Bitches Ain't Shit

Add links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Bitches Ain't Shit"
Dat Nigga Daz, Kurupt, and Jewell
from the album The Chronic
ReleasedDecember 15, 1992
Genre
Length4:48
Label
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s)Dr. Dre

"Bitches Ain't Shit" is the final song of Dr. Dre's debut solo rap album, The Chronic,[1] which was released in December 1992 as Death Row Records' first album.[2] Though never a single, "Bitches Ain't Shit" was a huge underground hit.[3] The song's popularity was a major contribution to the success of The Chronic's sales.[4]

The song proved controversial, due to its prevalent themes of misogyny.[1]

Record production

Death Row

In 1986,

platinum sales, but disbanded in 1991 once primary record producer Dr. Dre left.[5] Freed from N.W.A's brash persona, Dre held creative control and preeminent industry cachet.[7][8]

Dre wanted to only produce, but his N.W.A. ghostwriter

major distributor Sony Music.[7][11][12] In April 1992, SOLAR issued their first rap song, "Deep Cover," which hit drew Sony's interest in Death Row.[13] But soon, outrage at "Cop Killer," heavy metal, by Ice-T's band Body Count, repelled Sony, as "Deep Cover" had similar theme.[13][14] Death Row gained Warner Music distribution via Interscope Records.[15] Knight excluded Griffey, and reportedly "Deep Cover" as album track was replaced by a newer song, "Bitches Ain't Shit."[13]

The Chronic

Assisted by

1994 Grammy nominee, while "Let Me Ride" won a Grammy.[22][24] "Bitches Ain't Shit," while similarly musical,[17] was "gruff"[17] and "sinister"[17][25] and yet comedic, a gonzo style.[26]

Album recording, across nine months in 1992,[27] began in Calabasas, California, in Dre's house[28]—which in late June sustained severe fire damage[29]—but mainly occurred in the City of Los Angeles section Hollywood at the studio Galaxy Sound,[8] owned by SOLAR Records' owner Dick Griffey.[30] Its audio console was advanced,[8] yet its neighborhood had was suffering urban decay,[31] and from late April to early May was beset by the L.A. riots.[32] Guest rapper and studio fixture Kurupt questioned "what kind of album The Chronic would have been without the riots."[32] Recording, he says, "was coming from the middle of it all."[32] In any case, "Bitches Ain't Shit" was among "the most hard-hitting songs on The Chronic."[4] For the album's 2001 reissue, the song was added to the track list as a proper song,[33] unlike in 1992, [1] where it was included as a hidden track on the album.[34]

Instruments

Synthesis

In the album's 1992 issue, after the final listed track, "The Roach," subtitled "The Chronic Outro,"

bass line, a riff that is the replayed start of Funkadelic's 1976 song "Adolescent Funk,"[43] spans the bar—while both backbeats also meet a chord perhaps on synthesized keys.[44] Simultaneously, an eerie, high-pitched whine or ring, a type of motif called "the funky worm" and created on a Moog synthesizer—a keyboard that can synthesize bass, too[8]—manifests while Snoop, restarting from its first line, raps the full hook.[36] It has four lines,[45] each a bar.[38] As he restarts the full hook, a sample emerges—to recur often in the song—from New York City rapper MC Shan's 1986 hit "The Bridge."[46][47]
Starting the 11th bar is Dre's verse.

Backstory

Bass guitarist Colin Wolfe was first hired by Dre at Ruthless Records for its R&B singer Michel'le.[48][49] Wolfe played the bassline also on Dre's debut solo single, "Deep Cover."[50] In 2014, Wolfe recalled, "One day, I was alone in the control room and Dre and Daz were up in the back room, trying to mess around on the keyboard for the 'Bitches Ain't Shit' bass line. So I stepped in the doorway and I could hear what they were trying to do. I said, 'Man, look out, y'all trying to do this.' I straight did it, recorded it, and then I was like, 'Yo, I got another part,' and did the high Moog part right after that."[48][49]

Via the funk group

major distribution,[52] recalls, "Dre's sonics just sounded better than anything else on my speakers."[53]

Vocals

Backstory

Dre's verse was written by the D.O.C.,[54] his usual ghostwriter,[1][48] a rapper whom Dre discovered in Dallas,[55] and who helped Dre form Death Row Records.[10][56] The four "Bitches Ain't Shit" guest vocalists, unsigned and poor, frequented the studio like a social club.[7] Snoop's circle brought his younger cousin Daz and Kurupt—soon a rap duo, Tha Dogg Pound—while R&B singer Jewell, already present, hereby pioneered women's singing on gangsta rap.[7] Yet most prominent is Snoop.[7] In early 1991,[57] Dre drew Snoop, who would turn 20 in October, from the Long Beach, California, trio 213: Snoop, his cousin[58] Nate Dogg, singer, and Warren G, producer and rapper,[7][59] stepbrother of Dre.[60]

In April 1992, unheard since N.W.A's May 1991 album and breakup, Dr. Dre reemerged by a debut solo single—title track of the film Deep Cover—while debuting a guest but in essence lead rapper, Snoop Doggy Dogg.[15][7] Despite intense anticipation for Snoop,[31] his album recorded awaited release Dre's,[19] which largely doubled as Snoop's debut album.[20] Early on, working with Snoop to write the "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" lyrics, the D.O.C. focused, beyond Dre's verses, on imparting to Snoop, already gifted, an extra lyricism, "the formula."[54] Snoop brought from Long Beach an intoxicated, lighthearted gangsterism,[31] and the elders coached him,[61] sealing the aura that this team would mint.[1][18]

Arrangement

The four "Bitches Ain't Shit" male rappers' vocals never skip a beat—effecting teamwork, like a tag team

Reverb effect echoes Dre's declaration across the full bar till the following bar's first beat.[63] On this beat, Jewell's vocals enter, effecting an R&B outro—initially wordless Wooo'ing for two bars—and then her first clear word, if mere ad lib, is on her own third bar's first beat as she sings, "Yeah."[63][64]

In vocal metre, or timing of stresses, which often rhyme, the rap verses mostly include stress on the bar's last beat, the four count, whereas Jewell's singing most stresses the first beat, the one count, the strongest bass and only cymbal attack.[64] By this, Jewell's first line, I don't give a fuck about a bitch, gathers from her third bar's last beat to peak on her fourth bar's first beat, when she sings "fuck" while Dre states "bitches."[63][64] First heard four bars earlier, Dre's deadpanned Bitches ain't shit—now echoing across Jewell's first full bar of lyrics—proves to be a refrain, issued across every fourth bar.[63] Jewell, unperturbed, sings of her own outlook and lifestyle until exposing one tenet. In four straight bars, she stresses at beat one the line's last word when belting, "And I don't give a fuck!"—the first time here, Dre's refrain adding bitches—and then, switching to sexual theme, she raps, switching stress to beat three, then to beat four.[65] Her final few words abruptly go a cappella and, echoing, fade out while Dre's refrain, still on time, returns once more and fades across two bars echoing.

Lyrical content

Dr. Dre's verse

Based on an early rap feud, Dre's verse never directly comments on women. Rather, complementing brief skits and the single "Fuck wit Dre Day," it is the album's final smear of Eazy-E.[1] Dre's former N.W.A groupmate, Eazy had founded the group and owned its label, Ruthless Records.[66] Never identifying Eazy by his stage name, Dre's lyrics identify him first by his legal name, Eric Wright, but otherwise call him "bitch" and "she."[67][68] These jabs attend Dre's glossing their music alliance and friendship amid Compton nightlife, followed by nationwide success with hit songs while they grew apart, and ultimately Wright's lawsuit against Dre,[68] allegedly resulting since, Dre raps, "bitch can't hang with the street." Tracing the turning point to Wright's, more specifically, "hanging with a white bitch"—unnamed in the song's lyrics—Dre thus alludes to veteran music manager Jerry Heller,[1][69] counting N.W.A among his clients.[66][70] Wright and Heller—manager of Dre's first group, too, the World Class Wreckin' Cru[71]—had cofounded Ruthless.[66][70]

(In real life, feeling underpaid as an N.W.A rapper and Ruthless Records' prime

independent giant Priority Records, an early distributor for Ruthless,[11] became The Chronic's official seller.[52] Eazy's musical retort[77]—"Real Muthaphuckkin G's"—became his biggest solo hit.[78]
)

Guest verses

Daz & Kurupt

Although both touting hedonism,

nymphomaniacs, who if shown men's affection would repay it by becoming the men's adversities as traitors and perhaps parasites.[36]

Snoop Dogg

Snoop skims a saga of finding himself as "a nigga on sprung," "up in them guts like every single day," and "in love like a motherfucker," walking into his debacle with her, "a bitch named Mandy May."[36] Early on, despite "the homies" advising him that she was "no good," he had "figured that niggas wouldn't trip with mine," his being, after all, "the maniac in black, Mr. Snoop Eastwood."[80] But, "on a hot, sunny day," his "nigga D.O.C." and "homie Dr. Dre," retrieving him from a jail stint, pose, "Snoop, we got news."[36]

Now wise to her "tricking" during his "county blues," Snoop, who "ain't been out a second," already must inflict some "chin checkin.' " So he pulls up to "my girl's house," he says, and will "kick in the door," but first goes, "Dre, pass the Glock."[36] At the doorstep, drawn to "look on the floor," Snoop finds, "It's my little cousin Daz, and he's fucking my ho"—a discovery that prompts Snoop to "uncock" the pistol.[36] Snoop admits, but affirms, "I'm heartbroke, but I'm still loc,"[81] and, at long last, swears Mandy May off: "Man, fuck a bitch."[36]

Public reception

The hidden jam

"Bitches Ain't Shit," in predating the cultural effects of Snoop's debut solo or November 1993 album,[20] met a society that, despite misogynistic rap lyrics by Too Short and by 2 Live Crew since the 1980s,[82] still expected popular songs, rather, to romanticize women.[83][84] Although too hardcore to be a Chronic single, it was among the album's "unheralded favorites,"[85] spurring talk of "the beat"—that is, the whole instrumental stream[37]—and of the "flow" by vocals,[46] whereby Snoop's, mellow in the era,[21] at times hinted singing.[7] Altogether, this hidden track, a huge underground hit,[3] as explains its guest rapper Kurupt, "was one of the things that helped sell The Chronic the most."[4]

Interviewed, asked her sentiments on "Bitches Ain't Shit," one young woman, incidentally black, echoed many women's view[86] by commenting, "I shouldn't like it, but I love the song 'cause it's the jam."[87] In October 1993, rap journalist Dream Hampton, remarking aside the controversy over it, called it, in the rap genre, "the best song on the best album of a pretty slow year."[88] Surveying the genre across 1993, music critic Alan Light called the album a "sonic masterpiece."[21] Since the November 1992 release of "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang," the album's singles, lyrically mild, pervading popular radio, shifted the rap genre's spotlight, for the first time, from the East Coast or New York to the West Coast.[2][23] The Chronic, rapidly, "recast hip hop in the mold of L.A. rap."[32]

Snoop was charged with involvement in a homicide in August 1993, but was bailed out and continued becoming one of America's biggest superstars.[21][23][19] "Bitches Ain't Shit" was notorious,[23] but began reshaping popular music's culture.[83] But meanwhile, even some rap fans still disputed that rap songs, being strongly rhythmic, often sampling other songs, and allegedly not melodic, are in fact music.[86] "Bitches Ain't Shit" critique usually exclaimed either "the beat" or the "flow"[37]—end of the analysis—or anxiety and allegation at its lyrics written in prose format.[46][89][86] Expert analysis of the musicality in rap songs' construction, including metric and rhythmic structures within Snoop's style was mostly beyond a "poorly conversant music public," reading about controversial lyrics.[86]

Public opposition

The runup

All in 1990, many rap records gained the

major label, Warner Music[95][96]—had Dre remove the track "Mr. Officer,"[48][60] whose hook wishes a policeman's death.[60][97] In October 1992, rapper Tupac Shakur, Interscope Records, and Time Warner had been sued for the April 11 fatal shooting of a Texas Highway Patrol officer.[98]

In June 1992, homicide on an undercover, corrupt detective already themed Dre's debut solo single "

Warner Brothers Records[104]—itself owned by Warner Music—freed all Body Count artists from contract.[101] Yet after The Chronic, despite a related, civilian homicide in June 1993,[105] opposition regrouped about misogyny.[106]

Harlem rallies

On Sunday, May 9, 1993, in his Mother's Day sermon, senior pastor

Calvin Butts—leading the Abyssinian Baptist Church, in New York City's Harlem section—vowing a symbolic act, solicited offending music samples.[107] Butts thus became the first black public figure to decry gangsta rap.[108] On Saturday, June 5, amid a few hundred supporters outside of Abyssinian—historically the city's largest and preeminent black church[109]—Reverend Butts, as vowed, mounted a steamroller.[110] But dozens of counterprotesters, decrying censorship, blocked its path.[110] One shouted, "You're steamrolling our dreams," and "who we are."[111] Another alleged, "He's attacking us black rappers," not "the white power structure."[111] Skipping ahead to the preplanned finale, then, Butts and followers, taking the boxes of CDs and tapes unexpectedly unscathed, boarded a bus to Midtown Manhattan.[110]

On the 550 Madison Avenue sidewalk, they laid, and some trampled, the boxes of gangsta rap.[110] There, at Sony Music headquarters,[112] "representative of an industry which," Butts felt, "laughs at black people all the way to the bank," he blared, over megaphone, "Recognize that this poison kills!"[113] But that summer in Harlem, young men casually wore T-shirts emblazoned Bitches ain't shit but hos and tricks.[88] Eventually, some two dozen women organized, and for three days on the thoroughfare 125th Street aimed megaphones demanding that street vendors withdraw the shirts.[88] Such apparently sold on Los Angeles sidewalks, too, maybe till 1995.[114] By then, Reverend Butts—who, romanticizing "the black community," had called gangsta rap "antithetical to what our culture represents"[108]—had receded from the battle. But in 1994, US Congress had invited Butts to speak about gangsta rap.[115]

