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Essential Track: Genesis Be’s ‘Tampons & Tylenol’

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Los Angeles Times Pop Music Critic

This post has been updated. See below for details.

The relentlessly catchy chorus from Genesis Be’s new track “Tampons & Tylenol” isn’t one I expected to be looping in my head all morning. But ever since the Village Voice’s Sound of the City blog posted the video and a Q&A with the Mississippi-born, New York-based rapper, her recently released work has become an earworm obsession.

As witty as it is smart, the track feels like a takedown of all the lunkheaded male posturing that has weighed down the genre over the years, most recently with Kanye West’s base, raw “Yeezus.”

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“When she hear this song, make her body wiggle,” Genesis begins, noting a woman’s movement on the dance floor, her allure, the contours of her body, objectifying her just as a dude would. Then, though, the rapper digs into the dancer’s back story, and creates a three-dimensional human: “She got a lotta ass/But also got a lotta class/Work two jobs, go to class.”

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The chorus is pretty simple: a repetition of the line “tampons and Tylenol” while musically, a crawling, minimal trap jam wiggles and pounds around her.

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Genesis explained the birth of the title to Sound of the City: “My friend and I were at the convenience store looking for tampons and I was upset that I couldn’t find tampons or Tylenol. Going back and forth, I thought they should just package them together. My friend began singing those words together.”

A year later she and the track’s producer, DJ Goodgoose, worked out the track, in which she dismisses fashion culture, the quest for money and competitive nature of rap culture in a few simple couplets: “shine without a name brand/cool without the ice/these boys don’t want to battle/’cause they hear I’m super nice.”

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The best verse, though, is the last, in which Genesis dives into the topic of the title: “I don’t like to waste time, no need for a Rolex/I’d rather spend my money on some Tylenol and Kotex.” She boasts that her music “make the speakers bleed -- I think they need a tampon,” and unveils a choice metaphor: “They say my flow’s heavy so I guess I need a tampon.”

The track has too much cussing to embed, but you can listen to it on YouTube.

Update, June 22, 11:30 a.m.: Genesis Be has released a clean version of “Tampons & Tylenol.” You can listen to it below.

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Follow Randall Roberts on Twitter: @liledit

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