which, despite all of our warnings and cautionary tales to women about not being rape, still has a huge rape problem. And what went down in that song will likely get most accused of a serious crime.