National battle

In September 1993, C. Delores Tucker, chair and 1984 founder of the National Political Congress of Black Women, a lobbying group in Washington, DC, reentered the public eye to take up the battle against gangsta rap.[108][116] Swiftly becoming the battle's national leader, she expanded it against offensive rock lyrics, too, but especially targeted "Bitches Ain't Shit," The Chronic, and Death Row Records.[117][118] Of a background in civil rights activism and state political office, Tucker demanded congressional hearings.[117][119] Illinois representative Cardiss Collins, already chair of Congress' standing committee on commerce and consumer protection, convened them in 1994 on February 11.[117][120] There, Tucker called gangsta rap, especially Snoop's, "pornographic smut."[108][120] Congress convened again for the inquiry on May 5.[120] No government action ensued.[119] Tucker, a Democrat, soon teamed, however, with Republican conservative, onetime US education secretary, William Bennett.[118][121]

In May 1995, Tucker and Bennett aired a TV commercial, in four major cities, attacking Time Warner,

MCA,[96] soon renamed Universal.[126] Suge Knight, too, expressed relief,[95] and his Death Row label, unfazed, steamrolled onward.[119][127] In the late 1990s, as G-funk's era closed,[128] The Chronic grew into a popular classic.[129][19][130] And yet "Bitches Ain't Shit" would refuel recurring rebuke and debate over this slang term for women,[131][132] such depictions of them, and, more broadly, its album's pivotal role in popularizing the values of idealized street gangsters.[36][69][83][87][84]

Female listeners

Bay Area rapper Too Short had smeared types of women since 1985,[82] or 1983,[133] more vaguely.[36] "Bitches Ain't Shit" apparently "scorned all women,"[36] and "presented misogyny with an explanation."[85] Although the words bitch and ho can be playful or even loving,[134] the song scorns any trust or love for such.[36][135] While many were instantly offended,[46] women fond of the song often explained, "It's not about me."[88][136][89] Especially from women,[86] a near apology emerged: Oh, I just like the beat.[46] But in one view, this adopts a sexist stereotype: "men work the intellect, and women work the body."[87] At least some girls who ignored accosts by passerby boys were harassed by chants from the hook.[137]

In perhaps 1995, a New York rap mogul promoted a party where one Sarah Jones was, "like some video ho, singing along to 'bitches ain't shit but hos and tricks.' "[138] She noticed, "This is not me. You know, I disagree!' "[138] Wistful for classic hip hop, she wrote a poem, "Your Revolution," its motif Your revolution will not happen between these thighs.[139] Read as slam poetry, it helped her get an Off-Broadway show,[138] and in 2000 was televised on cable TV series Def Poetry Jam.[139] DJ Vadim then produced a version to music.[139] In 2001, the Federal Communications Commission, deeming it indecent, fined a Portland radio station for playing it, but reversed after Jones became the first artist ever to sue the FCC.[139]

In 1995,

Hoes With Attitudes,[140] recalled "boys' most twisted notions of womanhood—that 'bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks.' "[141] The Source's September 1993 issue has Hampton profiling Snoop but noting, "Women like him because of, not in spite of, his verse on 'Bitches Ain't Shit,' "[15] among her own "two favorite songs this summer."[88] New York rapper Jadakiss, a man, called women the "main ones" seeking "entertainment" by Snoop and "that 'Bitches Ain't Shit' shit."[142] In 2008 in Detroit, a female open mic's planning held a female focus group, which, scorning the proposed name, advised Bitches Ain't Shit.[143]

In 2015,[144] chairperson of theatre arts Amy Cook,[145] in research on casting, indulged her urge "to sing along about how 'bitches ain't shit.' "[146] Her own dissimilarity, being white and female, versus from the rappers,[147] thus her likelihood to get cast as "one of the various 'bitches,' "[146] expands her "leap" into an "outlaw" persona fit to counter any threat.[147] "I take on the position of the powerful, the angry, the sad, the person aggrieved by 'bitches.' "[146] Further, amid the female/male distinction's social primacy, when beholding such a "strategic miscasting, or counter casting," Cook explains, "the spectators must consider the nature of their expectations."[148] Cook finds, then, "a cultural power in the counter casting."[148]

Cultural integration

Snoop effect

In 1990, rappers

N.W.A.'s final or May 1991 album, in the song "One Less Bitch,"[82] mostly a Dr. Dre rap, Eazy-E says, in part, "a fool is one who believes that all women are ladies. A nigga's one who believes that all ladies are bitches. And all bitches are created equal." "To me, all bitches ain't shit!"[152] The Source chief editor Kim Osario recalls, "Once Snoop said, 'Bitches ain't shit,' it was a wrap for us."[153]

Ice-T's "Cop Killer" by his own hook's using a police code for homicide, 1-8-7.[154] As to his infamous hook, interviewer Kevin Powell "cornered" him about bitch meaning "women" or, allegedly, "black women."[154][155] Snoop reportedly answered, "It's just a word, you know, that you grew up with. It's some shit that's hard to shake."[154] Ice-T, later discussing Snoop, likened ghetto idiom's bitch to nigga, disputed the gravity that outsiders impute to ho, and posed, "All men are dogs. How many times have you heard women say that?"[156] "Bitches Ain't Shit" may be some fallout from that slur.[157]

Dre's carefully crafted "G"—a sociable street gangsta ever at leisure until violent on threats to his comforts and privileges[18]—spawned untold copycatting.[69][19] And the "Bitches Ain't Shit" track—"the final wisdom Dr. Dre left us on The Chronic"[158]—lays bare the basic values of the aura.[159] This was refined in Snoop's breakthrough, early rap brand, intoxicated on alcohol and marijuana, mellow and debonair, but, while loyal to the homies, guntoting and misogynistic.[21][20] Amid the rap genre's snowballing corporate consolidation underway,[160] Snoop's persona fed rap's massive commercialization, like his endorsements of St. Ides malt liquor and Tanqueray gin, in the 1990s.[20] Traditional R&B rapidly diminished.[161][162]

In 1999, rap magazine Ego Trip named "16 Memorable Misogynist Rap Music Moments."[82] They date to 1985: the pioneer, Too Short, still at #3, "The Bitch Sucks Dick."[82] Ahead of that, the #2 moment, is "Bitches Ain't Shit."[82] This trails only Snoop with, the next year, more male camaraderie and teamwork,[19][85] now featuring Warren G, Nate Dogg, and again Kurupt: the Doggystyle track "Ain't No Fun (If the Homies Can't Have None)."[82][163] Also never a single, yet another huge underground hit,[3] "Ain't No Fun" is often recalled with "Bitches Ain't Shit."[83][89][85][164] Snoop's second underground hit swiftly fulfilled what Snoop's first had presaged: the end of popular music's tenacious idealization of women.[83][84]

Female reply

Ahead of Beyoncé as solo icon, Vibe profiled the lead singer's R&B group Destiny's Child.[161] "Chockful of sophisticated, ball-busting, and often comical hits that berated brothers," its second or June 1999 album, The Writing's on the Wall, "earned the group reputations for being everything from gold-digging male bashers—a charge the girls heatedly deny—to new-millennium feminists out to challenge the bitches-ain't-shit posturing that plagued much of late-'90s R&B and hip hop," recalls the February 2001 issue.[161] By contrast, of March 2000, rapper Trina's debut album Da Baddest Bitch imparts "sexually explicit tales riddled with braggadocio and vulgarity."[165] Late to reply, Trina redoes the 1992 hook's fellatio as her "Niggas ain't shit" hook's cunnilingus directive.[166] Yet in 1996, rapper Lil' Kim, by a track name on her debut solo album Hard Core, hailed herself as the "Queen Bitch."[167] And though Canadian singer/rapper Peaches' 2003 effort to offend American men may appear stunted by patriarchy,[168] Lil' Kim's second or July 2000 album answers "Bitches Ain't Shit" artfully.[131][169]

Lil' Kim's 2000 song "Suck My Dick" is, in English professor Greg Thomas's view, an "anti-sexist faceoff" where Lil' Kim "talks back," delivering "a royal reply," to the 1992 "classic" and "flips its sexual script," such that ultimately, "Snoop and Dre get tricked themselves, lyrically."

segue to her own hook, original.[169] Her hook, a duo with a man—his only vocals—is after each of her three verses.[170] In verse one, Lil' Kim identifies with enterprising, ghetto, intoxicated women, boasts of combat prowess and sexual power, but poses, "Imagine if I was dude, and hitting cats from the back." Soon aping a man, she is still rapping, " 'Ey, yo, yo, come here so I can bust in your mouth"—how she closes verse one—when a man, starting the hook over her vocals, yells, " 'Ey, yo, come here, bitch."[170] Thus dragged into the hook, she snaps, "Nigga, fuck you," is asked, "Why you acting like a bitch?"—her reply, 'Cause y'all niggas ain't shit—and her hook's own fellatio directive, hypothetical, is what, "if I was a dude, I'd tell y'all."[170]

In verse two, Lil' Kim, supplier of many intoxicants, wants only money and cunnilingus, but "got this nigga now" who, tipsy, "asked me did I love him." Aping a demeaning vocal

singles back in his face."[169] Thomas reads, "The male 'nigga' is now"—derided by the stripper—"the 'trick' who gets done."[169] In verse three, a "dude named Jaleel," seeming a rich socialite, offered Lil' Kim "10 grand just to belly dance" and "come all over his pants," but "showed up with his homeboy named Julio," and "was a phony." Recalling her gun in his mouth—Fool, give me my money!—she relabels him "just a nigga frontin'." She chimes, "Niggas ain't shit, but they can still trick," and limits them to sucking till she climaxes and jumps up.[170]

Pop revised

In 2003, Lil' Kim reemerged with her

avarice and violence, more gangsta rap.[117][132] (The 1974 blaxploitation film Foxy Brown's beautiful, indomitable protagonist regained currency in 1995,[173] after her cameo in a Snoop music video of 1994.[174])[175] By allegedly roundabout[171] reinforcement of "Bitches Ain't Shit," both rappers were accused of "resurrecting Jezebel"[117]—purportedly endemic stereotypes of women, especially of black women—a model sustained since 2010 by Nicki Minaj[176] and 2015 by Cardi B.[177] In any case, Lil' Kim's persona stressed loyalty—especially to her one "nigga"—and in some ways grew women's senses of liberties.[132][178] Per a 2009 analysis, Lil' Kim's 2000 song "Sucky My Dick"[170]—retorting "Bitches Ain't Shit"—"moves beyond any rigid gender or sexual identity."[169]

Meanwhile, during 2002, certain singers, rather, including Usher and Alicia Keys, were leading a revitalization of R&B's soul tradition, after a decade of the rap genre, with its "Bitches Ain't Shit" model, invading the R&B genre.[162] But by 2005, in the rap genre itself, "Bitches Ain't Shit" had seemingly stood, as New York rapper Jadakiss would hyperbolize, "since the beginning of time."[142] And yet, in 2012, at The Chronic's 20th anniversary, Billboard magazine still found, at this track, "an elephant in the room here: the misogyny is ugly and thick, even for a rap record," as "women are treated like disposable sperm receptacles."[1] The album was, by then, both a rap classic and a popular classic, anyway,[130] roundly celebrated at its 25th anniversary.[179] "A misogynistic hip-hop masterpiece and relic of the past," wrote one music journalist during the commemoration.[23] Another journalist, meanwhile, called it "rap's world-building masterpiece."[31] In 2020, the Library of Congress entered it in the National Recording Registry.[129] By then, music artists of over 40 songs had borrowed from "Bitches Ain't Shit."[180] In the process, it had become, additionally, "a gorgeous piano ballad"[181]—a 2008 description of the 2005 cover version by rock artist Ben Folds[182]—which entered the main popular songs chart, the Billboard Hot 100.[183][184]

Ben Folds cover version

"Bitches Ain't Shit"
Tracy Lynn Curry
  • Colin Wolfe
  • Ben Folds
    • Ben Folds singles chronology
    "
    Bizarre Christmas Incident
    "
    (2002)     		"Bitches Ain't Shit"
    (2005)     		"Landed"
    (2005)

    Development

    In July 2003, Ben Folds

    Cat in the Hat vibe to sound serious with sad chords."[182][188]

    Folds sought in his rap collection a classic with vocals more varying from English poetry's classic metre, iambic pentameter.[182] He found "Bitches Ain't Shit," chose only Dr. Dre's and Snoop Dogg's lyrics"[45]—thus omitting the other three verses, whose boasting, gloating, and slurring impart most of the misogyny[26]—slowed the tempo, and, Folds says, "just added pretty chords and one of my best melodies."[182] With only Dre's and Snoop's sagas of endured betrayal, the hook—chiming "ain't shit but hos and tricks" best fit to "suck the dick"[45]—sounds, in Folds's view, "like a sad Johnny Cash song with a lot more vulgarity."[182]

    In some views, his piano version, alike a minstrel show, mocks blacks,[189] or, exposing "musical misogyny" as "absurd bullshit," takes the original, "flips it on its head, and makes Dr. Dre look like an idiotic buffoon."[190] Yet by consensus,[189] it parodies Ben Folds "whiteness."[191][192] "It's touchy," he says, "because someone could say, 'You think all rap is like this.' But no, it's specifically gangsta rap."[193] Calling his own genre "punk rock for sissies,"[194] he depicts a man "hurt"[182] or "wrecked."[193] About the rap song, he asserts, "Dr. Dre is no dummy: there's comedy in it, there's Quentin Tarantino, and then there's also serious stuff in it."[26]

    Composition

    The cover version, while importing lyrics, is a new composition. Ben Folds on piano, Lindsay Jamieson on

    musical bars—spans six more lines/bars, which meanwhile vary the bass riff.[43]

    In the rap Snoop verse, his journey to her house and arrival with handgun span two bars of bass riff absent, then his kicking the door in and shock by the sight span two bars of bass riff halted—with the

    three, four
    ," how the next beat unites the band in full attack and singing of the Snoop hook.

