Sesali Bowen - Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes from a Trap Feminist

For all the real bitches

This for my jazzy bitches, classy bitches,

Oh yeah, my ratchet bitches.

Yo Gotti, I Wanna Fuck

Throughout my entire college career, and for years after, I was the proud owner of a 2007 Pontiac Grand Prix. I named her Sandy because she was the exact same hue as the manufactured beaches off Lake Michigan. A few years later, after the Fetty Wap song dropped, I nicknamed her my Trap Queen because for the better part of a decade shed made sure I made it to classes, to work, to get my hair done, to pick up weed, to rescue homegirls from the homes of shady niggas, to pull off getaways after my homegirls got payback on those same niggas, to countless dick appointments, and into two car accidents. Sandy had heated leather seats and a sound system that allowed everyone to hear me coming from a block away when I had the volume all the way up. Some of the best and worst times of my life happened in the drivers seat (and sometimes the back seat) of that car. Youll hear quite a bit about Sandy later. Her name is probably the only one besides mine that hasnt been changed for this book.

Anyway, I was definitely in Sandys drivers seat when I heard Memphis rapper Yo Gottis I Wanna Fuck for the first time. I was three years into college at the best public institution in Illinois, without a degree in sight thanks to my struggling GPA. My cousin had recently graduated high school and joined my friends and me in the midwestern cornfields to attend the local community college. She was living without parental supervision for the first time in her life, and it didnt take long for her boyfriend from Chicago to join her in her off-campus apartment. The three of us spent a lot of time together riding around and smoking weed, which probably explains my GPA. It was on one of our many trips that her boyfriend slid his bootleg copy of Yo Gottis mixtape Cocaine Muzik 4 into Sandys CD player. He never got it back.

The disc quickly collected scratches from going in and out of my rotation. I listened to track 4, I Wanna Fuck, the most because the first verse felt like it had been written for me. I was occasionally jazzy, sometimes classy, but mostly ratchetjust like the women he was shouting out at the top of the verse. And though Ive never sucked dick in a club, which was another one of his identifiers of such a lady, there was an incident at the now-closed Lux Lounge in Washington, DC, where a dude put his dick in my hand and I took my precious time removing it. The point is, as a sexually open-minded Black girl, I felt seen by Gotti. This verse was his playful ode to those among us who were willing to put our wigs in a rubber band and let loose during a night out. Its not often, in any genre of music, that women who also looked forward to the... after-the-club activities have been celebrated, as opposed to shamed and shitted on for it.

The more I listened to the song, the more attention I paid to the second part of the verse, where Gotti took his affirmation a step further. Right after a particularly childish line where he tried to distance himself from cunnilingus by suggesting that he only ate at Waffle or Huddle House, he laid out one of the most thoughtful, empathetic, responsible, and equitable casual sex scenarios that Id ever heard in this context. I was grateful for a reference to his favorite condom brand, even if it was the gold-wrapped Magnums that smell like a literal latex factory and make the inside of my vagina feel dry and itchy like a burlap sack. Safe sex is an underrated wave that more people should be on but is often glossed over in music, movies, and TV, where sex is frequently depicted with an undertone of urgency and reckless spontaneity.

Gotti also completely detached himself from the hypocritical, shame-on-you-hoe finger wagging that male privilege emboldens so many Black men to do, especially in hip-hop. In fact, he explicitly stated that he could still respect her after their first-night encounter because, shit, he was there too. At one point in the verse he was almost encouraging her to stand pridefully in her decision and not use intoxication to justify her decision to bust it open for a Memphis nigga. In other words, Gotti didnt devalue or dehumanize this woman because she decided to give him some pussy. He wasnt ashamed, and for that very reason, he didnt think she should be either. I wish I could say every man Ive fucked made me feel the same way. But this verse would do.

To be clear, Yo Gotti didnt write a feminist manifesto. Having followed his career and different interviews hes done, I would argue that he could benefit from a YouTube video or two on Black feminism. If Im lucky, hell read this book, but I digress. Gotti did lay out an alternative to how women, especially Black women, in similar situations are too often represented: acting only on the sexual desires of men, of lesser moral character for doing so, and not worth the respect of the same men who want to fuck them. I was already hyperaware of this dynamic and actively navigating it in my personal life. However, this verse made me reconsider how women were being talked about in trap musica hip-hop subgenre that expresses some of the realities and aspirational views of Black folks from the hoodand how those narratives held up against the regular degular women I knew in the real world. From that moment, I felt like I needed to relisten to all the trap music I loved and reconsider what I was being offered.

Despite its mainstream popularity, trap music is still considered one of hip-hops lowest forms. Part of this stems from elitist assumptions about Southern Black culture, including the accents and unique version of African American vernacular, and respectability politics. However, trap music is also often dismissed because of its representation and treatment of women. As a feminist, Id often considered the question of why I not only subjected myself to it but also reveled in it. Sitting with Gottis verse pushed me beyond my frequent cop-out response: Trap music is problematic and sexist, but I like the beats. Like every other staple of Black womens lives, it was more complicated than that.

trap:

Atlanta slang for the specific dwelling or neighborhood where drugs, guns, or other illicit products or services are sold. The term is multifaceted and flexible. When used as a verb, trapping means hustling. You can use trap bitch/nigga, or simply trapper, to describe someone who hustles, typically in an underground economy. Trap music got its name because its pioneering artists were indeed trap niggas, and the lyrical content reflects the realities of the trap.

Still, it felt initially counterintuitive to look for examples of affirming language in trap, a genre that had been labeled aggressively reductive. But there was a reason some trap songs made me put more bass in my voice when I shouted the lyrics over Sandys speakers, or put my hands in the air at the club. I suddenly paid more attention to all the times Gucci Mane also openly rapped about his partners having abortions. I thought differently about Travis Porter letting a females voice dominate their single Make It Rain with a straightforward demand: You wanna see some ass, I wanna see some cash. And what about all of the female rap Id been devouring since I was old enough to control the radio?

Female rappers have often echoed the sentiments of male rappers: that sex and desire are indeed transactional. But the formula laid out on Trick Daddys 1998 single Nann, when the baddest bitch, Trina, insisted, You dont know nann hoe done been the places I been, who can spend the grands that I spend, fuck bout five or six best friends, Thats not the position of a passive receiver of male attention but that of a strategic mastermind set on creating sexual relationships on her own terms. Over decades of listening to female rappers, I learned to prioritize my own desires, ambitions, and pleasures, because for all the ways that they might reflect how men talk about us in their rhymes, these women are also adding a key piece of nuance that these niggas would rather everyone overlook: women,