Sometimes it’s more like a drenching. Difficult people are drawn to the reasonable ones and all of us have likely had (or have) at least one person in our lives who have us bending around ourselves like barbed wire in endless attempts to please them – only to never really get there. So when Thore asks me if I’m a “hip hop bitch” and I know full well that Pro-Sieben doesn’t have the air time for an in-depth exposition – or any interest in hearing it anyway – then it’s only logical I should have hip hop’s back and say, yes, you bitches, I’m a real hip hop bitch.We have all had toxic people dust us with their poison. Which is why the feminist take on “bitch” needs to be questioned: Is appropriating “the bitch” truly emancipating or merely yet another platform for patriarchal views? And the lyrics performed by most female artists, including the above-mentioned Shirin and Katja as well as lots of others, are actually written by men. Would women use the word “bitch” as frequently if they wrote their own lyrics? The music industry is eighty per cent male. Women are likely an even smaller minority in hip hop. So if you want to claim the word for yourself, I can only say: Go, Bitch, go! The Bitch is Queen! She’s courageous and confident. So it’s really all about a new take on the word as a means to self-empowerment.īeing a bitch also means breaking with society’s stereotypes and expectations and marching to your own beat instead. And to say that “bitch” ain’t bad just because male rappers use it to diss us women. But with clicks and followers running into the hundreds of millions, they’ve encouraged countless women and girls to own the “bitch”, to say it’s cool, it’s hip, to be a “bitch” – whatever that may mean. I wouldn’t go as far as to say they’ve actually upgraded the “bitch”. And in 2021, the rapper Shirin David released her album Bitches brauchen Rap (Bitches Need Rap). In 2020, Katja Krasavice, a German singer and influencer, put out a book provocatively titled Bitchbibel (Bitch Bible). If someone else uses it, it’s an assessment or an assumption and therefore offensive to me. So who gets to say “bitch”? The rule here is: What I say about myself is my call, my claim, I get to call myself whatever I please. It has caught on in the LGBTQ+ community, too, where it’s generally associated with feminine attributes. So men should use the word sparingly, if at all.īut the word actually has a positive connotation among female rappers, many of whom riff on “bitch”, identify as such and invest the word with a feminist meaning. It’s the done thing for (gangsta) rappers to put down women using pejorative epithets: women are supposed to be submissive and sexually available to men, so the men can shore up their alpha status within the pack. But it’s also applied to men to mean a guy “with no balls” – which is, of course, equally sexist. But it’s perfectly normal in the rap scene, where you hardly ever hear the word “woman”. It’s generally a no-go for a man to call a woman a bitch. It can be used to mean a sexist, misogynistic slur, a term of endearment or an exclamation of incredulity or appreciation. It’s a fine line between degradation and emancipation. The meaning of the word “bitch” changes according to who says it and how, with what intonation and in what context. After all, bitches are good for ratings, especially on a German reality talent show like The Voice of Germany. Needless to say, Pro-Sieben aired this very part of the interview on, prime time, at a quarter past eight, on 21 October 2021. What he was actually asking was whether I really “eat, breathe and sleep” hip hop. Is that what Thore meant? That I’m a female dog in heat? No, definitely not. It’s usually men who use it to put down women, a lot like the German word “ Schlampe”. “Bitch” means a female dog and is used vulgarly to refer to the uncontrollability and aggressiveness of a female dog in heat. What else could I say? Was Thore really aware what a word he was confronting me with in front of millions of spectators?! “Are you a real hip hop bitch?” Thore, a TV presenter on Pro-Sieben, asked me point-blank with cameras rolling. And the MC scene is now packed with tough chicks who confidently identify as “bitches”. Google the words “boss bitch” or “bad bitch”, for example, and you’ll find content galore. In this feminist age, the word is causing some contention, now that Germany’s most famous female rappers are shaking up the male-dominated scene and co-opting “bitch” to give the word a positive spin. When talking about hip hop and language, the word “bitch” is bound to come up sooner or later.
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