    Yet two choruses—the known Snoop hook[45] and a new Dre hook—play in the cover. More specifically, Dre's verse, still the song's first verse, loses its closing line—So recognize, then pass to Daz—while its prior three lines/bars are rearranged as four bars and phrased as a hook. Before this, the song opens with Folds on piano keys sparsely—only one chord every half bar—then resting while his bandmates speak, "Bitches ain't shit." Folds then sings, solo, the Snoop hook and then Dre's verse, which closes as the Dre chorus joined by singing bandmates. Jamieson then sings, solo, the Snoop verse's first eight bars, which set up the middle eight—multiple singers and synth at high pitch—and then Folds sings, solo, the last six bars till just short of their cap, added by Reynolds. His three, four count cues united singing of the Snoop chorus. Folds then sings Dre's verse again—yet atop brighter keys and livelier drums—this time with backing, accenting vocals. Dre's verse again closes as the Dre chorus. The very beat after it, its first line/bar becomes a refrain—Bitches can't hang with the streets—sung every other bar till song end. (In the rap song, the beat after Snoop's final hook recital starts Dre's refrain, every fourth bar till song end, Bitches ain't shit.)

    Release

    Chart Peak
    position
    US Billboard Hot 100[199] 71
    US
    Digital Song Sales (Billboard)[200]
    		 18

    Between the February 1 release of Songs for Silverman's lead single "Landed" and the album's April 26 release, Folds bypassed record labels to directly[185] issue "Bitches Ain't Shit," on March 8, by only Apple's iTunes.[187][201] Soon, his own website presold "Bitches Ain't Shit" on a forthcoming, expanded album version on vinyl, an LP record.[187] And it was the B side of the "Landed" single's vinyl edition, the 7'' or 45 RPM format.[202] By then, these appeared to be "unusual marketing ideas."[187] "Bitches Ain't Shit" is also on his October 2006 compilation album of covers, Supersunnyspeedgraphic, the LP.[203] Playing live, rather, "Ben Folds sitting at a piano evokes an old-fashioned crooner or lounge act."[146][204]

    Reception

    In 2007, across June into August,

    best pop album with a best pop song, "Waiting on the World to Change."[205] On that tour, up to 15 000 per arena,[194] an opener was Ben Folds,[205] who, father of twins, age 7, and nearing divorce, had just completed his own tour. Folds admits that he was causing problems on the tour, and that "the biggest problem" was otherwise, or elsewhere, "a very successful single." Mayer's fans reliably booed "Bitches Ain't Shit." Feigning bewilderment by the scorn, as if it had made him lose track,[206] Folds would replay the song till the crowd quieted or, as he urged, sang along.[194]

    Whereas many cover versions succeed unto themselves, the irony of this one—swapping genres, subcultures, and largely races[207]—partly relies on recognition of the original song, gangsta rap.[208][191] Folds recalls, however, that the John Mayer crowds, not angered by the word niggas—which the piano ballad renders ostentatious[207]—disdained the curse words and lewdness, especially the fellatio lyrics. Since the demographic was, like his own, whites of middle class, Folds deemed the scorn trivial and felt Fuck 'em. In 2019, stating uncertainty how to explain this, Folds called it "childish," and likened it to chronically pushing on a sore tooth, "something in the human psyche that just doubles down."[194]

    Some others felt that Folds was belittling a rap classic.[209] In 2019, Folds recalled that the "most compelling argument" he ever saw was between his friend Eef Barzelay of Clem Snide and Michael Doughty of Soul Coughing, two musicians, yet Folds perhaps did not clarify Doughty's complaint in this debate via internet. Questlove, visiting Folds, admired the artistic respect paid to the original.[193] A rock critic calls the rap song, which closes Dr. Dre's 1992 album, "a sumptuous slice of Olympic-level sexism that's almost as memorable as Ben Folds' emotional, piano-ballad version."[34] "When it came out," Folds says, "I remember bouncers—big black dudes with bald heads standing right in front of me while I'm playing—they'd hear the lyrics to Dr. Dre and they're like, 'Yeah!' They thought that was great."[194]

    Altogether, whatever offensiveness by the cover version was trivial until about 2010.

    major label Sony Music,[182] on the Hot 100 for two weeks, peaked on February 26 at #77.[183] The other, "featuring" bass guitarist Jared Reynolds and drummer Lindsay Jamieson as "Mr. Reynolds" and "Lin-Z,"[195] a rendition ironically sentimental,[208] "had spread by word of mouth and was now doubling my audiences," if regrettably raising share of "drunken college boys," Folds recalls.[212] "Bitches Ain't Shit," on the Hot 100 for the one week ending April 2, placed #71.[183][184]

    "The cackles and singing from the audiences," writes a researcher,[145] "suggest that they are hailed by the song, welcomed in, and engaged to be a part of it. And they like it."[191] In gist, "the collision" of character's role versus performer's mold bares "the network" of unseen implications.[213] Prefacing an April 2007 performance, Folds recalled "one nasty letter" and a few times of almost been beaten up, "once by a kind of uptight hippie woman who said it was demeaning to women."[214] He referred her to "the lyrics department"—Dr. Dre—while her daughter, age 13, "apparently loves the song."[214] At this Michigan State University show,[215] the first line, Bitches ain't shit, drew a male yell So true!, yet the reception, eager and joyous, was evidently led by female voices.[214] This remained so in April 2017 at a theater in Eastern Pennsylvania.[216] In 2008, book publisher Rough Guides anthologized the song in the Best Music You've Never Heard.[181]

    Rejection

    A 2005 album review recalls, about Ben Folds, "his tricksy piano songs were the first to teach us that alt. rock didn't need to arrive strapped to a Marshall amp."[217] Perhaps likewise, "Folds has always been defined by what he is not—not hip, not fresh, not underground"—till Songs for Silverman, "more mature," lent "solid core to his musings."[217][218] His solo debut or 2001 album's title track, "Rockin' the Suburbs,"[219] evoked nonidentity by satirizing him as a white male of middle class.[217] Yet after 2009,[194][210] that "identity" plus "scrutiny" of his old songs found they "aren't terribly reassuring to feminist listeners."[189] In a 1998 issue of Bitch, a writer sensed in Folds fans a type "who feels threatened by feminist empowerment."[220]

    By December 2008, artfully feigning

    Village Voice writer endorsed "wincing," called ironic covers "a problem right now, generally," and said he "perhaps mercifully" omitted the Dre cover, "way more problematic."[226]

    In 2012, the "violence and aggression" entry in Encyclopedia of Gender in Media linked rocker Ben Folds to rapper

    Slate.com editor L. V. Anderson, to reexplain Folds's popularity, cited "musical prowess," leftward "politics," and "identity" in "the trials and tribulations" of straight, white males of middle class.[189] No longer fond, she claimed his breakthrough hit, "Brick"[211]—whose 1997 album was reissued in 2005[202]—"feels exploitative and seems to dehumanize Folds' former girlfriend."[189][228]

    L. V. Anderson, adding "empathy" for herself lacking "perspective" in 1998, says that at 15, herself unblighted but "unhappy" and a straight white of middle class, she—who maybe "wasn't Folds' exact target audience"—wanted insight on "the opposite sex."[189] His songs, allegedly, "don't hold up to scrutiny."[189] They, "condescending" or "appropriating other people's struggles,"[229] commit "mansplaining" and "unsolicited advice," while 2005 track "Late," for a dead friend, is "troubling," "astonishingly presumptuous."[189] His "entirely unserious songs," like "Song for the Dumped," are "unsuccessful," as maybe Folds—or many a fan—"really believes that paying for dates entitles a man to a woman's sex and affection," she fears.[189]

    "Even more disquieting" to editor Anderson is "Rockin' the Suburbs"—Folds, in it, "mocking his own lack of urban credibility," "before dismissing concerns about racism by asserting that slavery 'wasn't my idea' "—which, she feels, "reads as the musical manifestation of an enormous chip on his shoulder. Similarly offensive is Folds' slow, acoustic cover of Dr. Dre's 'Bitches Ain't Shit,' which was part of an ugly mini-trend in alternative pop." "Like 'Rockin' the Suburbs,' this bit of quasi-minstrelsy ostensibly pokes fun at Folds' whiteness, but comes across as sneeringly chauvinistic."[189] From 2015 to 2020, others accused his Dr. Dre cover of "toxic masculinity,"[230] "cultural appropriation,"[231] and being "deeply problematic."[232]

    Folds says "the part I chose to excerpt skews sad,"[182] lacking "most of" the "misogynistic rant" of Dre's song—which, beyond "serious stuff," has "Quentin Tarantino" and "comedy in it"[26]—while his "white voice"[216] sings at slower tempo atop "sad chords"[182] and "heartfelt melody."[216] Amy Cook, chair of theatre arts,[145] in 2018 prefaced, "I analyze the performance of the same song by two different artists."[213] White, female, Cook enjoyed introjecting them.[214] Still, "the artsy white man at the piano," she "felt," had "masked a troubling experience."[146] "Folds is trespassing into Dre's gangsta character in order to point out that the song is both sad and funny" via, she wrote, "the all-access pass granted him by his whiteness."[146]

    Meanwhile, a major radio station held a benefit show where, backstage, a planner forbade "Bitches Ain't Shit" from Folds, who then said "you should've told us that before we flew in to do it."

    master of ceremony, "thought it was amazing," Folds recalls but reveals, "They all leave in droves." "So what was gained, you know?" "I don't play it anymore because things are so explosive in the United States." "I feel bad for anyone who isn't white, who would have to experience that." "It wasn't like that when it came out."[194] Yet even in 2017, it had been joyously greeted at his own concert.[216]

    Retirement

    On June 5, 2008,

    Wakarusa Festival, Ben Folds announced the last performance of "Bitches Ain't Shit" before its retirement. This began a string of appearances at festivals in which Folds claimed each performance would be his last. When interviewed on the matter, Folds claimed that it had genuinely been retired between each performance, but was now being included in his set lists once more.[234]

    Folds reportedly still had "Bitches Ain't Shit" in his live sets in 2015.[208] He played it as recently as April 2017.[216] Yet by 2019, Folds ceased to perform the song—which had "never got easier for me to sing," and "always felt so very wrong", although "that was also part of what made it interesting"[212]—and while it was "regularly requested,"[235] had chosen to ignore these requests.[212] Folds partly explains that one time, when playing the cover, "I saw a black couple pretty near me, and I'm like, 'How would I feel with the whole audience singing the N word?' Yes, 10 years ago it wasn't a big deal, but now it is a big deal, because they're being especially targeted."[194] Folds altogether reasons, about the word niggas in 2019, "just because I'm an old man, and I can remember when you could say this, doesn't mean I need to make five people in the audience feel threatened, or terrible, or somehow less than. Anytime you're doing that, you're doing the wrong thing."[194]

    His memoir,[236] released in July 2019,[237] imparts, "Music should work to ease social tensions, not throw gasoline on the fire, even inadvertently."[212] In August, he elaborated, "I had to stop playing it because—and I've had a lot of African Americans tell me this—they don't like to go out to big events with lots of white people."[194] In a November interview, he speculated about "someone that wasn't white, in my audience, hearing a bunch of white people singing the N word—and in this climate?"[235] Folds estimated, "they might feel like they need to run for the exit."[235] And in 2020 on June 24, amid America's sociopolitical upheaval via the George Floyd protests and the Black Lives Matter movement's nationally pressing allegations of ubiquitous racism violating blacks,[232] Ben Folds on Facebook announced plan to ask the record label, as soon as possible, "to take the next step and remove the recording from any streaming platforms where it has been placed."[238][232] The next day, he issued his a new song, "2020."[232][239][240]

