On dope|d monsters

When Nicki Minaj featured the controversal Jay-Z/Kanye West single Monster (2010) she completely emanicipated. How? Well, in that track, she simply ignores the male erotic fantasy of female sexual death, pictured as motionless, disposable sexual bodies that don’t speak, or pictured as a monstrous sexual threat, haunting the sinful men alive, a fantasy overtly at play in the lyrics and the imagery of the video. She rather creates a female counterpart, a second version of herself to engage with, instead of interacting with the male figures/MCs present in the piece.

By co-opting the trope of genuine female narcissism and with it a central atom at the core of misogyny, Nicki takes Her sexuality out of the hands and mouths of her male collegues, and re|creates it on her own terms. She is literally fucking herself. And the climax: Barbie Nicki, the hyperfeminine gets to come and wins (that’s why the dominatrix has to hide her head in that bag again).

So, what about Snow Tha Product in this context? well, I found a parallel and with it an example of how Minaj leads a pathway: The participation of rapper Snow Tha Product in the Tech N9ne et al. cooperation So Dope suggests a follow up of Nicki’s Monster Queendom. Now Snow occupies the throne (only this time it’s a real throne, lacking the subtlety of the wooden chair, Barbie was strapped on), and also waits for the last verse to sum things up. And things sum up: It’s a comment at the end of a row of male fantasies of access to female sexual bodies, explicitly made accessible by the use of drugs, delivered by Tech, Wreckonize and Twisted Insane (quote: „I don’t care whatever it takes to get her upon the matresses“).

Unlike the Monster’s, the So Dope boys show a certain aspiration for active participation and actual pleasure of their fantasized female sexual counterpart. But eventually they don’t miss to refocus the universe to their alleged center of sexual pleasure, the penis (the „weenie“,  „suckin‘ on my zucchini“…really? zucchini?  – …excuse me for the interruption,  I had to pause the writing as I b.o.l.’ed listening to their verses again … – lalahahaha… .) only to exhaust every possible way to symbolize and rhyme the urge „I wish someone would fuck me“.  And what is Snow doing in that messy, pressing, stressfull environment?  Like Nicki Minaj, she works her way through it all by commenting implicitly, focusing on her self, refusing to participate. She is „not getting down like that“ and therefore dismissing any advances, male or female, claiming a space „to figure things out“:

„So he feeling me, he want to bang I want to wait /

So he get at me he want to say shit that make /

Me think that he gone rape me If I don’t stay /

Cause I got that sickening style, that built me a crowd /

And men and women feelin‘ me now and it’s freaking me out /

Cause I’m just here to figure it out and what this is about /

But I’mma say it’s getting so wild that it’s tripping me out /

Cause I’m like here to kill the morale just kill all these sounds /

But lately when I spit to a crowd, these men just reach out /

And they tell me that they women is down, they gettin‘ aroused /

And they be tryin‘ to give me they child, with a genital smile /

They say they wanna (Fuck)“

In both cases the MCs leave the boys with empty hands and presumably wet pants: Nicki by rendering the objectifier, the spectator, a.k.a. the male gaze passive, forcing him to observe female sexuality that is not dumb nor mute but empowered and not even aiming at his pleasure. And Snow does it her way by saying „No.“ full stop. And what does No mean? In her case it means: „Yeah, I know, I make y’all want me, but that’s none of my business. And don’t threat me with rape and sh*t like that. It doesn’t impress me you dumb fuck.“