Sexyy Red is to testing limits what lox is to a toasted bagel.
Last weekend, the St. Louis rapper posted a video to her 3.5 million Instagram followers showing her, with a pregnant belly, bending over for a photo as a man – presumably a fan – buries his face in her butt.
“My bad if my booty stank,” she says before busting out in a laugh.
Whenever Red pops up, I feel two very disparate emotions at once: An appreciation for a young Black woman living her (presumed) unencumbered truth and a desire to spray my phone with ammonia.
The 25-year-old is currently at the head of a newer subgenre of Black women rappers peddling so-called “Pussy Rap,” a brand of wildly sexually explicit Hip-Hop over trap beats. Popular Pussy Rappers include Latto and Glorilla, who lean more strongly into raunch than, say, Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion or Nicki Minaj.
But even in Pussy Rap, Red and her homie — reality television star Sukihana – exist on the extreme end. And folks are here for it – Red’s “Pound Town 2” was a Billboard Hot 100 earworm last summer. Suki and Red have remained ubiquitous over the last year in large part because of social media: both have millions of followers on Instagram and TikTok.
Their lyrics and antics have stoked the old (and somewhat tired) conversation of whether artists like them are stewards of Black female empowerment or if they’re contributing to the “destruction” of the Black community.
The impact of rappers on the Black community is a conversation that’s existed since I was a kid. There was C. Delores Tucker versus Tupac Shakur and any number of (mostly white) politicians – including Vice President Dan Quayle and Al Gore’s wife Tipper – who crowed loudly about the destructive nature of “gangsta rap.” Baby Boomers clutched their pearls tightly at the likes of Adina Howard and Lil’ Kim, who unabashedly flaunted their sexuality and skin.
As teenager in the 1990s, I rolled my eyes at the stodgy old gatekeepers of Black respectability while bumping my music with Parental Advisory stickers. I still feel that Hip-Hop’s freedom of expression should go unmolested, but something feels different about Sexyy Red and Sukihana.
It could be that their whole career purpose is to demonstrate to the world their unabashed ratchetry without any true artistry. At least Lil’ Kim could rap, and her debut album “Hard Core” still rides after 27 years.
Red and Suki’s song “Hood Rats” is lowest common denominator rap: No meaningful bars or rhyme scheme…just two women bragging about being hoes over a beat that you’ll forget about before your brush your teeth at night.
Also, social media has provided these women something the rappers of yesteryear didn’t have: unlimited access to say and post objectively stupid shit. I empathize with my friends with young Black daughters who express concern at the ability to counter the foolishness.
Sexyy Red is so egregious in her hoodrat-sex-bomb persona that she’s been dubbed an “industry plant” from people who believe that (white) record executives use her as a tool to consciously tarnish the reputation of Black women – which, if true, is an entirely different conversation.
But while many believe these women take it “too far,” there’s an argument to be made that they’re leveling the patriarchal playing field that has allowed men to record and perform highly sexualized lyrics unchecked for eons. Shanita Hubbard’s 2022 book, “Ride or Die: A Feminist Manifesto for the Well-Being of Black Women,” explores this issue of Hip-Hop’s history of policing the sexuality of Black women.
Defenders of Red and her ilk also point out that white women are afforded more space to be sexually overt without negative consequences. Kris Jenner literally built a billion-dollar mainstream empire off of her daughter Kim Kardashian’s sex tape; in contrast, Red was attacked for what she insisted was an unauthorized release of her own sex tape.
When discussing “Pussy Rappers,” there’s no avoiding the topic of respectability politics – specifically, concern regarding how white people perceive us and our behavior. If I had any say in the matter, we’d leave that shit right here at the top of 2024.
If Suki walking in front of London’s Buckingham Palace yelling that she wants to “eat a n****s ass” and get “her c****ie scratched” makes you pinch the bridge of your nose, I get it. But I sure hope it’s not because you’re concerned about what the British Crown – or the O.G. colonizers – think about Black folks. Because, respectfully, f**k them.
To Hubbard’s point, we tend to castigate Black women for their behavior before we come for the men who weaponize it. Men love to point to so-called “hoes” as reasons to mistreat Black women or dedicate entire podcasts to expressing how they think a “respectable” woman should comport herself.
Our feelings about it notwithstanding, Sukihana and Sexyy Red made a conscious decision to get on all fours and be walked like dogs by their weaves by rapper NLE Choppa for his “Slut Me Out” video. However, Suki did not consent to being force-kissed by YK Osiris in public.
The onus will always be on parents, educators and elders to teach boys and young men to never disrespect a woman’s agency, regardless of how “loose” she’s perceived.
Whether these women – or any of the explicit rappers before them — are detrimental to the Black community is ultimately a matter of subjectivity. But if I had to back a campaign to improve the well-being of Black people, it would focus on the racial wealth gap, the Black achievement gap, racist laws and the a**holes who pass them, persistent structural racism in healthcare and actual gun violence – not Sexyy Red and her love of analingus.
The Sexyy Reds and Sukihanas of the world don’t have to be cancerous to Black people if we do what we need to prioritize education and uplift positive role models. You can’t control what media your child consumes 24 hours a day, but you have the power to convey messages in your home to counteract the foolishness.
Essentially, if your young daughter scoffs at the idea of getting pregnant by a random dude with an ankle monitor and bragging about it on Instagram, you’ve helped uplift the Black community and done your job as a parent. Bravo.