    Notes

    1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Thomas Golianopoulous, "Dr. Dre, 'The Chronic' at 20: Classic track-by-track review", Billboard.com, Prometheus Global Media, LLC, 15 Dec 2012.
    2. ^ a b c d Wayne Marshall, "Hip-hop's irrepressible refashionability: Phases in the cultural production of black youth", in Orlando Patterson with Ethan Fosse, eds., The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth (Cambridge, MA & London, UK: Harvard University Press, 2015), p 184.
    3. ^ a b c Soren Baker, The History of Gangster Rap (New York: Abrams Image, 2018), indexing "Bitches Ain't Shit".
    4. ^ a b c James G. Spady, Charles G. Lee & H. Samy Alim, Street Conscious Rap (Philadelphia: Black History Museum, UMUM/LOH Pub., 1999), p 538.
    5. ^
      AllMusic.com
      , Netaktion LLC, visited 14 Jun 2020.
    6. ^ Todd Boyd, Am I Black Enough for You?: Popular Culture from the 'Hood and Beyond (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), p 75.
    7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Ben Westhoff, "The making of The Chronic", LAWeekly.com, LA Weekly, 19 Nov 2012.
    8. ^
      TheGuardian.com
      , Guardian News & Media Limited, 13 Sep 2016.
    9. ^ Will Lavin, "Dr. Dre says he didn't want to appear on his classic '2001' album at all", NME.com, BandLab Technologies, 17 Nov 2019.
    10. ^
      VladTV/DJVlad "Verified" channel @ YouTube, 22 Dec 2015. Interview clip opens on money gripes sending Dr. Dre from Ruthless Records. Death Row Records' formation enters near 2:33 mark. Snoop Dogg's development enters near 12:36
      mark.
    11. ^ a b c d e Chuck Philips, "The big mack", Spin, 1994 Aug;10(5):48–53,96, p 53.
    12. ^ Sheldon Pearce, Changes: An Oral History of Tupac Shakur (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021), pp 173–177.
    13. ^ a b c Ronin Ro, Have Gun, Will Travel: The Spectacular Rise and Violent Fall of Death Row Records (New York: Main Street Books/Doubleday, 1999), esp. p 83.
    14. ^ Sheldon Pearce, Changes: An Oral History of Tupac Shakur (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021), p 182.
    15. ^ a b c Snoop Dogg cover story by Dream Hampton, "G Down", The Source, 1993 Sep;(48):64–70, archived at dreamhampton.com.
    16. TheGuardian.com, Guardian News & Media Limited, 13 Sep 2016]. Yet it was Dre's guidance whereby it became, rather, "a fully formed universe" [Jeff Weiss, "25 years later, Dr. Dre's 'The Chronic' remains rap's world-building masterpiece"
      , ChicagoTribune.com, Chicago Tribune & The Washington Post, 15 Dec 2017].
    17. ^
      Chevy Impalas, showcasing them at street rallies, mingling at barbecues, and, after nightfall, drinking malt liquor at parties, at any moment puffing weed, altogether, at that time, "a glamorous brand of gangsta rap" [p 143
      ].
    18. ^ a b c d Bryan J. McCann, The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2017), p 70–, for several pages, McCann swiftly unveils and deciphers the cultural subtexts of the G-funk aesthetic.
    19. ^
      Atria Books, 2017): pp 204 & 211 on Death Row Records' atmosphere; p 201 on Dr. Dre's ghostwriter the D.O.C.'s own view of it; p 206 on Chronic singles gaining play on popular radio and on MTV
      and then superstardom by Dre and Snoop as trendsetters; pp 211–213 on Doggystyle's recording and content and on Snoop's murder case.
    20. ^ a b c d e Travis L. Gosa, "The fifth element: Knowledge", in Justin A. Williams, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p 56.
    21. ^ a b c d e Alan Light, "The year in hip hop: Hard reign", Vibe, 1993 Dec & 1994 Jan;1(4):74–75, p 75.
    22. ^
      ABC-CLIO, 2019), p 130
      .
    23. ^ a b c d e Stereo Williams, "When Snoop Dogg became the most wanted man in America", TheDailyBeast.com, The Daily Beast Company LLC, 18 Nov 2018.
    24. Recording Academy, "Artist: Dr. Dre"
      , Grammy.com, 13 Apr 2020.
    25. ^ a b Havelock Nelson, "Album reviews: The Chronic", RollingStone.com, Rolling Stone, 18 Mar 1993.
    26. ^
      Folds discusses his own 2005 cover version of "Bitches Ain't Shit" and clarifies that he took most of the original song's "misogynistic rant" out from his own version. Yet Folds also says, "Dr. Dre is no dummy: there's comedy in it, there's Quentin Tarantino, and then there's also serious stuff in it." In turn, about the Hollywood filmmaker, Bret Easton Ellis, "The gonzo vision of Quentin Tarantino", NYTimes.com, The New York Times, 12 Oct 2015, cannot "imagine an earnest 20-something millennial dreaming up a film as perverse and lurid" as his 1994 film Pulp Fiction or 1992 film Reservoir Dogs, much less "his racially explosive comedy-western Django Unchained." Ellis deems 2015 "obsessed with 'triggering' and 'microaggressions' and the policing of language", whereas Tarantino's films are "relentlessly un-PC
      ."
    27. ^ a b "Dr. Dre speaks at Snoop Dogg's Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony 11.19.18", The Hollywood Fix "Verified" channel @ YouTube, 19 Nov 2018.
    28. Atria Books, 2017), pp 123 & 132
      ].
    29. ^ "The house was described by fire officials and neighbors as heavily damaged, particularly its shingled roof and the attic, which was completely destroyed. Fire officials estimated damage at $125,000. 'It looks like a dinosaur ate a huge chunk out of it,' said neighbor Amanda —, 16" [Henry Chu & Aaron Curtiss, "Fire damages rap singer's house, injures 2 firefighters", Los Angeles Times, 29 Jun 1992].
    30. Capitol Records Tower. The building included office space and his Galaxy Sound Studio where most of his acts had recorded their hits" ["This is a Tribute to.... SOLAR (Sound Of Los Angeles Records)"
      , Disco-Disco.com, visited 21 Aug 2021].
    31. ^ a b c d e Jeff Weiss, "25 years later, Dr. Dre's 'The Chronic' remains rap's world-building masterpiece", ChicagoTribune.com, Chicago Tribune & The Washington Post, 15 Dec 2017.
    32. ^ a b c d e Felicia Angeja Viator, To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020), p 234 skims the March 3, 1991, beating of Los Angeles resident Rodney King by city police officers; pp 242–242 skim the nation's reaction to the April 29–May 4, 1992, rioting that was triggered by the police officers' acquittal at criminal trial; pp 252–254 skim the riots influence on The Chronic and the album's setting for the rap genre a new national standard; Kurupt is quoted, about the riots' influence upon the album, on p 253.
    33. ^ EAM, "Dr. Dre: 'Bitches Ain't Shit' from The Chronic", HiddenSongs.com, ERRRRK! Media, visited 25 Aug 2021. Meanwhile, the song is listed #16 and the album is copyrighted 2001 at "The Chronic: Dr. Dre", Music.Apple.com, Apple Inc., visited 25 Aug 2021.
    34. ^ a b Mark Beaumont, "Remember the '90s fad for 'hidden tracks' on CDs? Here are 10 of the best from Nirvana, Blur, Dre and more (and where to find them)", § "6: Dr Dre—'Bitches Ain't Shit' ", NME.com, BandLab Technologies, 5 Apr 2019.
    35. ^ The Chronic tends to omit silence between tracks.
    36. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Mitchell S. Jackson, Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family (New York: Scribner, 2019), p 125.
    37. ^ a b c Mitchell Ohriner, Flow: The Rhythmic Voice in Rap Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), p 16, note #17, discussing no particular song, separates two meanings of the word beat, one in music theory versus one to rap listeners: "Here, I use the term 'instrumental stream' in place of what is usually called 'the beat.' I wish to distinguish between 'beat' in the sense of an abstract time point within the metre of the music from 'beat' in the sense of the instrumental sounds of a rap verse, minus the rapping." (Both meanings thus differ, also, from a third meaning of beat, solely the drum pattern.)
    38. ^
      St Martin's Press, 2011), p 195
      .
    39. ^ "Direct sample of multiple elements": Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg feat. Daz Dillinger, Kurupt & Jewell, "Bitches Ain't Shit", The Chronic (Death Row, 1992) / Trouble Funk, "Let's Get Small" (D.E.T.T., 1982), WhoSampled.com, visited 11 Mar 2020. "Let's Get Small", itself, is discussed by John Leland, "Singles", Spin, 1985 Sep;1(5):33, and by Kip Lornell & Charles C. Stephenson, Jr., The Beat!: Go-Go Music from Washington, D.C., revised edn. (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2009).
    40. 1/4 beat
      , and so on, is how Dr. Dre's bass drum syncopates offbeat and how the bass riff grooves.
    41. hi-hat cymbals
      , vertically stacked, played by foot action that lifts and drops the stack. In rap music, a cymbal is generally presumed hihat.
    42. PLoS One, 2018;13(6):e0199604, sec "Materials and methods: Pattern category"]. The downbeats tend to get kick/bass drum attack, yet the backbeats usually get attack by an accenting instrument, standardly snare drum [Ibid., Wyatt et al., Ear Training, 2005, p 23]. Whereas the kick's thump is bassy, the snare's tap is sharper [Trevor de Clercq, "Rhythmic influence in the rock revelation", in Russell Hartenberger & Ryan McClelland, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Rhythm (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp 190–191]. "As a result, beats 2 and 4 are arguably more accented in rock on a regular basis than beats 1 and 3", which, despite their "structural importance", premise "the familiar joke among popular musicians that 'friends don't let friends clap on beats 1 and 3.' " [Ibid.] Yet besides a metric downbeat's contrast from a backbeat, an instead rhythmic downbeat contrasts from an upbeat. For instead an orchestra, led by the conductor's wand movement, beat #4 is the upbeat, weak, setting up the forthcoming downbeat, beat #1, strongest [John W. Wright, Matt Fisher & Lisette Cheresson, eds., The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind, 3rd edn. (New York: St Martin's Press, 2011), p 195]. Yet in popular music, upbeat often implies not metric structure but instead rhythmic structure, which varies both stress and timing, whereby both metric downbeats, #1 and #3, as well as both backbeats, #2 and #4, are in fact downbeats, simply beats or, more specifically, whole beats, whereas an upbeat is any midpoint between beats, thus a 1/2 beat, positioned where the word and occurs when counting a whole bar, "One and two and three and four and." [Ibid.] Meanwhile, given genre conventions, a music theorist explains, "It is not quite right to say that syncopation is the stress of a normally unstressed beat—often stress will be expected on such beats—but rather, it is stress that is not placed on the metrical downbeat." "For instance, funk has stress on '4'—the 'backbeat'—and tango on '2 and.' " [Andy Hamilton, Aesthetics and Music (London & New York: Continuum, 2007), p 138
      ].
    43. ^
      Atria Books, 2014), p 375, confirm that the "Bitches Ain't Shit" bass riff is a classic funk riff, as indicated by "Interpolation (replayed sample) of bass": Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg feat. Daz Dillinger, Kurupt & Jewell, "Bitches Ain't Shit", The Chronic (Death Row, 1992) / Funkadelic, "Adolescent Funk", Hardcore Jollies
      (Warner Bros., 1976), WhoSampled.com, visited 11 Mar 2020.
    44. Complex.com, 21 Jun 2015] (Being a "beats man" and thus "smugly commonplace or conventional"—"philistine", Dictionary.com, visited 1 Jan 2022—may allude to purported purists who, although hip hop began as dance music, tout "lyricism" instead.) Unclear is why this discussion identifies the "ping" at only each bar's end—not also each bar's approximate midpoint—and how "the ping" also "changes pitch with the bass line". It is the cymbal strike, only beat #1, that both ends the bar and starts the next bar. Yet indeed, beat #4 is the bar's final beat, whereupon the bass riff soon initiates to attain primary stress on beat #1
      , then articulates till beat #2—having the first "ping"—and then resonates till about beat #4, having the "ping" that may seem to trigger the bass riff to repeat.
    45. ^
      40 oz
      . bottle of malt liquor.
    46. ^ a b c d e Saul Williams, The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop (New York: Pocket Books, 2006), pp xv–xvi.
    47. ^
      Ced Gee—otherwise a member, along with Kool Keith, of the historic Ultramagnetic MCs—who anchors the story, starting with hip hop's Bronx origin
      near his childhood apartment building.
    48. ^ a b c d Tony Best, interviewer, "Musician Colin Wolfe built beats with Dr. Dre for The Chronic, NWA's Niggaz4Life, and Jimmy Z's Muzical Madness", WaxPoetics.com, Wax Poetics, 3 Jun 2014.
    49. ^
      UNC-TV, 1 May 2017, streamed live, now archived, on Moogfest @ YouTube. Wolfe demonstrates and discusses his use of Moog keyboard and bass guitar to help write The Chronic instrumentals. Comments on meeting and working with Dr. Dre start near 33:10 mark
      . Note that this source perhaps does not discuss "Bitches Ain't Shit" specifically.
    50. Main Street Books/Doubleday, 1999), pp 59 & 83
      .
    51. AllMusic.com
      , Netaktion LLC, 2021.
    52. ^ a b Geoff Mayfield, "Is you or is you ain't an indie? The charts explained", Billboard, 1994 Mar 26;106(13):86–100, p 86.
    53. ^
      Allen Hughes, director, The Defiant Ones, Part 3 (New York: HBO
      , 2017).
    54. ^
      VladTV/DJVlad "Verified" channel @ YouTube, 10 Jan 2016. Near 02:33 mark, the D.O.C. affirms he wrote Dre's sole "Bitches Ain't Shit" verse. Near 00:24 mark, he comments, rather, on imparting to Snoop "the formula". Groping a moment for an apt word, he apparently invokes the theme of his own single "The Formula", released in 1989 by Ruthless Records before a car accident, injuring his vocal cords, ended his own rap career. On some principles he imparted, see Soren Baker, "Doing numbers with the D.O.C.", History of Gangster Rap (New York: Abrams Image, 2018), p 119
      .
