Some things about Remy

(Image taken from -- where else? -- crunk and d)

I wanted to open this post about Remy Ma and her pretty terrific debut album, the just-released There's Something About Remy, with a lyrical quote that succinctly captured her. "I'm such a fuckin' lady," (from "Conceited"), "I ain't hard, these broads is just too easy" (from "Secret Location") and "Suck my dick" (from "She's Gone") were all in the running, but none quite capture her perhaps inconsistent greatness. Blame it on great inconsistency -- if there were just something about Remy, if she were just a girl who rapped about her sex life or just a hard bitch or just a butch complainer, there would be little need to explain her at all. On a daily basis, we're faced with pop acts who fumble and come out lucky if they find one, any dimension (like, could the Pussycat Dolls come up with a collective point even if they were topless in a very, very cold room?). Not as often, but steadily, we're faced with female rappers who revel in their sole dimension, eager to be just anything because just sells and just is accessible and maybe because just is actually kind of easy, if you just resign yourself to suppression.

Not that it's the ladies' fault that the general public has a hard time dealing with women in rap (a man's game, lest we forget) who aren't cartoon hoes or in drag. Not that you can't blame female rappers for seeing that the normal-chick, around-the-way-girl stance will just end up falling on uninterested ears and eyes. Gone are the days of the tough 'n girly, cute 'n sexy females like Salt-n-Pepa or Roxanne Shanté. In the past 10 years, virtually the only two women to come up who didn't use their sexuality as a gimmick or make it a total point of ambiguity, Jean Grae and Rah Digga, have failed to scare up anything but cult followings (Grae seems to have a ride-or-die relationship with the underground and Digga, I believe and am sad about, is currently without a record label).

Yeah, hip-hop's a man's game, so when Remy says "I rap as if I had a dick," on "I'm," it's more defensive than bold (her femininity is excused right up front during Something's intro, when Big Pun explains from the grave that, "Sometimes you gotta send a woman to do a man's job, nahmean? In that case, my girl here like a grown fuckin' man"). But what is bold is the balance Remy strikes with her image -- she goes toe-to-toe with beats strong enough for a man that sound great under a woman (Swizz Beatz' "Whuteva" and LV's "Bilingual" bang particularly hard). Her voice is thick and deep, but she makes it float (she stretches out the words of "Conceited" like she has all the time in the world, and you should, too). She portrays herself as a lover, a fighter, a drug dealer, a hustler, a scorned family member, a flawed woman who's living with her mistakes. Sexuality is a major part of her music and her image, but unlike so many other gruff females, it's completely matter of fact: "We can't even talk if he can't fit a Magnum" is merely tossed between the details of Remy's outfit during the throwback highlight "Lights Camera Action" (between: "Here I am standin' in my b-girl stance / I got my name airbrushed down the leg of my pants / I got my $54.11's and my Kangol on / Bamboo earrings and my bangles on / Yeah, word up, the girl look good / I'm a '80s baby, pain in full / Look at my rope chains, now check my belt buckle / Put my Gazelles on my eye, now I'm lookin' for trouble" and a wardrobe change into an 8-ball jacket and spandex).

The former image may be chuckle-worthy (go back up to the top picture and imagine those thighs wrapped in spandex), but that's key to Remy's personality. It's like her misguidedly two-toned hair -- a sign of the fact that, in Fresh's words, Remy does not give a fuck. And if she does, if nonchalance is a front, then she has her act down. Variety is her aesthetic, and not just in her words:

Or, even better:

Rocking frills with Tims (perhaps the most literal, easiest-to-digest example of the femme-butch balance that Remy consistently achieves), she is no pitbull in a skirt (as the actual pitbull she's walking can attest). She's a real woman, or at least, a character capable of more than a few dimensions. That she poses in a skimpy, jewel-encrusted bikini on the inside of her CD booklet shows that yeah, she can be as sexual as Kim and Foxy, but only once you attempt to know her.

There aren't so many easy answers with Rem, and that's why she's outstanding. You don't get the sense that her interjections of unabashed sexuality are damage control that they tend to become for so many "butch" female rappers. But then, few female rappers come as complex image-wise on their debuts as Remy is. It took years for Missy to even achieve a semblance of sexuality -- she came out looking like an alien, in the entirely asexual trash-bag get-up she wore in "The Rain" video. As the years went by, her lyrics became more explicitly sexual, more man-obsessed as Missy's image softened (though it's interesting that the image she projects in the art of her latest album, The Cookbook, is one of a sort of glamor-butch variety, even as her lyrics are at their most seemingly boy-crazy).

So many female rappers whose sexuality isn't at the forefront of their image when they debut, or who look tougher than women tend to look in pop culture, will undergo a major image overhaul by the release of their third album. Just take a look at Da Brat's progression via her album covers:

From up-to-the-neck to down-to-the-navel.

