Why Don’t Women Face the Music Degrading Them?

It’s Thursday night at Glam Slam, a cavernous, downtown dance club owned by music superstar Prince. D.J. Dannie (Fut) James is on the turntables, and the music is bumping, punctuated by the repetition of a one-word lyrical exclamation:

“BITCH!!!”

The song is a months-long favorite around the dance club and party circuit, a little ditty called “Bitch Better Have My Money.” It’s guaranteed to fill a dance floor.

“BITCH!!!”

Fut has worked up a special mix, dropping in artist AMG’s one-word teaser over the beat before playing the complete lyrics. The crowd now swirling on the expansive parquet floor is a mixed bunch, some white, some Latino, some Asian, some black.

“BITCH!!!”

Shauna Ryder, a tall, attractive 24-year-old medical student at the University of Michigan is doing a polite shuffle with a guy dressed in a serious, six-button gray suit, tie and freshly shined loafers. He smiles at her, she smiles back.

AMG is into his lyrical run now, giving his unique take on the female gender and how he relates to them.

“A ‘ho’ is a ‘ho’ and a bitch is a bitch is a bitch . ...”

Amy Smith, 25, a certified public accountant and tax consultant from North Hollywood, is dancing a frenzy in the middle of the throng--big smile, wide moves, her blond ponytail flailing back and forth. Over in a corner, Stacy Beverly, 25, a traffic supervisor for an advertising agency, and her friend, Yvette Shelton, 27, a “hair designer,” are nursing their drinks and bobbing their heads to the beat.

“I don’t charge by the inch, I charge by the foot. And if you don’t believe me, just come take a look . . . . “

And as the song reaches its refrain, women throughout the club begin to mouth the lyrics:

“Bitch better have my money. Bitch better have my money.”

*

Before the weekend is over, thousands of proud mothers and daughters at clubs and house parties throughout Southern California will merrily bounce to the beat of a plethora of songs in which they are referred to as bitches and whores.

Before the summer is over, thousands more women will have crowded the concert stage for such performers as Ice-T, 2 Pac, Warrant and Motley Crue so they can be lauded as one-dimensional boy toys, sexual freaks and lower life forms.

Women will request tunes on local radio stations that refer to them as “rump shakers” and buy cassettes and compact discs that laud men who “keep their ‘ho’s in check.”

I came to the Glam Slam to find out why so many women tolerate, even subsidize, music that openly degrades them.

Sharon, our medical student, has now taken up a position next to the bar alongside her sister, a UCLA student.

“I think it reflects badly on women,” she says of the song, “It’s like a pimp talking to a prostitute.”

So, why were you dancing to it?

“I didn’t want the guy I was dancing with to think I stopped because I didn’t like him. It’s not that big a deal.”

Amy is upstairs, huddled with two friends, trying to figure out if my request for an interview is merely a clumsy come-on.

“It’s weird, degrading,” she says, “but I was having fun. There’s a lot of songs that are racist, prejudice. Look at ‘Cop Killer.’ ”

I note that police officers across the nation had raised quite a fuss about that song by rapper Ice-T.

I’ve got a feeling you won’t find too many police officers loading up on Ice-T tapes, nor bopping across a dance floor to “Cop Killer,” I say. She just shrugs her shoulders, slides out of the booth and heads back to her table.

“I don’t have a problem with it at all,” says Stacy, seeming almost offended by the question. “It’s nothing but words in a song. They’re not talking about me.”

“Yeah,” chimes in her friend Yvette. “If it’s not referring to you, it doesn’t matter. These bitches that’s out here dancing ain’t even like that. They just want to dance.”

*

Obviously, lots of women are offended by such lyrics. They don’t understand why any woman would dance to such music. Neither do the male DJs. “Hey man, you play those records, and they just run to the dance floor,” said DJ Douglas Gibbs, who was visiting Fut at Glam Slam. “They love it. I don’t know why, but they do.”

The men dancing with the women didn’t understand, either.

“Don’t ask me to explain,” says Marcus. “Who knows how bitches think?”

Fut is now deep into another record. It’s the flip side of “Bitch Betta Have My Money.” He says that when he first listened to it, he figured he’d never play it because of the lyrics, but then women in the clubs kept requesting it.

It’s called, “Janine, ‘The (male genital) Fiend.’ ”