    55. Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 2004), pp 248–249. Roni Sarig, Third Coast: Outkast, Timbaland, and How Hip Hop Became a Southern Thing (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 2007), pp 38
      –40.
    56. ^
      Mercury News
      (San Jose, CA), 28–29 Feb 2020.
    57. N.W.A.'s final album, released in May 1991. Dream Hampton, "G Down", The Source, 1993 Sep;(48):64–70, archived at dreamhampton.com, indicates that Dre and Suge Knight took to Interscope Records "an early version of 'G Thang
      ' a few short months after release of Niggaz4Life", the N.W.A. album.
    58. NickiSwift.com
      , Static Media, 23 Mar 2020.
    59. Hot 97 "Verified" channel @ YouTube, 10 Aug 2015. On the V.I.P. record store, see Andrea Domanick, "World famous V.I.P. Records to close", LAWeekly.com, LA Weekly
      , 5 Jan 2012.
    60. ^ a b c Al Shipley, "Dr. Dre's The Chronic: 10 things you didn't know", Rolling Stone, 15 Dec 2017.
    61. ^ Interviewed in 1998, Snoop explained his January departure from the label. "When I first got with Death Row, it was for Dre", says Snoop. "I wanted to be down with him, help him, and that's why I wrote so many tight records with him. That's why I was there. His departure took away my heart and soul. But I stayed down, did what I had to do. And then Tupac got killed, and it was like, Damn, and then Suge went to jail, and it was like, I can't handle this by myself, 'cause I don't have control. When the company's structure broke up, I was just an artist, a player with no coach. So I had to find a team that knew how to coach me" [Cheo Hodari Coker, "The treacherous two", Vibe, 1998 Sep;6(7):151,159].
    62. ^ William L. Van Deburg, American historian, likens the song to "a testosterone-fueled gang bang" [Hoodlums: Black Villains and Social Bandits in American Life, University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp 209 & 269].
    63. ^ a b c d e Sound recording, "Bitches Ain't Shit", Dr. Dre "Official Artist Channel" @ YouTube, 19 Apr 2020, timestamp 03:25, where Snoop raps the final hook recital's last bar, then Dre's Bitches ain't shit refrain starts, then Jewell's ad lib occurs, and then Jewell's verse starts.
    64. ^
      musical bars, also termed measures. Jewell's first lyrical line, I don't give a fuck about a bitch, spans roughly six beats or roughly 1 & 1/2 bars arranged within three consecutive bars. First, in this abstraction of these, the word and, being the syllable immediately before as well as after a beat #, strikes a 1/2 beat, which, midway between beats, may be called an "upbeat" between two "downbeats": | . . . and Four (#4) and | ONE (#1) and Two (#2) and Three (#3) and Four (#4) and | ONE (#1) . . . |. Improvised here, the symbol ^ will denote silence at the 1/2 beat, so instead of counting, "One and two and three", we count, "One. Two. Three". A long dash, —, symbolizes silence for a full beat, so instead of counting, "One and two and three", we count, "One. —and three". Inward arrows, > <, are only where Jewell rapidly vocalizes "give a" as two 1/4 beats in a 1/2 beat's span. Boldface denotes any stressed beat, some of which a performer freely chooses, personalizing the rhythm. BOLD UPPERCASE denotes a stressed beat given primary stress, generally dictated by the metre, whereby dramatic or unceasing departure may derange the performance. Stress variation concerns metre and rhythm, whereas pitch variation, atop these, helps create melody, but pitch, not covered here, differs from stress, which is depicted here for Jewell's first two lyrical lines, prefaced by her ad lib's closure: | . . . -oh- (#4) -hh | YEAH (#1) — (#2) — (#3) I don't (#4) >give a< | FUCK (#1) — (#2) a-bout (#3) ^ a (#4) bi- | -ITCH (#1) — (#2) but I'll (#3) let her (#4) kno- | -OW (#1) ^ that (#2) she can't (#3) ^ fade (#4) ^ | THIS (#1) . . . |. Jewell's first three actual words on her #1 counts—the beats that receive primary stress both vocal and instrumental—are thus seen to be yeah, then fuck, then bitch [Sound recording, "Bitches Ain't Shit", Dr. Dre "Official Artist Channel" @ YouTube, 19 Apr 2020, timestamp 03:26
      , where Snoop raps his last bar, Dre echoes one bar, and then Jewell enters].
    65. ^ Sound recording, "Bitches Ain't Shit", Dr. Dre "Official Artist Channel" @ YouTube, 19 Apr 2020, timestamp 04:05, where Jewell's verse sets up its I don't give a fuck refrain, repeated four times, and then switches from singing to rapping.
    66. ^
      AllMusic.com
      , Netaktion LLC, visited 14 Jun 2020.
    67. ^ "In fact, the first 'bitch' referred to in the song is Eazy-E. This does not decrease the misogyny so much as increase the 'heat' thrown at Eazy-E, who is cast as nothing but a ho and a trick" [Amy Cook, Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), p 166, note #61].
    68. ^
      Atria Books, 2017), p 204
      .
    69. ^ a b c Jim Irvin & Colin McLear, eds., The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion, 4th edn. (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2007), p 587.
    70. ^ a b Daniel Kreps, "Jerry Heller, former N.W.A manager, dead at 75", RollingStone.com, Rolling Stone, 3 Sep 2016.
    71. ^ Sha Be Allah, "Founder of the World Class Wreckin' Cru: Dr. Dre and Eazy were supposed to co-own Ruthless Records", TheSource.com, The Source, 27 Aug 2015.
    72. Real Compton City G's", featuring Gangsta Dresta and B.G. Knocc Out, The Arsenio Hall Show, season 6, episode 64
      , 10 Dec 1993.
    73. VladTV
      /DJVlad "Verified" channel @ YouTube, 13 Jul 2019].
    74. ^ Soren Baker, The History of Gangster Rap (New York: Abams Image, 2018), indexing "October 1992".
    75. ^ Interscope agreed to pay Ruthless a "huge" cash payout and publishing royalties on Dre's Death Row earnings: 10% on production and 15% on solo performance [Gerrick Kennedy, Parental Discretion Is Advised (Atria, 2017), p 156]. By some estimates, Eazy's royalty payments were up to some $1.5 million before his 1995 death: 25 to 50 cents per copy on some three million sold [Al Shipley, "Dr. Dre's The Chronic: 10 things you didn't know", Rolling Stone, online, 15 Dec 2017].
    76. ^ Soren Baker, The History of Gangster Rap (New York: Abams Image, 2018).
    77. ^ Sacha Jenkins, Elliott Wilson, Gabe Alvarez, Jeff Mao & Brent Rollins, eds., Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2014), p 237.
    78. ^ Joel Whitburn, Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955–2002, 10th edn. (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research Inc., 2003), p 217.
    79. ^ Hedonism means "devotion to pleasure as a way of life" [Dictionary.com, visited 26 Mar 2020].
    80. ^ Story on Snoop Dogg by Charles Aaron, "Sir real", Spin, 1993 Oct;9(7):50–56, p 51.
    81. ^
      Jones and Bartlett, 2010), p 197
      ].
    82. ^
      Kool G Rap & DJ Polo
      , "Talk Like Sex" (Cold Chillin', 1990).
    83. ^ a b c d e Nathan Rabin, The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture (New York: Scribner, 2009), p 91.
    84. ^ a b c William L. Van Deburg, Hoodlums: Black Villains and Social Bandits in American Life (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp 209 & 269.
    85. ^ a b c d Marcus Reeves, Somebody Scream!: Rap Music's Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power (New York: Faber and Faber, Inc., 2008), p 148.
    86. ^ a b c d e Kyra D. Gaunt, "African American women between hopscotch & hip hop: 'Must be the music (that's turnin' me on)' ", in Angharad N. Valdivia, ed., Feminism, Multiculturalism, and the Media: Global Diversities (Thousand Oaks, CA, London & New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 1995), pp 285–287, esp. p 286.
    87. ^ a b c Kyra D. Gaunt, The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop (New York & London: New York University Press, 2006), pp 120–121.
    88. ^ a b c d e Dream Hampton, "Dreaming America—hip hop culture", Spin, 1993 Oct;9(7):111.
    89. ^ a b c Amanda Seales, Small Doses: Potent Truths for Everyday Use (New York: Abrams Image, 2019), p 20.
    90. ^ In 1985, Tipper Gore, wife of Democratic senator and later US Vice President Al Gore, bought Prince's album Purple Rain, which spurred her to cofound the Parents Music Resource Center, or the PMRC, which instigated laws requiring some albums to bear parental advisories. In 1990, the Recording Industry Association of America, the RIAA, standardized the Parental Advisory sticker, soon most common on rap albums, sometimes for reasons unclear. For discussion, see Jessica Elliott, "Hip hop and censorship", in Mickey Hess, ed., Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, Volume 2 (Westport, CT & London: Greenwood Press, 2007), pp 398–399.
    91. ^ Richard Harrington, "Critics hit Newsweek's bum 'rap' ", The Washington Post, 28 Mar 1990. Harrington explains that the Newsweek article, more like a mere opinion piece, so broadly stereotyped rap that it triggered a unified rebuttal by some three dozen music critics, including Harrington. (For a short take, see Times Wire Services, "Critics rap Newsweek on rap", Los Angeles Times, 29 Mar 1990.)
    92. ^ a b Jessica Elliott, "Hip hop and censorship", in Mickey Hess, ed., Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, Volume 2 (Westport, CT & London: Greenwood Press, 2007), pp 398–399.
    93. Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 2004), p 249
      .
    94. Damon Thomas, soon prompting Eazy-E to comment, "He had the Dee Barnes thing, breaking that kid's jaw, driving his car off the cliff, getting shot, New Orleans. None of that ever happened when he was down with us" [Gerrick Kennedy, Parental Discretion Is Advised (New York: Atria, 2017), p 201
      ].
    95. ^ a b c Julia Chapman, "The race card", Spin, 1996 Jan;11(10):65.
    96. ^ a b Nelson George, Hip Hop America (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), p 140.
    97. ^ Gerrick D. Kennedy, Parental Discretion Is Advised: The Rise of N.W.A and the Dawn of Gangsta Rap (New York: Atria Books, 2017), p 204, quotes a line from the song's hook as going, "Mister Officer, Mister Officer, I wanna see you lying in a coffin, sir".
    98. ^ During a routine traffic stop on April 11, 1992, the trooper was shot by Ronald Ray Howard, age 19, reportedly listening to "Soulja's Story", a track on 2Pac's November 1991 album 2Pacalyse Now. With Howard's attorneys expected to claim this as an influence and mitigating factor at his sentencing, the widow, Linda Sue Davidson, filed in October 1992 a product-liability lawsuit alleging gross negligence via music that incites "imminent lawless action". Interviewed, she said, "Ron Howard may have pulled the trigger, but I think Tupac, Interscope, and Time Warner share in the guilt for Bill's death and they ought to take responsibility for their actions" [Chuck Philips, "Testing the Limits", L.A. Times, 13 Oct 1992].
    99. ^ In this duet, whereas Snoop raps the role of an undercover detective's killer, Dre actually raps the role of that undercover detective, in line with the theme of the 1991 film Deep Cover, whose director wanted such for the soundtrack [Soren Baker, The History of Gangster Rap, NY: Abams Image, 2018, "Deep Cover" indexing].
    100. ^ Soren Baker, The History of Gangster Rap (New York: Abrams Image, 2018).
    101. ^ a b c In June 1992, a presidential election year, US vice president Dan Quayle called the "Cop Killer" song "obscene", whereupon US president George H. W. Bush, the elder President Bush, called such lyrics "sick", and the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, or CLEAT, urged boycott of Time Warner. Time Warner's CEO, Gerald M. Levin, publicly defended the song's release. But in July, at a shareholders meeting, eminent Hollywood actor Charlton Heston read "Cop Killer" lyrics and condemned company officials. By August, the Body Count album was certified gold—over 500 000 copies shipped—but over 1 000 stores pulled the album from sale. For the timeline and context, see Soren Baker, The History of Gangster Rap (New York: Abams Image, 2018). For more "Cop Killer" and public opposition to it, see Barry Shank, "From Rice to Ice: The face of race in rock and pop", in Simon Frith, Will Straw & John Street, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp 268–269.
    102. ^ Dallas Morning Sentinel staff, "Ice-T, police clash over 'Cop Killer' song", Orlando Sentinel (Florida), 19 Jun 1992.
    103. ^ In 1987, Ice T had become the first rapper signed to Sire [B. Westhoff, Original Gangstas, New York & London: Hachette, 2017]. Following the "Cop Killer" controversy, indie giant Priority Records, issuing much of gangsta rap, released the new Ice T rap album, Home Invasion, later in 1993 [M. Forman, The 'Hood Comes First, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002, p 296, archived elsewhere].
    104. ^
      Time Warner company in 1993—controls this distribution. (For general discussion, see Christoper Knab & Bart Day, "How and why major labels and independent labels work together"
      , MusicBizAcademy.com, Midnight Rain Productions, Mar 2004.)
    105. ^ On Saturday, June 12, 1993, in Port St. Lucie, Florida, the brutalized and mutilated body of Mollie Mae Frazier, age 81, was found in a field near her home. Victor Brancaccio, 16, once an altar boy, but otherwise troubled, would recall listening on his walkman to The Chronic track "Stranded on Death Row" when the elderly woman, a passerby, unwittingly provoking his attack on her, had criticized him for rapping the coarse lyrics aloud. For details, see Karen Testa, Associated Press, "Man convicted of widow's slaying gets new trial, fashionable defense", Los Angeles Times, 11 Oct 1998, and Erin MacPherson, "Family members plea to judge for grandmother's killer to stay behind bars", CBS 12 News website, 17 Jan 2018. On the American climate of controversies over song lyrics in the early 1990s, see Murray Forman, The 'Hood Comes First (Wesleyan U P, 2002), p 295.