Or take MC Lyte, another initial up-to-the-necker whose sexuality has been ambiguous since she revealed in her early single "Paper Thin" that she does "not touch until the third or fourth date." She's another who did the tomboy thing during the span of her first two albums . . .

. . . only to start to pretty up for the third ('91's Act Like You Know, which also contained R&B choruses and was led by the up-to-then uncharacteristically romantic single "When in Love"):

Dark and lovely and silky and femmey. But it didn't even stop there -- after Shanté flung insults at just about every relevant female rapper in her '92 single "Big Mama," calling out Lyte's sexuality in homophobic terms ("To me a butch don't deserve a mic in hand / Somebody tell her to stop acting like a man"), Lyte hit back with not just a dis, but the ode to hard boys, "Ruffneck." Transparent as it was, it was Lyte's biggest hit to date at that point.

Even Queen Latifah, who kept a less-than girly image throughout her rap career (even, amazingly, playing a bull dyke in '96's Set It Off, despite it only fueling the constant chatter about her sexuality), went intermittently romantic and man-obsessed starting with her second album.

Artists like Brat, Lyte and Latifah were all young when they started -- at best, the above examples illustrate girls turning into women. Growing up means change, especially when it comes to sexuality and just being comfortable with your body. But still, when previously ignored sexuality is all of a sudden thrust to the forefront of music and image, you wonder how much is expression and how much is put out to quash the rumors, to be more accessible to middle America (it's sort of amazing that these girls are allowed to be as butch as they are upon entry -- is it the major labels they're signed to saying, "OK, be you, but if you aren't multi-platinum in two albums, you're doing it our way"?). Even Eve, who's always mixed hot and rough, looks positively domestic compared to when she debuted on the scene.

It's hard to tell just how much of this informs Remy's music and image, though she does tell us, point blank, that she's "not gay" when she's at a titty bar in her hustling anthem "Secret Location." Remy's there just to get drunk, just to hang with the boys ("See most niggas call a girl when they wanna give a dick / My shorties call me when they wanna get a brick," are the lines that start that track). Regardless, There's Something About Remy is a remarkable balancing act. It's not always great -- the tough beats shift into a monotonous pummeling and start to sag the middle -- but Remy is never less than fascinating. Something has, in fact, so many things -- bangers, gangsta tales, R&B-blessed love joints and, most daringly, confessions (the abortion track, "What's Going On," yet another invocation of Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Mother", is the emotional high point and a total risk, so much so that Grae's similarly themed "Forgive Me" didn't even make it onto her album, and that was released on an indie). I wonder where Remy can go from here, if she can continue to be such a broad broad or if she'll eventually be balled up and tossed as a more easily digestible pill to all the people who won't end up buying Something.

It's a shame, really -- she's practically set up to fail. For now, though, there are, in fact, words of hers to take solace in, words that can wrap up her and her amazing balancing act: "The levels, the levels, the levels is good. The levels is good, the levels is good."

Comments

[Saun]

You know what Rich? I really enjoyed reading this. I couldn't pinpoint why I like Remy Ma even though sometimes I think that she's a mess but I think you figured it out for me. She is who she is. I may just have to check out the cd. And is it just me or does she sometimes resemble Kelis? Check that "something about remy" picture.

[Penny Woods]

It always pissed me off to see female rappers go from tomboy looks to looks that are more feminine, and I'd like to extend that to most of the girl groups I saw growing up including TLC, SWV and Xscape. They came out on the scene with baggy clothes and tomboyish looks, but eventually they wore "sexier" and more revealing clothing. I wish they could have stood up for their looks instead of comforming to some standard created by the media.

And I never knew Remy Ma had a dick.

[Rich]

I considered mentioning TLC, but in their case, I really, really do think it was just them growing up (I mean, even those futuristic "No Scrubs" outfits, even if they showed some skin, were definitely on the cyberbutch side). I don't remember Xscape's progression (though I do remember the caps and bagginess at the start of their career), and I don't know, SWV were sort of the Queen H.A.M.s of their day, I think, channeling the tomboy sense of TLC and the hoochie-glamor of early En Vogue, alike (I remember skin-tight skirts and caps and jerseys in the It's About Time booklet).

But yes, I can see how they all somewhat fit into what I'm talking about -- really, I probably could have gone on for days.

[price]

Why did I even go to college? My guidance counselor should have just said... "wait a few years, there will be a special website for anything you ever need to know."

[lovejoy]

I question whether the initial masculine images of many young, black female stars are entirely of their own doing or are the at the record company's behest, with the artist taking more control of her image as she "proves herself" on the charts. (Although, I must confess that I don't know whether there's a correlation between chart performance and debut of "glam" to support this theory, but please hear me out). There's definitely "an agenda," if you will, by the entertainment industry to thwart the use of feminine, attractive black women and advance the idea that black women are sexually undesirable. Pine Sol Lady, anyone?

