How NWA’s ‘A Bitch Iz a Bitch’ impacted Lupe Fiasco: “This is why I don’t trust women”
‘A Bitch Iz a Bitch’ hasn’t quite made it into the poetry hall of fame yet, but NWA’s 1987 track has made its way into Lupe Fiasco’s subconscious.
The Chicago rapper – real name Wasalu Muhammad Jaco – revealed in an interview with Pitchfork that ‘A Bitch Iz a Bitch’ impacted his adult relationships with women in ways that he only recently has come to understand.
Lupe recalled that as a kid, he would ride around with friends in cars, listening to the song and vibing to it. “This song’s hot! This is why I don’t trust women!” he and his friends would exclaim, enjoying the energy and entertainment of the music. Lupe didn’t really recognise how ingrained the lyrics were getting in him.
Fast forward to 2006, when Lupe was working on his debut album, Food & Liquor, and things started to look a little different. “I had [an] epiphany two months ago”, he told the interviewer. “I was going around bumping NWA and I was like, this is why I don’t trust women, why I be really weird about approaching women!”
The penny finally dropped about the song he had enjoyed as a youngster, and his adult attitude towards the opposite sex. “I don’t know if I can trust [women], because Ice Cube told me when I was eight that they’re skeezers and I can’t trust them!” Lupe explained.
In his reflection, Lupe has been careful to recognise that the song is talking about some women, not all women. Yet, that nuance also contributed to his mistrust. “Not all women, some women, but you don’t know who those are. So this opened the door for that distrust”, he said.
Of course, Lupe doesn’t think that NWA purposely set out to damage listeners’ perceptions of women. “I don’t think it’s intentional; I just think it’s one of those things”. For Lupe, it’s a bigger topic about how media shapes developing minds and how it’s often not until kids mature that they fully understand what they’ve been consuming – and sometimes at that point, it’s too late.
The most important thing, though, according to Lupe, is to use those reflective moments as an opportunity to examine other aspects of your personality and worldview – which is exactly what he’s done.
“I go back to all this to see what got me the way that I am”, he said. “What you raised on and what you ingest as a youngster, it really affects you when you grown up in really subtle, long drawn-out ways”.
Did the rapper think that he could ever address his experience with the likes of Ice Cube and Too Short? No. “It ain’t like, ‘Hey Ice Cube, when you made ‘A Bitch Iz a Bitch’ when I was eight years old, that’s all I listened to, and I really think that that’s probably now why I can’t trust women’”, Lupe said. “It really doesn’t go down like that; you just say, ‘Hey what’s up?’”.
So, while Lupe Fiasco may never be able to trust women again, thanks at least in part to NWA’s music, he has contributed to a wider conversation about the influence of hip hop on young minds. Moreover, how artists can impact listeners in ways that they don’t (and may never) realise.