    106. ^ Earlier, in 1990, the 2 Live Crew controversy was mainly over lyrical obscenity. And although other rap acts with lyrical misogyny predating 1993, like N.W.A and the Geto Boys, became targets for it in 1993—year of The Chronic and Snoop Dogg—it was here that misogynous lyrics overtook murderous lyrics in the cries against gangsta rap. For a broad view, see Carlos D. Morrison & Celnisha L. Dangerfield, "Tupac Shakur", p 398, and Jessica Elliott, "Hip hop and censorship", p 399, in Mickey Hess, ed., Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, Volume 2 (Westport, CT & London: Greenwood Press, 2007).
    107. ^ Michel Marriott, "Harlem pastor to campaign against rap lyrics", The New York Times, 8 May 1993, § 1, p 24.
    108. ^
      Calvin Butts quote p 80, C. Delores Tucker quote p 81–82, author elaborating on pp 83–84
      .
    109. ^ Clarence Taylor, Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City (New York: New York University Press, 2019), p 11.
    110. ^ a b c d Clifford J. Levy, "Harlem protest of rap lyrics draws debate and steamroller", The New York Times, 6 Jun 1993, § 1, p 39.
    111. ^ a b A counterprotester, Gary Jenkins, 31, a lawyer, shouted, "You're steamrolling our dreams, you're steamrolling our aspirations, you're steamrolling who we are. But we're here to say that we will not stand for it. We know what is right. We know what is wrong. Music is not the killer, it is not the ill. The ill is the streets". Willie Stiggers, 15, an aspiring rapper, before climbing onto the steamroller, shouted, "No justice, no peace!" Noel Rosa, also 15, of the rap nickname Kiddynamite, verbally squared off with Janice Robinson, 38, a Butts supporter then working for a record company. Janice told him, "You did not listen, my brother! The Reverend said he was not attacking rap or rappers. He was attacking negative rap!" Noel persisted, "I understand that! But he should be attacking the white power structure, who own the record companies, who own the cable stations." Janice affirmed, "He did. He said it was mainly their fault because they were the ones with the money." Noel retorted, "But what is he doing now? Actions speak louder than words! He's attacking us black rappers now!" Janice posed, "Do you consider yourself a negative rapper?" Noel demanded, "What is negative? You tell me what negative is!" According to Janice, "Negative is when my 14-year-old daughter comes home with a tape that says, 'Gangster bitch!' That's negative!" [CL Levy, "Harlem protest", NYT, 6 Jun 1993, § 1, p 39].
    112. ^ Press release, "Sony Corporation of America announces sale of 550 Madison Avenue building", Sony.com, Sony Corporation of America, 18 Jan 2013.
    113. Slate.com
      , The Slate Group, 20 Nov 2019.
    114. ^ Carter Harris, "Eazy living", Vibe, 1995 Jun–Jul;3(5):59–62, collected in Raquel Cepeda, ed., And It Don't Stop: The Best American Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years (New York: Faber and Faber, Inc., 2004).
    115. ^ Bill Holland w/ J R Reynolds, "House panel to examine rap", Billboard, 1994 Feb 19;106(8):1&103.
    116. Business Week
      , 1995 Jun 18;(3249):41.
    117. ^
      Southern California Review of Law and Women's Studies, 2000 Fall;10(1):167–207, part III: "Jezebel of contemporary times", § A: "Rap music: Resurrecting Jezebel", pp 186–187
      .
    118. ^ a b Carlos D. Morrison & Celnisha L. Dangerfield, "Tupac Shakur", in Mickey Hess, ed., Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, Volume 2 (Westport, CT & London: Greenwood Press, 2007), p 398.
    119. ^ a b c Kyra Gaunt, The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop (New York & London: New York University Press, 2006), p 119, although Gaunt misidentifies Tucker as a "Congresswoman"; Tucker instead was the chair and 1984 founder of the National Political Congress of Black Women, a lobbying group in Washington, DC.
    120. ^
      Government Printing Office, 1994), pp 4–7
      .
    121. ^ Elaine Woo, "C. DeLores Tucker, 78; civil rights pioneer led a spirited campaign against gangsta rap", Los Angeles Times, 14 Oct 2005.
    122. ^ The commercials against Time Warner—aired on the West Coast in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and on the East Coast in New York City and Washington, DC—urged parents to "make them feel the heat".
    123. ^
      Warner Brothers—and on Warner Music Group dropping Interscope to likely nil consequence for either Time Warner, Interscope, Death Row, or music lyrics, see Julia Chapman, "The race card"
      , Spin, 1996 Jan;11(10):65.]
    124. ^ Robert Hilburn & Chuck Philips, "They sure figured something out", Los Angeles Times, 24 Oct 1993.
    125. MCA, and PolyGram vied for Interscope [Chuck Philips, "Company town: 4 music companies wooing Interscope"
      , Los Angeles Times, 1 Dec 1995].
    126. ^ James Bates & Claudia Eller, "Seagram signs deal to buy 80% of MCA", Los Angeles Times, 10 Apr 1995.
    127. major label with American shareholding [J Chapman, "The race card", Spin, 1996 Jan;11(10):65]. And even without Interscope and its next major label, MCA/Universal, there was the giant independent label Priority Records, unfettered in distributing gangsta rap, like N.W.A and the Geto Boys, ready to pick up Death Row's distribution [Strauss, NYT, 1998 & Randall Sullivan, Labyrinth: The True Story (Grove Press
      , 2007)]. In fact, it was Priority that had distributed Tha Dogg Pound's album Dogg Food [Chapman, Spin, 1996].
    128. ^ By the July 1998 release of Nate Dogg's repeatedly delayed solo album, the curtain was already closing on the G-funk era [Thomas Erlewine, "Nate Dogg: G Funk Classics, Vols. 1 & 2", AllMusic.com, Netaktion LLC, visited 24 Apr 2020]. Even longer overdue, the eventual studio album from the Long Beach trio 213—formed of Warren G, Snoop Dogg, and Nate Dogg in 1985 [Lola Ogunnaike, "Dogg day afternoon", Vibe, 2001 Dec;9(12):156–160]—was a 2004 release, The Hard Way, competent G-funk for the nostalgic. "Time waits for no man", an album review closes [Rondell Conway, "213: The Hard Way", Vibe, 2004 Sep;12(9):236].
    129. ^
      uDiscoverMusic
      .com, Universal Music Group, 25 Mar 2020.
    130. ^ a b S. Craig Watkins, Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005), p 48, or elsewhere.
    131. ^ a b c d e Aine McGlynn, "Lil' Kim", in Mickey Hess, ed., Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, Volume 2 (Westport, CT & London: Greenwood Press, 2007), pp 454–455 on women reappropriating the word bitch, which in "Bitches Ain't Shit" is synonymous with the word woman, and on Lil' Kim touting herself "Queen Bitch". Yet pp 453–454 skim feud between Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown while slurring each other as sorts of "bitch".
    132. ^ a b c Stephane Dunn, "Baad Bitches" and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), pp 26–34.
    133. ^ Cheryl L. Keyes, Rap Music and Street Consciousness (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), p 96.
    134. Pearson Longman, 2004), p 95
      .
    135. ^ Apparently definitive is the Kurupt verse's close (while Snoop queries—and echoes another bar): | Bitches on my nuts like –clothes. Heh. | But I'm from the Pound and we don't love them hos. How could y' | trust a ho? (Why—) 'Cause a ho's a trick. I don't | love them tricks (Why—) 'Cause a trick's a bitch, and my | dick's constantly in her mouth— turning them | trick-ass hos the fuck out, now | [Sound recording, "Bitches Ain't Shit", Dr. Dre "Official Artist Channel" @ YouTube, 19 Apr 2020, timestamp 01:51].
    136. ^ Genell Goodson, "Mail", Vibe, 1993 Nov;1(3):17.
    137. ^ Jody Miller, Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban Inequality, and Gendered Violence (New York: New York University Press, 2008), pp 94–95, or elsewhere.
    138. ^ a b c Chris Nutter, "I'm every woman", Vibe, 2000 Aug;8(6):90.
    139. ^
      Seal Press, 2007), pp 4–5 discuss Sarah Jones's success litigating the Federal Communications Commission, whereas pp 8–10 republish her poem "Your Revolution", which invokes Gil Scott Heron's 1971 performance poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". Jones's poem rejects, one after another, a rapper's sexually motivated lyric. Once she performed the poem on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, it drew wider acclaim, and, with DJ Vadim, she made a 2000 version more musical. In May 2001, Portland, Oregon, radio station KBOO played it, whereupon a listener reported it to the FCC, which then fined the station $7 000, prompting other stations to cease playing it [Dustin Kidd, Pop Culture Freaks: Identity, Mass Media, and Society (New York: Westview Press, 2014), indexing "Your Revolution"]. For more details, see Brenda Cossman, Sexual Citizens: The Legal and Cultural Regulation of Sex and Belonging (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp 48–55, or pp 49–50
      skimming the FCC action and Jones's legal counteraction.
    140. ^ Hello Beautiful staff, "25 Women to Know: Dream Hampton", HelloBeautiful.com, Interactive One, LLC, 30 Mar 2011.
    141. ^ Dream Hampton, "Confessions of a hip-hop critic", in Evelyn McDonnell & Ann Powers, eds., Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap (New York: Delta, 1995), pp 456–457. Hampton recalls, "As a nineteen-year-old intern from NYU's film school hired to organize The Source's photo collection, I was always offering unsolicited opinions. . . ."
    142. ^
      PBS.org, ITVS, visited 21 Jun 2020]. A 2006 transcript by Media Education Foundation, and archived by University of North Texas, University Libraries, at Library.UNT.edu, quotes rapper Jadakiss
      : "This shit is entertainment. If it was so bad like that, Snoop wouldn't have no fans or nothing like that. Snoop has been talking that 'Bitches Ain't Shit' shit since the beginning of time. They want to hear that. They the main ones out there" [p 14].
    143. ^ Kellie D. Hay & Rebekah Farrugia, Women Rapping Revolution: Hip Hop and Community Building in Detroit (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020), pp ix–xi & pp 25–27. Hay & Farrugia, both professors in the communications department at Oakland University, located in Michigan, discuss at length Piper Carter, author of a foreword in the book. Carter had grown up living in Detroit and New York, and attended college both at Howard University, located in Washington, DC, and at the State University of New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, located in New York City. After several years as a fashion photographer in New York, Carter returned to Detroit, but found Detroit's rap scene stultifying, especially for women, and sought to form a rap club for women. Carter's effort led to a "no-misogyny open mic" named the Foundation for Women in Hip Hop, active from 2009 to 2015, which drew local, national, and international media coverage. In 2012, after several weeks of attending the open mic, which was held each Tuesday night, Hay & Farrugia began interviewing and shadowing Carter. Carter recalls initially having gone throughout the community while expressing her wish to "build a hip-hop community where women can get on", but Carter found that "no one cared" and that they felt it "a dumb and horrible idea". Still, two local rappers who were already established—Invincible as well as Miz Korona—lent support, stimulating more support. Carter then "went back to the collective body" and suggestting "calling the women and hip-hop group the Foundation and the first thing—and I thought everyone would think it's genius—and the first thing I heard was, 'That's the dumbest name. Why don't you call it Bitches Ain't Shit?' " "They were like, 'You should have girls in bikinis with Jello shots.' I was like blown back. These were coming from women!" which "younger women were upset" and "actually wanted to do the misogyny and they preferred that. Not only did they suggest it, they were actually fighting me and pissed off because I didn't want to do that stuff. Now this proves the need; I'm definitely calling it this. If it's upsetting them that much, it's going to be called that." [pp 26–27]
    144. ^ Amy Cook, Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), p 166. Note #60 identifies a URL for the Dr. Dre "Bitches Ain't Shit" sound recording listened to, but lacks an access date, though related notes on this page, especially #69 for the Ben Folds version, indicate 17 Aug 2015 access date.
    145. ^
      Shakespeare
      and contemporary performance". According to the English webpage, supplemented by Cook's CV linked to there, Cook is 25% professor in the English department, and 75% professor in as well as chair of the Department of Theatre Arts [11 Aug 2021].
    146. ^ a b c d e f Amy Cook, Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), p 94.
    147. ^ a b Amy Cook, Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), p 93.
    148. ^ a b Amy Cook, Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), p 95.
    149. ^ Lisa Capretto, "How being a woman 'absolutely helped' this rap icon in her career", HuffPost.com, BuzzFeed, Inc., 6 Jan 2017, updated 10 Jan 2017.
    150. ^ Sha Be Allah, "Happy 50th birthday to hip-hop icon Queen Latifah", TheSource.com, The Source, 18 Mar 2020.
    151. ^ a b c Dominique DiPrima w/ interviewer Lisa Kennedy, "Beat the rap", Mother Jones, 1990 Sep/Oct;15(6):32–36,80–82, p 82.
    152. ^ Sound recording, "One Less Bitch", N.W.A. "Official Artist Channel" @ YouTube, 24 Jul 2018.
    153. ^ Kim Osorio, Straight from The Source: An Expose from the Former Editor-in-Chief of the Hip-Hop Bible (New York: Pocket Books, 2008), p 15.
    154. ^ a b c Snoop Dogg cover story by Kevin Powell, "Hot Dogg", Vibe, 1993 Sep;1(1):50–54, p 54, also republished at Vibe.com.
    155. ^ Mahaliah Ayana Little, "Why don't we love these hoes? Black women, popular culture, and the contemporary hoe archetype", in Trimiko Melancon & Joanne M. Braxton, eds., Black Female Sexualities (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015).