But really, have you ever noticed how the extras and bit parts in film, TV, and commercials, when filled with black women, are usually filled with REALLY unappealing black women? ER, Grey's Anatomy, various and sundry clerks, government workers, airport security personnel, orderlies, etc. are more often than not really fat, boisterous, oogly women that you wouldn't want to tangle with, neither in the sheets nor in a dark alley, while their white counterparts tend to be slim and more "socially-accepted as attractive" (but that's a whole other topic).

As a point of reference look to the fat, black, sloppy-bosomed, ham-handed maid of the old Tom and Jerry cartoons and her slim, white, well-groomed counterpart, both shown only from the neck down, to the slim/white--fat/black team of the Reynolds Wrap ladies depicted in commercials today.

That's not to say that this convention isn't evolving a bit -- the likes of Aisha Tyler, Gabrielle Union, and Stacy Dash being chosen for bit parts in CSI, Friends, Grey's Anatomy, etc. and the the interracial best friend "Yoplait women" are a nice example of this standard evolving, but the convention lives on.

So maybe it's less the rap chicks' choice to debut butch than record company executives' prediliction for adhering to a well-established convention, but with a twist --- since most of these young women are very attractive, even outright gorgeous, some of 'em, the easiest way to lower their mainstream sex appeal is to dyke 'em out. I'll even introduce, in closing, the possibility that the execs are so far removed from the psyches of their target audiences that they make misguided assumptions about their sexual tastes.

At any rate, I thank you, Rich, for presenting, for public consumption, such a perspective of young black women in entertainment, let alone such a poignant, thoughtful, well-written one.

[Can't Get Enough]

I'm from the BX so I gotta thank you for this Rich. And even tho I'm tempted to tell the Koreans down the block to stop selling her blonde bangs I figure fuck it. Do you.

she's wack

what kind of cat is winston?

[hypnotic]

this was an analysis and celebration in one great post

i want to distribute this as a flyer

i dont know how much love remy gets in the streets or even on 106 & park but i for one think shes dope

kudos

[Monica C.]

You'd better WRITE.

Damn, you really have TALENT!

I have never even HEARD of Remy and may never hear one of her tracks, but I read every last word of your review because it is so well-written!

If it is not already, your work should definitely be published in someone's widely circulated newspaper. Kudos!

[eliot]

i like that she sideswiped us by naming the album (and shaping the album cover) after an undeniably caucasian sleeper hit from the nineties.

[ezra]

Wow, such an intelligent piece of writing... is someone paying this guy, please? I went to the Remy Ma album release party last night at club exit, and yes, I paid $25 to get in, hoping to get a glimpse of "that bitch" (her words). The party was a dud, maybe the VIP was fun, but I was not a VIP, the club was pretty empty.

Does Remy care about her gay fanbase? Probably not, does she care that i liked the CD so much that i bought 4 copies for friends... maybe? All I know is, her label screwed her, and she even called them out on it as she filled in for Miss Jones in the morning on HOT97 yesterday.

They released the first single "Whuteva", a great song, and a great video. The album was pushed back, the new date was advertised, then pushed back again, "Conceited" was released, with a much lower budget video. And the album dropped yesterday with no ads. I hope she does well, even if it takes another try.

My catchphrase has become "Remy Ma: The best Female rapper thats not in jail or deaf"

monica c really knows her stuff.
rich on a roll, we can't never get enuff.
white in the skin but we wish we was tuff.
music our viens keep it off the cuff.

[Joshua]

This post is fascinating and, being a huge fan of females in the industry (whether pop, rock, R&B or rap) something that flits into my mind quite often.

Here's my thinking - these female hip-hop acts were all basically reflecting their street counterparts at the time when they came out. The baggy, hard, "gangsta" look was what the round-the-way girls were all about in the late 80s and early 90s, and that's what these women at the forefront and in the media's eyes came out sporting. In the mid-90s on, glamor was what was in, more male rappers were flashing the bling, the fur coats, the tailored outfits, and subsequently, so did the female rappers. The older school females either modified their image to suit this new trend, or the new rappers came out looking like high-flying escort hos (Foxy, Kim, etc.)

Another factor I want to bring up is age. It's okay to be wearing the baggy clothing, the tough street clothing when you're a teen or in your early 20s, but once you're in your mid-20s, and you're a female, you're going to look pretty ridiculous strutting around in a baseball cap, baggy patched jeans and an oversized jersey (unless you are being ironic and tongue-in-cheek, the way Missy was [and still can be]).

