Instead of boycotting Yung Miami's 'Spend Dat,' just share and listen to better music
India Arie has a point about worldwide views on Black women, but the lyrics don't always influence the listener
As a teenager, there have been multiple music memories that have affected my personality and my take on respect. Interestingly, none of the people who formed those views know (or recall) that they did it (unless they read this post).
Memory #1: When I was about to turn 12 years old, I was persistent about my older brother buying me Snoop Doggy Dogg’s “Doggystyle” album, which was released a couple of weeks later. He didn’t verbally say anything, but the expression on his face showed his discomfort. I was confused. This was the same guy who crooned along to NWA’s “Automobile” the year before. How could this album be any worse? He did eventually buy it for me after constant nagging, but he handed it to me like a plate of chitterlings. I listened to it in full one time, cringed through most of the lyrics and never listened to it in full again.
Memory #2: I made a joke in front of my mother and my brother’s then-girlfriend, loudly saying, “We don’t love them hoes.” Although my mother raised an eyebrow, she didn’t respond. However, the look of disgust on my brother’s girlfriend’s face (who was only six years older than me but didn’t listen to much rap and probably never heard “Gin and Juice”) made the smile fall from my face. As far as I can remember, I haven’t called anybody a “ho” before or after that moment — if I exclude dancing to Frank Ski’s “Whores In This House” dance mixes.
Memory #3: A high school friend of mine was in the habit of making up wild names for her friends. We had a mutual friend named Angel who she renamed “Angel-ho.” She changed my name to “Slutmontiel.” The irony is these names couldn’t have been less deserved. I was a virgin until I was 20 years old, but the friend (who was sexually active) thought this was hysterical. Because of Memory #2, I returned to school the next day and put a stop to the friend calling us these names. She thought I was overreacting. I didn’t care.
Memory #4: I have no idea who let me hear Akinyele’s and Kia Jeffries’ “Put It In Your Mouth” song, but all of my friends knew it. And I could rap and sing along to all the words, regardless of me having zero clue about the act. And you weren’t going to out-rap me if Whodini’s “I’m a Ho” and “Freaks Come Out At Night” or 20 Fingers and Gillette’s “Short Short Man” came on either, three songs I learned courtesy of hanging around two neighborhood girls who were about five to six years older than me. I’m sure we were singing along to at least one of these songs as we watched cars drive by while sitting on the porch of a neighborhood boy. But then one of my buddies asked the guy if she could see his penis. Clear out of nowhere. I almost needed a neck brace from whipping my head around to look their way. The look of discomfort on his face made me and the third friend insist that our buddy chill out after she repeated the same question three more times.
I could keep going with music memories that didn’t match my lifestyle, but you get the idea. No matter what lyrics I was listening to, absolutely nothing I heard made me want to do anything in any of these songs. My real life was more like a sitcom.
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In fact, I still remember sitting on the floor in front of my locker and a particularly popular football player leaning over and kissing me on the lips. I could’ve floated into the clouds at this very G-rated moment that was more like an episode of “Blossom” or “Moesha” — all while I was singing and rapping lyrics filthier than a sewer.
I wasn’t even claiming to be doing anything in the lyrics. I just liked various types of hip-hop. But if someone were to ask me who did I actually act and dress like at that age, I was a combination of MC Lyte and Missy Elliott. In the last two years of college (and dropping from a size 12 to a size 6), I got a little experimental with fashion like Eve.
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Still, both boys and grown men gave me a certain amount of respect (in my neighborhood, partially because of my older brother lurking nearby). However, boys in elementary school, high school and even college who didn’t know my brother were still respectful to me 99% of the time — give or take the 1% of idiots who met me once and got a mouthful the millisecond I felt disrespected. No matter what I was rapping, I didn’t give off the kind of energy that would convince someone I meant the lyrics literally.
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India Arie didn’t ask for a Yung Miami boycott but sorta got one anyway
I thought of these memories recently after hearing a take from the “Joe Budden Podcast” and “Mornings With Mero” about the India Arie boycott of Yung Miami’s song “Spend Dat.” I was confused about why India Arie kept calling it the “song of the summer” when I'd never heard it.
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The way she was talking about it, the song should’ve been blasting as much as “Blurred Lines.” So I watched the “Spend Dat” video and listened to the words to see what I’d been missing. It sounded like every other rap from a handful of today’s femcees whose whole brand is T&A (i.e., strip music beats with titties-and-ass-dominant lyrics).
But considering the songs I used to memorize as a child, Yung Miami’s song was annoying, materialistic … and much tamer. Boycotting this song (even though India Arie claimed she wasn’t asking for a boycott while voluntarily singling this song out) felt several decades too late.
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Is Yung Miami’s “Spend Dat” my type of rap?
Would I listen to “Spend Dat” twice? Absolutely not. I only watched half of the video before I grew bored and switched to watching an Ali Siddiq comedy skit. Am I boycotting “Spend Dat”? Not really.
When I think of a boycott, I think of a topic I'm going out of my way to vocally oppose. For example, I started boycotting Target long before Trump’s second term. I boycotted Amazon for over a decade before giving the e-commerce platform a second shot (and ironically becoming an Amazon Affiliate). But I cannot officially boycott an artist I was never listening to in the first place. Right now, if someone offered me a briefcase of money in exchange for rapping a City Girls song, my checking account balance would remain the same.
So what changed? Why was I so into music like hers (or worse) before but not as an adult?