Why Sexyy Red rejects your classification: “That’s the only thing that you got?”
Sexyy Red put herself on the map in 2023 with ‘Pound Town’, a song that received attention for the graphic lyric, “My coochie pink, my booty-hole brown.” Many people have classed the song as part of the “pussy rap” wave, which is described as “a subgenre of rap where women embrace their sexual prowess” in the face of “the patriarchy and misogyny.”
However, the 27-year-old (real name Janae Wherry) is determined not to be boxed into something by listeners. Instead, her music covers all of her experiences. She doesn’t want one lyric about her genitals defining her sound.
“I don’t agree with that [classification], because why is that the only thing you heard me talking about?” she told Billboard. “That’s the only thing that you got out of everything I just said? You just heard me say ‘coochie’? I hate when they say that. I just rap about my daily life. Girls that live like me, I just rap about what we go through. I don’t sit and talk about coochie all day.”
Songs like ‘Free My N***a’ are a prime example of lyrics that detail her real life. “When I don’t hear from my n*gga, I write him/ He a bad boy, I don’t care, that’s how I like ’em/ Yeah, free my n*gga ’til it’s backwards/ Fuck the police, fuck the pigs, they some bastards.” Her manager, Dave Gross, says, “Authenticity is self-relative, and for Sexyy, it’s that she’s independent, fierce, strong, unafraid of the world’s opinions and unbowed by backlash.”
‘Pound Town’ has over 38million streams on Spotify and 34million YouTube views. Nicki Minaj was also featured on the remix, ‘Pound Town 2’, which boasts over 77mSpotify streams and peaked at number 66 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
She’s gone from strength to strength since, with songs like ‘Got It Sexyy’, ‘Whatchu Know About Me’ with GloRilla, and ‘Fat Juicy & Wet’ featuring Bruno Mars charting in the top 20. She most recently released her In Sexyy We Trust mixtape in May 2024, which featured Drake on the song ‘U My Everything’. She also joined Drizzy as a support act on his and 21 Savage’s It’s All a Blur Tour, further boosting her popularity.
Speaking to XXL, Sexyy Red shared her thoughts on the public perception of her. “They’re starting to understand me a little bit, but I really don’t care if they don’t because if you get it, you get it. If you don’t, you don’t,” she said. “Whoever meets me and we click, that means they understand me. They understand where I come from.”
She added, “But if you don’t, that means you’re trying to learn or figure it out. But that’ll take you to sit back and see, ‘Why does she act like this? Where does she come from?’ I came from something different from you, so I’m not gonna act the way you act or how you expect me to act. The people that don’t get it, they wasn’t raised like me, so now they gotta figure it out.”