Finally, one can argue that being in the media spotlight just "refines" one's look. Outside of the rap industry, look at other actors, country singers, TV stars, heck - news anchors, reality TV players - male and female - they all go through the style makebetters after getting the clout, the money, and the scrutiny. It, then, is not really a particular phenomenon strictly in the female rap game.

[Cedric]

God bless you for the pic of LYTE in "Cappuccino." I often wonder if i am the only one that remebers or ever heard that song. Which forced me to question if it were a real or a product of the after effects of post-grade school drug abuse.

Now I know it was not just a dream.

Thank YOu
You've completed me.

Cedric

[Bill]

Very good post, Rich.

Now you should tackle the homothug imagery in R&B and Hip-hop...

AKA the DMX post.

[iv]

Can't echo the kudos loud enough for this post and this site. I'd be embarassed about how into it I am if it wasn't so obvious that I'm not alone.

I guess I agree with Joshua and the last several posts that the the street look at the time these female artists came up plus the inevitable buff-and-polish that comes with life in the spotlight explains a lot of the evolution you're talking about. Damn, that '88 picture of MC Lyte just looks exactly like the kids on the subway looked in '88 tho, doesn't it?

Maybe you can do a follow-up piece, Rich, tracking the same idea but looking at the change in appearance in ads (and the change in products being endorsed). There was this awesomely ghetto ad for a black hair product featuring Destiny's Child circa 1998 on a billboard mounted to a crappy building over around 120th and Park, and it stayed up there, getting all faded and torn, even up to around "Bootylicious"-era DC. If I were smarter and more articulate, I'd say something insightful about capitalism driving all of this.

[Mara]

thoughtful post...are remy's singles getting played at least up north? i live in the bronx, but am in florida a lot and they play nothing down here but extremely mainstream pop, alternative, christian and country...with the occasional ghetto-ass bangers...(i actually miss hot97)

another problem is lack of promotion by the record companies; its as if they sign certain artists but don't bother to "back them" enough to make sure that they do even "ok"...makes no sense at all and is a waste of money on their part...

anyway, love the blog to death, even the project runway reviews!

[Sexyma078]

I mean speaking as a former tomboy that grew up in the same time as most of these artist like missy, tlc, xscape etc., at that time baggy was in not only have these artist grown up but fashion has change there was no sych thing as stretch jeans until like 98,99 so we wore what was in , but also at some point you become a women you see the feminity of yourself for years i only wore lipgloss not i have a make up bag the size of a suitcase i grew up i saw how the make up accented my features it became normal so i dont think its anything wrong with these artist evolving sexually we all did unfortunely, or fourtunetly we didn't have to do it in front of the world and be judged by idiots that think that their perfect---emphases on think their perfect cause if we were so content with our lives we wouldn't be so caught up in theirs. ALSO TO WHO EVER WROTE THIS YOU HAVE TO BE GAY OR WHITE BECAUSE SPANDEX LOOKS BEST ON LEGS LIKE REMY MA TAKE FOR INSTANCE LUDACRIS'S LINE FROM HIS FIRST CD 20" THIGHTS MAKE 20" EYES BABY THOSE LEGS ARE THE LEGS MEN WANT THAT WHY YOU SEE THE SISTAS GETTIN ALL THE WHITE BOYS LATELY CAUSE THEY WANT LEGS JUST LIKE REMYS WRAPPED AROUND THEIR HEAD!!!! NOW HOLLA BACK!!!!

[Jenyce]

I don't know if you heard Remy on Wendy Williams yesterday, but I was so impressed with her. She told it like it IS.

[Foxy]

When did she drop the "rtin"? I'm on the fence about Miss Remy - but since you, my love, are so gung-ho, I will check out songs besides the Terror Squad stuff and the singles.

But really...I've been overdosing on the old-school hip-hop lately, and I now realize that "Cha-Cha" is sorely missing from my playlist. So thanks for that.

[erica]

thanks rich. you made my day again. i'm not a big remy ma fan...i just can't get past her ridiculous look. but now i'm going to definintely cop her album as i definitely respect your opinion. we'll see what it brings...

[bob]

what a boring pile of shit that post was.
remy aint nothing but a dirty hood rat with a record contract. NO lyrical content what-so-ever and the only reason why she isnt trying to be sexy is because it couldnt happen no matter how much mac is piled on her ugly face.

youre really bad at critiquing supposed musicians and their image. so take it where back there. please.
check!

[Kim]

Great post Rich! I really enjoyed reading this.

[lamorenaenkobe]

This is a very well-written post. I haven't even bothered trying to listen to anything from Ms. Remy Ma due to her crazy ass appearance. But, now my interest has been piqued. Too bad, I'm in Japan now. Don't know if I can find her CD and if I am willing to pay the high ass price. But, I'll look into it.