Do You Hate Her Music, Or Are You Just a Misogynist?
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Ice Spice has become the newest rap princess. Don’t believe me? Even the New York Times says so. Her viral songs have established her as “valid” within the rap community– something that is difficult when competing with male rappers. Nicki Minaj, the queen of rap, is a trailblazer for female rappers; she set the scene and paved a path for her future predecessors. Although, unlike male rappers, their reach is usually exclusive to the female population. The reason for this is, you guessed it, double standards.
Imagine you're trying to show your male friend your favorite song. You spend so much time hyping up the song for them, and when it comes time to play it, they shoot it down. They hear a woman’s voice and don’t even give it a chance. Of course, there are exceptions to this. Who doesn’t love ‘I Hate U’ by SZA? While many other well-liked songs written by women exist, it's not common for a straight cis man to openly like it or appreciate it.
One of the most significant reasons why men may not like female artists is simply because they can’t relate to their topics. The problem is all artists sing about the same topics. They sing about love, happiness, betrayal, infidelity, and more. The only real difference is that women like to talk about their bodies. Since it’s in a very positive way, America has an obvious problem. God forbid Cardi B talks about her fat a** even though Future talks about putting thumbs in them. Make it make sense. More often than not, men talk about sex in their music, and it gets brushed off like it’s NBD. Or we all scream it at the top of our lungs in the club. Applying limitations to an artist because they’re of the opposite sex is just stupid. The only sex that makes these assumptions are males because I don't know any females that refuse to listen to a song just because it’s from a male artist.
Even when it comes to different genres of music, women aren’t allowed to feel in such a raw way. Our most recent example is SZA’s ‘SOS’-- her wildly anticipated album that's continuing to break records with no physical sales (beat that, Swifties). However, much criticism has come about because a lot of her own fan base ran to TikTok (because where else would you go to complain) to voice their opinions following the album’s release. Many people spoke about how the album has not shown any progression since her debut album ‘CTRL.’ Most of the criticism went towards a specific song, and it’s the one we can’t stop singing– ‘Kill Bill.’ The chorus reads, “I might kill my ex, I still love him though, rather be in jail than alone.” Obviously, not everyone still loves their ex, but many feel the need to go out of their way to say, “I love that song, but I’m never singing along to that part.” This is fine, but if we were to only sing parts of any song that we related to, many of us would be silent most of the time. Now, this is in no way hating on our fave, but Frank Ocean also tends to be a little toxic in his songs. We all know his songs. We’ve all cried to ‘Ivy’ and ‘Thinking about you,’ but when he wasn’t afraid to show emotion, we applauded him. So why can’t we do the same for SZA? Why should it matter if you relate to a lyric or not when this is literally how an artist demonstrates their emotions?
An obvious theme here is that, once again, there is a double standard. As always, women are held to the highest standard possible. It doesn’t matter which genre or which theme their music happens to fall into; women can never do it all right. Even in the music industry, this is a man’s world.
Strike Out,
Emily Fiorini-Casamayouret
Boca Raton
Emily Fiorini-Casamayouret is the Senior Editor for Strike Magazine Boca. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys listening to sad music, doing some retail therapy, and eating pasta. You can reach her at emily.fiorini710@gmail.com
