Thursday, October 8, 2009

Aisha Sekhmet-"White Man Bitch"



GAWT DAYUM SHAWTY! I just happened to see a link to this sitting in the homie and Creative Loafing music editor Rodney Charmichael's gchat message. WHEW! I've never heard of this woman, but she just did some ol Drop Squad shit on the whole rap game with this one. The video speaks for itself but Rodney did a good job talking about it over at The Loaf, peep it after the jump...



Taken from CL:

Not since N.W.A. dropped “Fuck the Police” 20 years ago has hip-hop sounded this defiant, this jaw-dropping, this groundbreaking.


Yes, Atlanta resident/New Orleans transplant Aisha Sekhmet’s song “You the White Man’s Bitch” is as radical as the title suggests. Her primary target isn’t “the man,” however, but the morally corrupt generation of rappers that have turned self-degradation and misogyny into their own capitalistic come-up — all the while justifying the means with their ever-increasing ends.

It’s in direct response to Memphis rapper Yo Gotti’s song, “Five Star Bitch,” — his term of endearment for a top-shelf female companion. Sehkmet jacks his club bounce beat and twists his premise into her own profanity-laced, anti-white supremacist diatribe targeted at black men (and women) who’ve assimilated to the point of self-hatred.

In effect, she’s labeling them race traitors. Uncle Toms. House niggers.

There’s a message in her madness, but it’s not wrapped in the kind of out-of-touch, high-minded language that’s kept many politically-conscious MCs preaching to the choir in recent years. In fact, many enlightened rap heads have already found beef with Sekhmet — a former stripper who admits to being “a product of the streets.” Her lyrics are riddled with as many contradictions as she heaps upon her adversaries. But as raw and racially-charged as she is on the mic, there’s an abrupt honesty in Sekhmet’s delivery that hasn’t been heard in rap since “keepin’ it real” went way wrong.

Since her video hit WorldStarHipHop.com a week ago, it’s garnered over 150,000 views. It even got Atlanta-based activist Kalonji Changa’s attention, so he decided to conduct the first interview with Sekhmet.

Kalonji: What made you record and release this song and what’s your target audience?

Aisha: I recorded that song because I felt a burning anger when I heard Yo Gotti’s song Five Star Bitch. I felt in my spirit that he wrote that song to get a female audience to support him, and he had to call them bitches in the process. My target audience is anyone who can learn something valuable from my message.


Back in August, CL covered the debut of Food, Clothes & Shelter: The Street Album, the hip-hop compilation released by Changa’s FTP Movement. The double-disc CD is Changa’s and FTP’s attempt to bridge the gap between progressive hip-hop and the hood. But even he admits much of Sekhmet’s content can be a hard pill to swallow. It’s kinda like meeting Malcolm X in the middle of his radical jail-house transformation from the brain-dead pimp/street hustler Detroit Red to the eventual revolutionary leader El-Hajj Malik Shabazz.

Sekhmet ironically evokes X’s name in the song’s intro when she hollers: “You know I’m lookin’ for a real nigga like Malcolm X.”

Confused?

As Sekhmet told Changa, she’s only feeding the horse the way it eats:

Aisha: I’m a product of the streets. The Black Men and Women in the Hip Hop community refer to a real nigga as a man that has his shit together, someone that isn’t a deadbeat daddy, someone intelligent, etc. etc. That’s all I meant. The streets know what I meant. And I give honor to our ancestor Malcolm X for being a real nigga and dying for us!

On one hand, it’s refreshing to hear a black female MC respond to the overuse of the word “bitch” in rap by snapping back rather than wearing it as a badge of honor the way such standard-bearers as Lil Kim, Foxy Brown and Trina have infamously attempted to do, while successfully ho’ing themselves out in the process. And Sekhmet’s certainly more ballsy than the whole shebang of male MCs who’ve ever gotten high (and rich) off shitting on women.

Still, I doubt if any of that will earn her a spot on Oprah’s couch anytime soon — unless, of course, Sekhmet’s sociopolitical sound-off can bank the kind of Benjamins that finally made Jay-Z Ms. Winfrey’s favorite rapper.

2 comments:

grip said...

Wow, for this day and time I just don't know what to say, now that was from left field. She killed the track!!!

Unknown said...

Dope!!