Friday, January 21, 2011
Frontin' in the name of...
In music, 2003 was a stand out year for high-pitched male vocals. Not falsetto, exactly – I’m not musical enough to throw such terms around, anyway – but the kind of music you and a dog could enjoy together.
Justin Timberlake released the undeniably brilliant “Señorita” that year, a song which features parts both for ladies and men (a true metrosexual, JT sings both). If you pay attention to the video, you’ll notice Pharrell Williams is playing drums; a nod to the fact that he and Chad Hugo produced the track together.
Pharrell is responsible for another high pitched masterpiece released in 2003, “Frontin’”. The song and accompanying video are notable for several things, among them the relatively unusual ratio of clothes-on-women to clothes-on-men (for a rap song) and the phrase ‘tear ya ass up’, which is presented here more as a kind of cutesy come-on than the violent threat it surely ought to be.Until recently, frontin’ was a term I understood solely in the context presented here by Pharrell – referring to a person who puts up a façade of confidence or emotional availability (the ‘front’).
Not any more.
These days, it seems, the car insurance business is getting its claws into everything: meercats, Australians, etc – and now frontin’, or fronting, to give its insurer terminology. We are to understand the word in this context as referring to a low-risk ‘parent’ figure taking out car insurance in their own name on a car meant principally for a different, high-risk ‘child’ (who is included on the policy as a named driver).
The tactic is illegal and insurers are quick to see through it in the event of an accident, meaning that the effective level of cover provided is zero. But in these cash-strapped times, plenty of people are doing it – and this definition for frontin’ is rapidly gaining currency in the motoring press.
Let’s look at the evidence. Frontin’ = cool. Fronting = definitely not cool.
Image © Karl Hab via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: car insurance, fronting, young driver
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posted by Fuse @ 5:45 AM 
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