This Female Response to Drake's Hotline Bling Will Make You Twerk With Empowerment
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Drake’s 'Hotline Bling' has recently become fodder for a number of hilarious vines and memes, but one woman has topped everyone by creating a feminist version of the hip-hop ballad.
Cosmopolitan reports that the feminist rendition by Javetta Laster first caught the attention of Buzzfeed and has been shared over 2,000 times on Laster's personal Facebook Page.
It is not known whether Drake is aware of Laster’s version, but the feminist 'Hotline Bling' reignites the conversation of sexist themes and poor women standards in music, especially within hip hop and pop culture.
Oxygen, the television network that specifically targets 18-49 year-old women, ranked the lyrics in "Hotling Bling" as one of Drake's most sexist lyrics. In particular, Oxygen criticized the lyric, "You used to always stay at home, be a good girl." According to Oxygen, the song is simply "slutshaming." They argue that the song implies that there is a certain level of modesty that a woman is expected to maintain and that that modesty is then "policed by the women's whiny ex-boyfriend."
Laster also attempted to point out the sexism in Drake's lyrics by giving them a feminist reboot.
Some lyrics worth noting that Laster changed were:
Drake
Why you never alone/Why you always touching road/Used to always stay at home, be a good girl/You was in the zone, yeah/You should just be yourself/Right now you’re someone else
Laster
You used to stay at home and be someone I saw fitting into patriarchal expectations of women to be infantilized good “girls”/Right now, it seems you are someone else, like maybe you are your actual self and I’m not use to that.
ATTN: attempted to contact Laster but she did not respond in time for publication.
YouTube/DrakeVevo - youtube.comAlthough for years hip hop has faced this kind of backlash and criticism for its unashamed glorification of double standards, misogyny and sexism, women like Laster continue to challenge and promote a much more evolved set of gender norms.
As Jezebel reported, earlier this year a woman began a petition on Change.org to remove New York rapper Action Bronson from the 2015 NXNE Music Festival for his 2011 video depicting him cooking food over a woman's dead body and for another song called, "Consensual Rape."
YouTube/Action Bronson - youtube.comIn a tweet captured by The Atlantic, Bronson downplayed the controversy by encouraging audiences to consider his recent material. "HOW ABOUT THE 9 PROJECTS THAT HAVE COME OUT SINCE? Don't single me out," Bronson said.
Earlier this month ATTN: reported on The Amber Rose SlutWalk, where together with hundreds of people the model defended all those who freely enjoy a promiscuous lifestyle (something that has been considered a cultural taboo for women and not for men).
