Chai Lattes, Nail Polish and Dresses
What would DMX say if he heard Tyler The Creator professing his love for oat chai lattes?
His debut album was “It’s Dark and Hell is Hot” not it’s a mild day in February and the ideal time to splurge on Starbucks.
The game is changing and the landscape of hip-hop can appear foreign to older listeners. Old-school feuds like the one between50 Cent and Ja Rule culminated in an onslaught of diss tracks and 50 Cent mass buying concert tickets to make the other rapper’s shows look empty. In contrast, new-school beefs result in disjointed Twitter rants and half baked music.
DMX performing
Gone are the days of the West Coast - East Coast divide. Rappers have gone from regional to national to international. Some aspect of repping your city remains, but rap is now a billion dollar industry. Rappers, charged with continuing to push revenue upwards, have shifted from poets to products beholden to their labels.
The same culture that initially shunned rap for being anti-institutional now shows no reluctance to adopt whatever rap-pop hit is playing in H&M. Change never comes easy and some of the old guards of the genre have dug their feet in. For example the popular Louisiana rapper Boosie has become notorious for his rants targeting Lil Nas for his sexuality and rappers as a whole for going soft. To him and some of the senior rappers any cultural change risks the extinction of rap. Issues of gender have become a battle within the battle. Given how rap has always been linked to masculinity it is an easy talking point to beat the drum with. In the past a rapper would fall back on the street cred they had accumulated over the years to prove their bravado, but now all it takes is one viral video on TikTok and an artist is catapulted to stardom.
Rappers becoming famous via viral TikToks
The music itself is shifting. The genre is now reminiscent of a teenager trying to discover its style. A fight would have broken out in the 90s had Playboi Carti released “Whole Lotta Red” and called it rap. The vocals are shrill and abrasive. Carti is in an abusive relationship with the beat: he doesn’t glide over it like the MCs of old, he attacks it and leaves a trail of adlibs in his wake. That is to say nothing of his willingness to challenge traditional gender roles. His fashion shuns expectations, he embraces a vampire aesthetic that borders on androgynous. Carti boldy brushes aside questions about his sexuality, refusing to owe the industry anything. This is a sharp departure from rappers prior, where the go to was always “deny and deflect.”
Carti is only part of a broader generation of rappers that skirt sonic norms; Young Thug, Yeat, and Lil Uzi Vert are all examples of similarly aligned rappers. Even the more archetypal artists, like Drake and Kendrick Lamar, are beginning to step outside of the box of what is considered “real rap”. Drake collaborated with Yeat on the hit song IDGAF spurring a plethora of memes about 37-year-old Drake trying to keep up with the kids. Lamar has found a new muse in his cousin Baby Keem, with the rapper being pushed into unexplored lyrical waters that display a side of goofiness rarely shown by the top dog of a generation.
Playboi Carti, a postmodern presence
Chai Lattes, nail polish, and dresses. Has this piece shifted from an exploration of rap to a naming of unconnected items? Yes and no. The items should be unconnected, but, in the midst of the generational Rap war, they have become pressing.
In a genre built off shows of bravado and dauntless demeanors, it is no wonder the space became hyper-masculinized. If you were to ask a casual fan to list their top ten favorite rappers you would be hard-pressed to find continuous inclusion of female artists. Not only is rap exclusive to men to a large extent, but it is also exclusive to what those men can do. Any deviation from traditional heterosexual norms of masculinity likely results in backlash fierce enough to put one’s career in jeopardy.
When Young Thug wore a dress on the cover of his 2016 album Jeffrey, the immediate outcome was speculation about his sexuality and questions regarding his credibility as a rapper. Jeffrey highlighted the depths of Thug’s evolution as an artist but made it impossible to avoid discussions surrounding his fashion. That isn’t a bad thing; discourse about gender and hip-hop is necessary, but much of the commentary comes from an echo chamber unwilling to accept change.
Jeffrey album cover
Drake painting his nails made headlines. Why?
It wasn’t like he was the first rapper to do so. NBA Youngboy, Kid Cudi, Lil Uzi, and Trippie Redd have already done so. But Drake doing it felt different. This was the man responsible for pushing rap in an entirely new direction. He had spearheaded the commercialization of the genre and practically invented the pop-rap category that infected suburban families across the country.
But Drake is still Drake, the cold-hearted lyricist that renamed Toronto The Six and effortlessly glides between love songs and vintage braggadociousness. And now Drake painted his nails? The ultimate dilemma for the conservative listener. They didn’t like Drake for his music, they liked Drake because they wanted to be him. Do a quick Google search and you’ll find headlines like “How Drake is Redifing Masculinity” or “Drake redefines masculinity for young men.” Drake toed the line between nice guy and playboy. Fans fixated on the parts of his masculinity they respected—-wealth, power, charisma— and ignored anything outside of their paradigm—vulnerability, honesty, and empathy. But the painted nails brought the ignored qualities to the surface. Drake was just being Drake and to some fans that was too much.
Drake crying at Larry Hoover Concert
Rap was a genre born out of protest: a love child to all of those unwilling to be subjugated by oppression.
But that oppression looked different to all of the fans.
For some it was structural; racism, poverty, and abuse. For others it was internal; stress, anxiety, and lack of motivation. The genre exploded because it promised both a balm and a catalyst. Radical acceptance was the precondition that enabled the genre to grow.
Rappers pushing the boundaries of what is deemed normal by society is nothing new. Tupac acted in Shakespeare plays, Lil Wayne became a skateboarder, and Big Boi raises pet owls. The criticism surrounding gender is both unsurprising and hypocritical. It is unsurprising because fans are scared to watch the art form they love change. But it is hypocritical because without that change the genre would be stagnant and without innovation. Artists like Eminem and Kid Cudi have always described the way rap saved them because it gave them an outlet for self expression. To deny others that outlet when it comes to gender is contrary to the essence of the genre.
It is unfair to impose a code of conduct on the rappers making the music we love to consume. The genre isn’t the same as it was in the 90s, it isn’t the same as it was in the 2000s, and it isn’t the same as it was in the 2010s. That isn’t a bad thing. Who would prefer stagnation over innovation?
To anyone who criticizes Tyler the Creator for drinking chai lattes, Young Thug for wearing dresses, or Drake for painting his nails, it is clear that they have missed the mark on what constitutes rap. They likely would have been the same people that bullied Tupac for quoting Shakespeare or Andre 3000 for wanting to make music outside of the box. Without those contributors we would have never had the music we have today, and in hindsight people will say the say thing about the rappers flogged by their contemporaries.
Strike Out,
Josh Escayg
University of Notre Dame