    156. ^ Mike Barnes, "Invisible jukebox: Ice T", The Wire, 1996 Jul;(149)40–44, snippet view of pp 41 & 42, while p 42 contains, if unseen, quote of Ice T saying, "All men are dogs: how many times have you heard women say that?" [p 42].
    157. Anchor Press, 1981 / Boston: South End Press, 1986), pp 112–113 or –115]. All men are dogs was present [p 114]. Aside from specifically black women, a 2004 article in a popular women's magazine criticized the prevailing pop feminism as "Bad Dog" feminism, allegedly dehumanizing and denigrating men, as by All men are dogs mantra, an "astonishingly" old tactic of female bonding [Emily Nussbaum, "Is this girl power? Men are dogs, men are babies, men are stupid. Come on! Man-bashing may be good for a laugh, but it's no good for women", Glamour (Condé Nast), 2004 Jun;102(6):120–131, p 122
      ].
    158. Gotham Books
      , 2008).
    159. ^ Ira A. Robbins, The Trouser Press Guide to '90s Rock, 5th edn. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p 217.
    160. major labels in 2003: Sony BMG with 25.1%, Universal with 23.5%, EMI with 13.4%, Warner with 12.7%, and indies collectively with 25.3%. In 1993, the majors were instead the big six, as Sony and BMG were separate, and there was also PolyGram
      . Universal, which had been MCA before 1996, acquired PolyGram in 1998. Sony subsumed BMG in 2008.
    161. ^ a b c R&B group Destiny's Child cover story by Lola Ogunnaike, "Divas live", Vibe, 2001 Feb;9(2):74–81, p 76.
    162. ^ a b Craig Seymour, "The re-energizers", Vibe, 2002 Feb;10(2):68–73, wherein p 69 glosses traditional R&B's struggle amid rap's influence on R&B in the prior decade, p 70 skims the recent emergence of "neo-soul" in R&B, and p 73 contrasts this from "Bitches Ain't Shit".
    163. St. Martin's Griffin, 1999, p 40]—whereas Kurupt scorns any love ever for a "bitch", and so does Nate Dogg on the latter song, Snoop uniquely suggests having loved a "bitch", if both times incurring his present regret. In "Ain't No Fun", Snoop raps, "| Hoes recognize. Niggas do, too, 'cause when | bitches get scandalous and pull a voodoo, | what you gon' do? You really don't know. So | I'd advise you not to trust that ho. | Silly of me to fall in love with a bitch, | knowing damn well I'm too caught up with my grip |" ["Ain't No Fun (If the Homies Can't Have None) (feat. Nate Dogg, Warren G & Kurupt)", SnoopDoggTV "Official Artist Channel" @ YouTube, 8 Nov 2014, timemark 02:32 for Snoop's verse, or timemark 01:20 for Nate Dogg closing the first verse, followed by Kurupt's verse]. (By contrast, on Tha Dogg Pound song "Big Pimpin' ", on the soundtrack of the March 1994 movie Above the Rim
      , a Death Row Records release, Snoop's verse opens (with female backup singers), | . . . Now do I | love them hos? (Hell no.) And why is | that? (Because you're Snoop Doggy Dogg. And | you never gave a fuck about a bitch, 'cause to | you, bitches ain't shit but hos and | tricks.) Ha, ha, ha. Dee, dee, dah, dee, dah. |).
    164. ^ Charlamagne tha God, Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2017), p 246.
    165. ^ Abigail Addis, "Trina 'Da Baddest Bitch' ", Vibe, 2000 May;8(4):173.
    166. ^ Peter Shapiro, The Rough Guide to Hip-Hop, 2nd edn. (London: Rough Guides, 2005). Trina's song opens, "| Niggas ain't shit but hoes and tricks | Lick the pearl tongue, nigga, keep your dick | Get the fuck out after I cum, so I can | hop in my coupé and make a quick run |" ["Trina—'Niggas Ain't Shit' lyrics", MetroLyrics, CBS Interactive Inc., 2020].
    167. Facts On File, Inc., 2006), p 166, remarks that Lil' Kim's debut or 1996 album, Hard Core, "which entered the pop charts
      at number 11 due in large part to its effervescent dance arrangements, represented something of a challenge to the misogynistic posturing of male gangsta rappers".
    168. Pitchfork.com, Condé Nast, 29 Oct 2003], scorns her 2003 album, Fatherfucker, as mostly mindless and numbing, despite Lemay praising her prior or 2000 album, The Teaches of Peaches, as disarmingly direct and instinctive [Sound recording, "Peaches—F*** the Pain Away", XL Recordings
      "Verified" channel @ YouTube, 11 Aug 2014].
    169. ^
      Africology: The Journal of Pan-African Studies, 2007 Mar
      ;1(7):23–37.)
    170. ^
      coupé to make a quick run |.) According to Greg Thomas [Hip-Hop Revolution in the Flesh, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp 52–53], despite written lyrics saying "clit", Lil' Kim vocalizes "click" [Sound recording, "Suck My Dick"
      , Lil Kim "Official Artist Channel" @ YouTube, 8 Nov 2014]. In Thomas's reading of this song, whereby Lil' Kim has already posed, "Imagine if I was a dude, hitting niggas from the back", her saying "click" not only rhymes with the prior line's word trick, but also joins the word dick, which the elder hook employs, with the word clit, which one expects Lil' Kim to employ, and invokes the click or C-L-I-C-K homophone clique or C-L-I-Q-U-E, indicating an exclusive group of associating persons.
    171. ^ a b c Stephane Dunn, "Baad Bitches" and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), p 27, cites the feminist Jo Freeman's "The Bitch Manifesto" of 1971, which "critically configured 'Bitch' as a call to sisterhood and liberation struggle, declaring that the 'true bitch' was self-determined, militant, and beautiful." Dunn then exmaines the "Bad Bitch" persona of the 21st century.
    172. ^ Whereas the November 1996 album Hard Core was Lil' Kim's debut solo album, she was prominent as a member of rap group Junior M.A.F.I.A., whose album Conspiracy was released in August 1995. Foxy Brown's debut, Ill Na Na, was also a November 1996 release.
    173. MyLifetime.com, A&E Television Networks, 5 Apr 2018]. In 1994, cultural critic Nelson George described the lead actor, Pam Grier, as a cult figure liked even by many feminists. Grier was a rare nonwhite woman who had star vehicles developed for her physical beauty and ability to punish men who challenged her [Greg Braxton, "She's back and badder than ever: Pam Grier's '70s blaxploitation films are a big kick again, making the star a hot retro hero", Los Angeles Times, 27 Aug 1995]. And by August 1995, or 20 years after her film career's pinnacle, Grier was in high demand by young fans [Ibid.
      ].
    174. Revolt.tv
      , 15 Jun 2018].
    175. ^ Yvonne D. Sims, Women of Blaxploitation: How the Black Action Film Heroine Changed American Popular Culture (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006), p 6.
    176. Billboard.com
      , Billboard Media, LLC, 28 Jun 2021].
    177. ^ Trent Clark, "Offset blasts Snoop Dogg's critique of Cardi B's 'WAP' without dissing him", HipHopDX.com, HipHopDX, 12 Dec 2020, sharing apparently candid video of rapper Offset, who is rapper Cardi B's husband, responding to Snoop's recent interview comment, when about her song "WAP" that was #1 on the main popular songs chart, Billboard Hot 100, "let's have some imagination! Let's have some, you know, privacy, some intimacy where he wants to find out as opposed to you telling him."
    178. Pitchfork.com, Condé Nast
      , 26 Jan 2021.
    179. ^ "T.I., Juicy J & Outkast's Big Boi share their fondest memory of Dr. Dre's 'The Chronic' for 25th anniversary", Billboard.com, Prometheus Global Media, LLC, 14 Dec 2017.
    180. Boosie's mixtape Gone Til' December offered a "Niggas Ain't Shit". In 2011, YG's mixtape Just Re Up'd offered a "Bitches Ain't Shit", featuring Tyga and Nipsey Hussle, that samples the original and reached #90 on the main popular songs chart, the Billboard Hot 100. By 2020, over 40 songs had sampled the original, as listed at "Samples of Bitches Ain't Shit by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg feat. Daz Dillinger, Kurupt and Jewell"
      , WhoSampled.com, originally visited 16 Jan 2020, revisited 25 May 2020 [sampling count at 45 songs].
    181. ^ a b Nigel Williamson, The Rough Guide to the Best Music You've Never Heard (New York & London: Rough Guides Ltd., 2008), p 43.
    182. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Ben Folds, A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons (New York: Ballantine Books, 2019), pp 272–274. Google Books tends to conceal p 273, which as in this abridged excerpt explains, "the part that I chose to excerpt skewed sad", "like a sad Johnny Cash song with a lot more vulgarity. Slowing these words down from their gangsta-rap presentation and adding a melody creates an absurd effect, both sad and funny. Sung this way, the misogyny in the original lyrics, no matter how wrong, COULD be explained by how badly the narrator was hurt". "It was a joke only to the extent that the comedy I loved from the seventies was a joke: It was based on something real".
    183. ^
      Triple A Songs, where "Brick" had placed #9 on February 14, 1998, the Ben Folds song "You Don't Know Me", featuring Regina Spektor, peaked at #28 on November 15, 2008, and "Phone in a Pool" peaked, also at #28, on September 9, 2015 ["—Triple A Songs"]. Outside of "popular" and "pop" but under a "rock" chart is Alternative Airplay, wherein Folds has five songs, the first four as Ben Folds Five and the fifth as Ben Folds: "Battle of Who Could Care Less" for 12 weeks at #22 peak on April 26, 1997; "Brick" for 26 weeks at #6 peak on February 7, 1998; "Song for the Dumped" for 9 weeks at #23 peak on June 13, 1998; "Army" for 11 weeks at #17 peak on May 29, 1999; "Rockin' the Suburbs" for 11 weeks at #28 peak on September 22, 2001 ["Chart History: Ben Folds—Alternative Airplay", Billboard.com, Billboard Media, LLC, visited 14 Aug 2021]. Note that the Billboard 200
      , rather, is a "popular" albums chart.
    184. ^
      Hot Digital Songs
      .
    185. ^ a b Ben Folds's first bypass of record labels was an EP, titled Speed Graphic, released in July 2003, that debuted atop Billboard's Hot Digital Tracks chart in August 2003. But, this success being very relative, a music journalist, in January 2004, reacted, "Ben Folds has a new CD. What? You didn't know? That's because there is little, if any, publicity regarding this new five-song EP, available online only from a website— www.attackedbyplastic.com —created for the purpose of marketing it, from Apple's iTunes, and from Sony Music Digital Download. In a recording coup, Folds has recorded and released this album on his own to avoid the publicity circus" [Jonathan Nelson, "Ben Folds: Speed Graphic EP", Treblezine.com, Treble Media, 9 Jan 2004]. The EP, his first, includes a cover version of The Cure's 1985 single "In Between Days" and debuted on Billboard's Hot Digital Tracks chart the week ending August 9 at #1, selling 1 300 units, ahead of Avril Levigne's live EP [Silvio Pietroluongo, Minal Patel, Wade Jessen & Keith Caulfield, "SinglesMinded: It's 'Five O'Clock' at No. 1 on Country Singles & Tracks", Billboard, 2003 Aug 9;115(32):82]. Levigne's live EP, Try to Shut Me Up, released through only Apple's iTunes, had debuted the prior week, ending August 2, at #1 [Silvio Pietroluongo, Minal Patel & Wade Jessen, "SinglesMinded: RCA label group repeats its chart-topping trifecta", Billboard, 2003 Aug 2;115(31):64].
    186. ^ Billboard Staff, "Folds saves songs For 'Silverman' ", Billboard.com, Billboard Media, LLC, 25 Jan 2005.
    187. ^ a b c d e Jill Kipnis, "Folds open to unusual marketing ideas", Billboard, 2005 Apr 30;(18):42.
    188. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2008), p 46
      .
    189. ^
      she/her
      . @sw4miwants you to know these opinions are my own, as indeed they are.)
    190. ^ Rae Alexandra, "Ben Folds' top 5 best covers", VillageVoice.com, The Village Voice, 30 Jul 2013.
    191. ^ a b c Amy Cook, Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), pp 93–94.
    192. ^ Michael Z. Newman, "Movies for hipsters", in Geoff King, Claire Molloy & Yannis Tzioumakis, eds., American Independent Cinema: Indie, Indiewood and Beyond (London & New York: Routledge, 2013), pp 75–76.
    193. ^ a b c Chris Steffen, interviewer, "Ben Folds on repeating mistakes, conjuring characters, and repeating mistakes", AllMusic.com, Netaktion LLC, 23 Aug 2019.
    194. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Andrew Stafford, interviewer, "Another story from an interview with Ben Folds", Patreon.com, Patreon (San Francisco, CA), 31 Aug 2019. The July 2019 release of the Ben Folds memoir occasioned this writer's article for The Guardian [Andrew Stafford, " 'I dreaded that song coming out': Ben Folds on 'Brick,' William Shatner, and hitting rock bottom", TheGuardian.com, Guardian News & Media Limited, 28 Aug 2019]. Yet the writer could not fit into that article the "Bitches Ain't Shit" retirement, "a whole other story, about changing cultural norms in a increasingly volatile political climate, and the importance of being kind."
    195. ^
      TheGuardian.com, Guardian News & Media Limited, 2 Jun 2005. Photos are viewable elsewhere: Hayley Madden, contributor, Getty Images editorial #85019781, Ben Folds w/ Lindsay Jamieson & Jared Reynolds, and #85019918, Folds w/ Jamieson, live performance, Hammersmith Apollo
      , UK, 13 Dec 2005.
    196. ^ a b Justin A. Williams, " 'Cars with the boom': Music, automobility, and hip-hop 'sub' cultures", in Sumanth Gopinath & Jason Stanyek, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies, Volume 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p 139.
    197. ^
      TheGuardian.com
      , Guardian News & Media Limited, 8 Jul 2008.
    198. ^ Sound recording, "Bitches Ain't Shit", Dr. Dre "Official Artist Channel" @ YouTube, 19 Apr 2020, timestamp 02:27.
    199. ^ "Ben Folds Chart History (Hot 100)". Billboard. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
    200. ^ "Ben Folds Chart History (Digital Song Sales)". Billboard. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
    201. ^ Alyssa Fried, "Ben Folds covers Dre on iTunes", MXDWN.com, 6 Mar 2005.
    202. ^
      Millersville University
      , in Pennsylvania, to May 14 at the Avalon in Boston.
