Objectify This

Saturday night’s Mos Def concert was punctuated by frequent samples to highlight the talents of Mos’ DJs. One of the samples they chose was the bouncy blues of Ray Charles’ “I Got A Woman” (click for an audio-only experience; this was pre-MTV). A girl behind me bopping her head to the beat, was trying to place the reference. “Oh, yeah, Kanye West uses this song, too, doesn’t he?”

In fact, he does. But it gets twisted in the retelling. While Charles’ tune is a homily to “a woman, way over town, who’s good to me, oh yeah,” Kanye’s, entitled “Gold Digger“, is about, as Wikipedia would have it, “an exploitative woman who dates wealthier men as a pretense for gaining access to their riches”. West’s version switches Charles’ lyrics “she gives me money when I’m in need/ she’s a kind of friend, indeed,” to sing about a woman who “takes my money, when I’m in need, /oh, she’s a triflin’ friend, indeed.”

Kanye’s number one single, which Wikipedia dubs his “signature song”,
goes further than simply condemning this one woman (if it is one woman; the music video I link to above is full of potential trifling friends) who is its antagonist to relaying the story of “somebody payin’ child support for one of his kids . . .You will see him on TV on any given Sunday,/Win the Superbowl and drive off in a Hyundai. ” The song switches to the second person, generalizing the experience to the audience: “She was spose’ to buy ya shorty Tyco with ya money/She went to the doctor to get lipo with ya money,” and a few lines later, West has arrived at the imperative: “if you ain’t no punk, holla ‘we want prenup!’/We want prenup! Yeah!”

The gradual generalization of the experience of dating a gold digger is thus enacted over the course of the song, from the speaker’s story to a third party to the audience collectively. Kanye takes a break at the end of each chorus to address the girl: “get down girl go head get down (I gotta leave)” At the beginning of the third verse, West proceeds to advise women to see that their boyfriend is going to

“make it to a Benz out of that Datsun, he got that ambition, baby, look in his eyes This week he’s mopping floors, next week it’s the fries, So, stick by his side, I know his dude’s ballin’ but yeah, that’s nice And they keep callin’ and tryin’, But you stay right, girl But when you get on he leave your ass for a white girl.”

The implication of this (admittedly, probably parodic) directive to women not to assess their partners’ potential to provide for them – the social capital that men are taught is valuable in making them attractive to partners- is coupled with a cruel reminder of the white standard of beauty which dictates the social capital possessed by each woman. This final surprise ‘turn’ effectively rejects all black women -(white women are assumed not to be part of the audience, apparently, though West’s single features a sexy blonde)- so that even those women who might previously have been able to join in the speaker’s condemnation of women who abuse their partners for money are excluded. The lack of hip-hop directed at women is interesting, considering the amount of women who listen to it. Interested parties might want to investigate Psalm One.