The reports were wrong: even the birth of his baby daughter will not stop Jay-Z from using the world "bitch". And it appears the rapper is not the author of the widely circulated poem about Blue Ivy Carter, in which the writer says: "Before I got in the game, made a change, and got rich/ I didn't think hard about using the word b*tch/ I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it/ Now with my daughter in this world I curse those that give it."
The poem, initially attributed to Jay-Z, was actually written by the blogger Renee Gardner on 10 January. Three days after it was posted at Rolling Out, Perez Hilton brought it to wider attention on his own blog. "Jay-Z Swears Off 'B*tch' for Blue Ivy!" he wrote. He did not give a source.
Soon the story was picked up by the Daily Mail, NME and New York magazine. The Guardian covered it, too. But when E! News asked Jay-Z's representatives for comment, the answer was unequivocal. "A source close to the rapper's camp [said] the poem in question is not by Jay-Z," it reported. "No word how the lyrics made it online, but it wasn't from the rap mogul." Another denial came via a tweet from the Roots' leader, ?uestlove: "This just in: [Jay-Z] to me.
Some TIME writers and I combed through the lyrics to Jay-Z’s 15 studio albums (both solo and collaborative) and this is what we’ve found: 109 out of 217 songs contain the word “Bitch.” That’s 50.2% of Jay-Z’s entire lyrical output. Hova’s bitchiest album appears to be 1998’s Vol 2…Hard Knock Life, on which 71% of the songs feature the newly illicit B-word. On the song “Paper Chase,” he even took the women-as-dogs metaphor a step further with the line “Greyhound bitch, stay down bitch.”
There are, of course, countless ways the word can be used, and to varying degrees of offensiveness. To simplify things, all uses of “bitch” were treated equally in our lyrical survey. For example, Jay-Z’s 1996 debut Reasonable Doubt included commonplace phrases such as “Life’s a bitch” and others as rude as “If your leg’s broke bitch, hop on your good foot.”
While I appreciate Jay-Z’s newfound feminism (if it is indeed true), I don’t know how he’s going to avoid using the word if he wants to keep performing his old material. He could just bleep it out, I guess, but that’s not very helpful; we’d still know what he meant. No, Jay-Z will have to find an apt replacement to fit every lyric. That must be the 100th problem he’s been trying to avoid.
The poem, initially attributed to Jay-Z, was actually written by the blogger Renee Gardner on 10 January. Three days after it was posted at Rolling Out, Perez Hilton brought it to wider attention on his own blog. "Jay-Z Swears Off 'B*tch' for Blue Ivy!" he wrote. He did not give a source.
Soon the story was picked up by the Daily Mail, NME and New York magazine. The Guardian covered it, too. But when E! News asked Jay-Z's representatives for comment, the answer was unequivocal. "A source close to the rapper's camp [said] the poem in question is not by Jay-Z," it reported. "No word how the lyrics made it online, but it wasn't from the rap mogul." Another denial came via a tweet from the Roots' leader, ?uestlove: "This just in: [Jay-Z] to me.
Some TIME writers and I combed through the lyrics to Jay-Z’s 15 studio albums (both solo and collaborative) and this is what we’ve found: 109 out of 217 songs contain the word “Bitch.” That’s 50.2% of Jay-Z’s entire lyrical output. Hova’s bitchiest album appears to be 1998’s Vol 2…Hard Knock Life, on which 71% of the songs feature the newly illicit B-word. On the song “Paper Chase,” he even took the women-as-dogs metaphor a step further with the line “Greyhound bitch, stay down bitch.”
There are, of course, countless ways the word can be used, and to varying degrees of offensiveness. To simplify things, all uses of “bitch” were treated equally in our lyrical survey. For example, Jay-Z’s 1996 debut Reasonable Doubt included commonplace phrases such as “Life’s a bitch” and others as rude as “If your leg’s broke bitch, hop on your good foot.”
While I appreciate Jay-Z’s newfound feminism (if it is indeed true), I don’t know how he’s going to avoid using the word if he wants to keep performing his old material. He could just bleep it out, I guess, but that’s not very helpful; we’d still know what he meant. No, Jay-Z will have to find an apt replacement to fit every lyric. That must be the 100th problem he’s been trying to avoid.
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