Love Again

Is it the artist’s job to protect his/her work from gross misinterpretation?

“Yet every writer learns over a lifetime to be tolerant of the stupid inferences that are drawn from literature and the fantasies implausibly imposed upon it,” argued Phillip Roth, a great novelist (wrongly) called by many a great misogynist. Is Junot Diaz an objectifier of women because his characters objectify women? Does Francis Ford Coppola condone violence because his films inspired people to commit violent acts?

The answer to these questions, of course, is no. But what about rappers, whose lyrics sometimes read more like diary entries than artistic statements? I’d argue that to interpret lyrics as biographical and to take anything at face value would be to ignore the artistry of rap music. Take the song “Love Again” off Run The Jewels’ excellent album from last year, for example. In the song, El-P and Killer Mike exchange sexually explicit and degrading lyrics (“I will never condescend / Now spread yourself,” “Do you ask him pretty please / Do you crawl on hands and knees / Like you used to do for me / Oh, you such a dirty girl”) before launching into the chorus, “I put that dick in her mouth all day / She got that (dick in her mouth all day) / She take that (dick in her mouth all day).” If you were to pause the song midway, you might take El-P and Killer Mike for vile misogynists. But you’d be wrong. For the next verse and chorus, in which guest rapper Gangsta Boo one-ups her peers in terms of sexual gratuity and lewdness, cleverly inverts the stereotype of woman as mere pleasure provider. She raps, “He had a lot of bad bitches in his past / But I was the one who turned that boy into a motherfuckin’ man,” just like the countless rappers who brag of stealing a girl’s prized virginity—before launching into her own version of the boys’ chorus: “He want this clit in his mouth all day / He want this clit in his mouth all day (Yeah, ho!).”