    203. Nielsen SoundScan, "The Billboard 200: Nov 11 2006", Billboard, 2006 Nov 11;118(45):85
      .
    204. ^ And in 2006, an obscure group, the Leisure Kings, itself turned the Ben Folds cover—that is, the Dre and Snoop vocals alone—into musical parody of, indeed, a lounge act ["Cover version: The Leisure Kings, 'Bitches Ain't Shit', Total Loungification (Retropolis, 2006) / Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg et al., 'Bitches Ain't Shit', The Chronic (Death Row, 1992), WhoSampled.com Limited, visited 25 May 2020].
    205. ^ a b Katie Hasty, "Mayer schedules summer 'Continuum' tour with Folds", Billboard.com, Billboard Media, LLC, 14 Mar 2007.
    206. ^ Ben Folds, A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons (New York: Ballantine Books, 2019), pp 271–272 & 274.
    207. ^ a b Adam Bradley, The Poetry of Pop (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2017), p 268.
    208. ^
      Huff Post
      , 18 Nov 2015.
    209. Complex.com
      , Complex Media, 21 Jun 2015.
    210. ^
      Dixie Chicks to The Chicks and the "deeply problematic" Ben Folds "Bitches Ain't Shit" drawing his own retraction attempt [Steinberg B, "Hear us out: June saw musicians imagining—"
      , InsideHook.com, 30 June 2020].
    211. ^ a b Music video, "Ben Folds Five—'Brick' ", BenFoldsFiveVEVO @ YouTube, 25 Oct 2009. For a contemporary reaction, see Charles Aaron, "Singles", Spin, 1998 Jun;14(6):136.
    212. ^ a b c d Ben Folds, A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons (New York: Ballantine Books, 2019), mentions "Bitches Ain't Shit" on pp 272–274 & 276, but Google Books conceals pp 273 & 276, which may be viewable on Amazon.com's Look inside utility. The song expanded his audiences much as "Brick" had done for Ben Folds Five in the late 1990s, but the demographic altered, "more drunken college boys", and he later found children on YouTube lip-syncing to it, while the song "never got easier for me to sing. It always felt so very wrong, but, then, that was also part of what made it interesting", and "this crude and melancholy tune was undoubtedly my hit" [p 273]. On p 276 the song's retirement is explained.
    213. ^ a b Amy Cook, Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), p 32: "I analyze the performance of the same song by two different artists at different times (Dr. Dre and Ben Folds)".
    214. ^
      middle eight
      , lack addition of a synthesizer at high pitch to mimic the rap song's eerie ring ubiquitous, called the "funky worm".)
    215. ^ No footage but merely the venue and show date recorded: Ben Folds, live show, 3 Apr 2007, at Michigan State University Auditorium, East Lansing, Michigan.[unreliable source?]
    216. ^ a b c d e In 2017, prefacing a live performance, Folds explained, "You know, what's interesting, this controversial song, I didn't write it. I wrote the music to it, and Dr. Dre wrote the words." "There's a lot to be offended by in the song; I apologize if there are any bitches in the audience." "But honestly, the thing is that I took what is actually a heartfelt melody—and I spent it on this song. And the reason I did is because I thought that it was interesting to sing in a little, tiny-ass white voice the things that were being said, anyway, that we were consuming" [Sherman Theater, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, 18 Apr 2017]. For further, see Mark Beaumont, "Remember the '90s fad for 'hidden tracks' on CDs?", § "6: Dr Dre—'Bitches Ain't Shit' ", NME.com, BandLab Technologies, 5 Apr 2019.
    217. ^ a b c Denise Smith, "Songs for Silverman, Ben Folds, Epic Records", Third Way, 2005 Jun;28(5):31.
    218. ^ Dom Passantino, "Ben Folds, Songs for Silverman, Sony, 2005, C+", StylusMagazine.com, Stylus, 24 May 2005.
    219. ^ Jill Pesselnick, "Five-less Folds finds solitude, fights aging on 500/Epic's 'Rockin' the Suburbs", Billboard, 2001 Apr 11;113(32):17.
    220. Vice.com
      , Vice Media, 11 Jun 2018]. "But while many massive artistic undertakings meet criticism with defensiveness, Lilith Fair came back the second year with a lineup that was much more diverse, racially and musically. You might even consider it legendary" [Ibid.].
    221. Bustle.com
      , 17 Dec 2014].)
    222. Clarion Awards for journalism from women in communications. She lives in New York with her husband and is the mother of two adult children, a son and a daughter [Contributor webpage, "Kate Stone Lombardi"
      , Ideas.Time.com, Time USA, LLC, visited 16 Dec 2021].
    223. ^
      Jezebel.com, 15 Sep 2010, reports a cappella singing of "Dr. Dre's Bitches Ain't Shit.' " But the embedded video, on YouTube since November 2008, reveals performance of the Ben Folds cover version. The sociologist's announcement at the popular feminist blog duplicates hers on her own website the prior day [Lisa Wade, "Finding glee in Dr. Dre's 'Bitches Ain't Shit' ", TheSocietyPages.com, Sociological Images, 14 Sep 2010]: "Sociologist Michael Kimmel passed along a fantastic and entertaining example of resistance. In the video below, a Columbia University
      a cappella group sings Dr. Dre's 'Bitches Ain't Shit.' The appropriation of the song works on so many levels: the all- heavily-white, all-female group, the sweet choral arrangement, the pastel prep fashion, the strategically placed tennis rackets. They use race, class, and gender contradictions to force us to see and hear the song in a new way. All serve to mock the original, taking the teeth out of the language at the same time that they expose it as grossly misogynistic. Awesome."
    224. Vox.com, Vox Media, LLC, 20 Jul 2018]. Feminist discourse, planning, and even activism, like #MeToo tweets, are mainly online, while the Women's March was "conceived and propagated online" [Ibid.]. So it is often dated to 2008, when Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and feminist blogs like Jezebel and Feministing were well in place, and fourth wave was well recognized by 2013 [Ibid.] That year, Kira Cochrane glossed the first wave's apex in the 1910s via voting rights, the second wave's "liberation movement that blazed through the 1970s and '80s", and "the third wave declared by Rebecca Walker", daughter of the 1983 novel The Color Purple's author Alice Walker, and by others in the early 1990s, "with women defining their work as distinct from their mothers' " ["The fourth wave of feminism: meet the rebel women", TheGuardian.com, 10 Dec 2013]. Cochrane found it "feels like something new again", a "reactive movement" of "startling" popularity, enabled by new technology [Ibid.] Yet, more realistically, by the 1980, the second wave had splintered, as radical feminism, including its offshoot cultural feminism, along with socialist feminism, which is radical plus Marxist and largely is black feminism, opposed liberal feminism, the mainstream of mostly white women of middle class who endorsed liberalist values of individualism, capitalism, and the sexual revolution. Near 1990, poststructural feminism reexplained gender not as causing but instead as caused by culture as structured by language, and femaleness was displaced from the center of feminism, which then developed radical queer and critical race theories [Sam Warner, "Structuralism, feminist approaches to", in Nancy A. Naples, Renee C. Hoogland, Maithree Wickramasinghe & Wai Ching Angela Wong, eds, The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell/John Wiley & Sons, 2016)]. In March 2020, Dream Hampton helpeded commemorate Bell Hooks, author of the 1984 book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, which asserted "conviction that feminism must become a mass-based political movement if it is to have a revolutionary, transformative impact on society" [Dream Hampton, bell hooks "100 Women of the Year: 1984", Time.com, 5 Mar 2020]. Hampton closed, "Today, as we push back against those who wish to stymie progress on every front, the clear way she unpacks what it means to be a black feminist, a praxis
      that requires we take on class and race and gender, could not be more important." [Ibid.]
    225. Vulture.com
      , 3 Jun 2019.)
    226. ^ Rob Harvilla, "Live: Ben Folds swears profusely, goofs around, and covers Ke$ha at Beacon Theatre", VillageVoice.com, The Village Voice, 15 Dec 2010, indicates that during the December 14 show, Ben Folds "also covers Kesha—'Sleazy,' specifically—if only to force his bass player to sing the line 'Rat-a-tat-tat on your drum drum drum / The beat's so phat gonna make me come.' It's understandable if you're wincing, right now, at the whole Ironic Cover thing, which is a problem right now, generally. (Ben also has a gentle soft-rock version of Dr. Dre's 'Bitches Ain't Shit,' which he perhaps mercifully doesn't pull out tonight, as it's way more problematic.)"
    227. SAGE Publications, 2012), p 418
      .
    228. CMJ New Music Monthly, 2002 Dec;(108):46]. Otherwise, an interview of Folds upon the July 2019 release of his memoir renders an audio file and transcribed "highlights" that offer, On his high school girlfriend's abortion and his song about it, "Brick": "I mean it's not something I talked about much when the song was out. In fact, I never answered an interview question about that song. Try having a hit song and not answering a question about it." "Look, I let her know this book was coming out and I sent her the copy of that section to make sure she was OK with it. She's very happy that someone might benefit from the story." [Robin Young, "Musician Ben Folds tells the story of himself", WBUR.org, WBUR-FM
      , 29 Jul 2019]
    229. ^ Emily Sernaker, interviewer: You wrote that American audiences usually assume the songwriter is writing a confessional piece. Do you see the listener's tendency to think something is autobiographical as limiting? Ben Folds: It's limiting if you allow it to be. If I feel that my credibility hinges on how literally true a song is, then that is limiting. Then I can only write songs about what actually happened." "I think it's unfortunate that someone like Bruce Springsteen has to come out and admit that he never souped-up a car or didn't make out with a girl at some park somewhere. He's one of our greatest poets. But people still can't accept that he's not being autobiographical, and they get angry when they find out he didn't actually live some things in his songs." [Emily Sernaker, "Going toward what glows: An interview with Ben Folds", LAReviewOfBooks.com, Los Angeles Review of Books, 1 Oct 2019]
    230. ^ Arielle Bernstein, "Girl swagger and blood lust: Rihanna, Taylor Swift and repackaging toxic masculinity for a female audience", Salon.com, LLC, 12 Jul 2015. Bernstein argues that female consumers and female artists have adopted "toxic masculinity" through chronic exposure to such media. "The sexualized violence in 'BBHMM' "—that is, R&B singer Rihanna's music video to her 2015 single "Bitch Better Have My Money"—"is particularly troubling" [Ibid.]. "One of the joyful things about watching 'BBHMM' is seeing a female auteur flex her muscles, building on the themes of successful artists who came before her and owning her power. The painful thing is knowing that this fantasy of power is so easily stripped away. In writing this article I watched 'BBHMM' over and over again; at first the scenes of violence were hard to sit through, but eventually I became inured to it. The shocking things became less shocking; the ordinary things more ordinary. I felt this same way listening to Eminem rap years ago in my teens and early 20s. I felt this way driving around with my college boyfriend, me in the passenger seat, listening to a version of 'Bitches Ain't Shit' by Ben Folds. 'I don't like this,' I said. 'It's ironic. It's funny,' my then boyfriend told me gently: 'It doesn't mean anything.' But it did. And it does. I've sat through so many songs about bitches and whores, and so many shows where cut-up female bodies are just part of the landscape. 'It's not about you,' a girl at a party tells me, when a sexist song begins to play. But it is. It is and it is and it is." [Ibid.] Berstein, perhaps evoking New York gangsta rapper Biggie Smalls's published persona, the Notorious B.I.G., uses the nickname "NotoriousREL" and "teaches writing" at a Washington DC university ["Arielle Bernstein", Salon.com, visited 30 Dec 2021], which calls her a "cultural critic who focuses on film, TV, art, culture, and how social media and digital communications shape human expression, interaction, intimacy, and empathy" [Arts & Sciences, "Arielle Bernstein: Sr professorial lecturer: Literature", American.edu, visited 30 Dec 2021].
    231. Vice.com, Vice Media, 10 Apr 2019, wherein Sternberg mainly discusses cover versions of R&B "girl" group TLC's February 1999 single "No Scrubs
      ".
    232. ^ a b c d Bonnie Steinberg, "Hear us out: June saw musicians imagining—and advocating for—a better world", InsideHook.com, InsideHook, 30 June 2020.
    233. ^ "Ben Folds's 2008 concert history", ConcertArchives.org, Thiele Unlimited, visited 28 Aug 2021.
    234. Stereogum.com
      , Stereogum Media, LLC, 8 Jul 2008.
    235. ^
      Sydney Morning Herald
      , 15 Nov 2019, updated 18 Nov 2019.
    236. ^ Robin Young, "Musician Ben Folds tells the story of himself", WBUR.org, WBUR-FM (Boston's NPR news station), 29 Jul 2019.
    237. ^ Emily Sernaker, "Going toward what glows: An interview with Ben Folds", LAReviewOfBooks.com, Los Angeles Review of Books, 1 Oct 2019.
    238. ^ Ben Folds, "Those who have read my memoir. . .", @BenFolds w/ verification badge, Facebook.com, 24 Jun 2020, 5:26 PM EST.
    239. ^ Marc Parker & Melissa Benefield Parker, "Ben Folds interview: 'I see the role of an artist as someone who sees flicker that nobody else does' ", SmashingInterviews.com, Smashing Interviews Magazine, 21 Jul 2020.
    240. ^ Ben Folds, " '2020' lyric video", benfoldsTV "Official Artist Channel" @ YouTube, 25 Jun 2020.
    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bitches_Ain%27t_Shit&oldid=1217653432"