Jay-Z: The Death of an American Pimp

"Me give my heart to a woman? Not for nothin, never happen, I'll be forever mackin'." - Jay-Z "Big Pimpin"

Over the last five years a seismic shift has happened in rap, but it's happened so gradually, so subtly, that even most hardcore hip-hop heads haven't noticed. Jay-Z, a man who was once the most successful "pimp" rapper of all-time, has become completely and totally handcuffed.

To understand what a big deal this actually is, we first need to truly comprehend the scale of Hova's change from consummate pimp to loving and faithful husband. From the time "Reasonable Doubt" dropped to the release of "Kingdom Come" a decade later, the overwhelming majority of Hova tracks contained at least one reference to his "fuck 'em and leave 'em' approach to the opposite gender. Jay'z pimpery might not have been as serious as Pimp C's or Too Short's, but it was, without down, what he was known best for to the general populace.



Fast forward to 2011 and we're living in a world where Jay made it through an entire album (an entire album!) without a single truly misogynistic statement. Forget the pimpin, forget the women he fucks, Jay doesn't even so much as mention how many women want to fuck him. The man's turned oddly asexual. While Kanye's littering the album with references to knocking boots with women in mall bathrooms, Jay's crafting uplifting, female-empowered rhymes - even on a track called "That's My Bitch":



"But why all the pretty icons always all-white?
Put some colored girls in the MOMA
Half these broads ain’t got nothing on Wyldna
Don’t make me bring Thelma in it
Bring Halle, Bring Penelope and Selma in it
Back to my Beyoncés, you deserve three stacks word to Andre
Call Larry Gagosian
You belong in museums, you belong in vintage clothes crushing the whole building."

Five years ago Jay could spit a line like "But you really gotta ride nice dick / work them hips and the head's priceless" on "I Just Wanna Love U" and I would have barely noticed. But now he closes that "That's My Bitch" verse with, "Now shoo children, stop lookin’ at her t*ts / Get your own dog, ya heard / That’s my b**ch," my first thought was, "Did he just call Beyonce a bitch? She's gonna make him sleep on the couch for that one." My how times have changed.

To be clear, this is no small change. We're talking about the most powerful rapper in history, period, completely dropping the major topic that first gained him fame. That would be like if Snoop completely stopped rapping about smoking weed, if Game stopped rapping about the Bloods, if Kanye stopped rapping about himself. That's what's happened here, and we barely noticed.

There closest equivalent would have to be Eminem's sharp decrease in drug references (which we just discussed) but even the situations are exactly parallel. Em stopped rapping about strapping entire sheets of LSD to his forehead because he repeatedly almost died of an overdose. By contrast Jay's broken vow to "never give my heart to a woman" was completely his choice. Other rappers, like the aforementioned Snoop, have gotten married and had kids, but they've continued to flood their songs and videos with references to groupies and hos. Not Mr. Carter - the man's obviously made a conscious and deliberate decision to drop all forms of pimpin. In fact, Jay-Z only makes conscious and deliberate decisions.

So what happened? At the most optimistic the man actually not only fell in love to one of the most beautiful and successful women on the planet, but he fell in love with a woman whose tolerance for mistreatment is only slightly above zero. At the most pessimistic, he realized that pimpin was bad business. If he wanted to sit down with Warren Buffet go to dinner at the White House he needed to be a family man. As always, the truth probably contains a bit of both.

In other words, the man grew up. He became a man, which is a blessing - too much of rap is stuck in a perpetual adolescence. I'm truly happy that he's married, and as a father myself happy that he'll soon be a father, but some part of my hip-hop soul mourns the passing of Jay-Z's pimp rhymes. They're dead, and I don't think they're ever coming back.

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