Ain’t I
Lizzo
By Natalie Silver
I’m in the backseat of a beat-to-shit 2001 Mustang convertible with the top down—the only automobile that could convey the truth that “Yeah I’m a tourist but I also live here now”—blasting through the technicolor backside of Hana’s fairyland. Justice, our shirtless 17-year-old driver and the human embodiment of “shaka,” drifted every corner and honked at tourists.
The sun was setting, the rain had stopped, and shitty fucking trap music was playing at full volume. In other words, I was almost in paradise.
Maui boy, who is kindly driving us through his homeland, lights a joint and passes it to Charlotte, my best friend from college and fellow shave ice connoisseur, who then passes it back to me.
I’m the type of person who “hates weed” but will 100% take a hit if you pass me the J. So in other words, I’m the worst type of human that exists ever.
I inhale, taking in my surroundings. We’re whizzing through electric greens,deep blues and blotches of citrus neons that blur into every cloudy exhale when the bass drops one too many times and I snap into a moment of existential dissociation.
I gather myself and assess my current situation. I was months deep into a (temporary) phase of college drop-out nomadic bliss, shaving ice for a living and hanging out with local boys during every moment in between. We were listening to some shit trap playlist, which eventually morphed into Kendrick’s entire discography, played in reverse chronological order. But I couldn’t have told you any of that at the time.
“Who’s this?” I ask in the most stoned way possible, attempting to change the music using my “charm” instead of my words.
“WHO IS THIS?!” My de-facto Mom and Dad screamed from the front seat, Charlotte literally face-palming.
Justice accelerates and barks, “YOU, my friend, are uncultured swine.” He reaches for the volume knob and cranks it to the right with the same intensity and focus that he exhibited while drifting turns.
Whatever. I tried for the next hour to like Kendrick. I tried to love Kendrick actually, and maybe that was my problem, because I just couldn’t. To be honest, he was annoying me—pulling me out of paradise rather than enhancing it, reminding me of pseudo-intellectual fuckboys that I’ve fucked with too many damn times before. And quite frankly, I was over it. Why do you think I left the mainland in the first place? Crucify me. Call me a fascist. I don’t know what to tell you. I want to hear a female fucking voice.
I keep my mouth shut as the sun sets and Kendrick blabs in my ear “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe.” The word “IRONY” is branding itself into my frontal lobe while Charlotte and Justice manage to simultaneously roast me and jack Kendrick off in the same, never-ending and redundant conversation.
The outside world is getting darker, as is my own. My eyes were closed and my aperture to the outside world creaked smaller and smaller. Suddenly, the beat changes and they flutter open.
“What is this??” I asked, breaking my 80-minute vow of silence.
“Lizzo…duh,” Justice says smugly, as he turns the volume up and up and up…
And just like that, paradise came flooding back with the 30-year-old hip-hop artist’s maniacal beats and vocal richness.
I was hearing “Ain’t I,” a single off her 2015 album Big Grrrl Small World which acted as the critical link I needed to eventually understand and enjoy modern hip-hop (including fucking Kendrick—who, by the way, I eventually grew to love and appreciate). I needed a voice that combined the gangster rap conventions and style that I trusted with an artistic range that yields transgression into pop, R&B, soul, and contemporary hip-hop. Basically, I needed a killer to guide me into some of the softer stuff, because I’m the type of girl who claims to hate weed. In other words, I’m pretentious.
“Ain’t I” is laced in tenacity and melody, perfectly lubricating my psyche into a state of perpetual island bliss. I welcomed the track into my fantasy as I continued to float down the backside of the island.
Lizzo became the perfect fairy godmother to me, guiding my exploration of contemporary hip-hop and pop music, and drawing my attention to the intersection of soul and old school tenacious hip-hop with poppy melodies and sugar-sweet runs. Lizzo is a quintessential embodiment of this 21st century phenomenon, brilliantly delivering feminist lyrics in all forms—from explicit “fuck you’s” directed at problematic men to seemingly superficial inflations of the self that, when striking the right chord, actually render a feminist and highly intellectual reading.
It is not necessary, or even productive, to throw around social justice rhetoric, cite intersectionality or deliver militant dissertations about why women have been oppressed to empower listeners. Lizzo’s method is badass; in her success, tenacity and sneakily earnest words she lifts herself up and bashes those who are foolish enough to pose obstacles to that process. She savagely—both implicitly and explicitly—tells women that being confident and image-oriented is something to celebrate and validate others for if it makes you feel like a queen.
So yeah, I do strongly believe that lines such as “I be drippin' so much sauce/ Gotta been lookin’ like RAGÚ” are more digestible and accessible to younger women and to the general public than reading Judith motherfucking Butler!
And she can fucking SING! In the song’s second act, where she sinks into the line, “It don’t matter how deep your pockets are,” she briefly slips into a wholesome, lullaby-esque refrain, seducing the listener with her gospel and then transitioning into a psychedelic outro back into the aggressive “A” section of the song. She ends with the sneering title line, “Ain’t I a woman?”
The ending is savage and aggressive. She repeats it until the song fades out, which on a subliminal level represents the underlying anger and feminist voice that is consistently muted by external forces. This is a narrative that all women can share.
The aggression of her delivery, despite a global fade-out, questions this metaphoric boundary and this existential silence. She sonically pushes the threshold of vocal liberation, and in doing so, lures in everyone who wants to hear whatever else she was going to say, including me. I was hooked.
The two eclectic sections of “Ain’t I” represent the dichotomous genres shaping her unique and genre-transcendent sound that morphs millefleur and lullaby with raw, hard gangster rap—an experience that captivated me in a moment of unusual disenchantment.
“AIN’T I A WOMAN?” she absolutely demands, and I bowed down as the curtain closed on my introduction to my new favorite female rapper.
Bobbing my head as violently as a white girl in a bikini can, I smile and settle back into paradise. Laughing, Justice passes me the joint again, muttering with a smile, “uncultured…fucking…swine.”
Inhaling I roll my eyes and realize…I have a lot to learn.
January 3, 2019