If you’re reading this column, you must possess an understanding of the glimmering piece of art that glows in the limelight of strip-clubs and on-campus apartments nationwide (and potentially worldwide). It is this minimalist megahit that involves money, a type of territory and how they flow in an effortless tangent of twerkable genius.
This piece of art is called “Rack City” by Tyga. And it is art, no matter how you define it or choose to exclude it like strip-club anthems have never existed.
This is not the first of its type and it will not be the last. Tyga, government name Michael Ray Nguyen-Stevenson, is not the first artist to dabble in multiple forms of entertainment. But Tyga (an acronym for “Thank You God, Always”) has delved even deeper into his persona to introduce another format of seedy exploitation to his repertoire: RackCityXXX. com. Yes. You can now fire knuckle children courtesy of the guy who made “Coconut Juice” as the protagonist. I bet you forgot that “Coconut Juice” existed. I also know that you forgot he’s Travie McCoy’s cousin, but I digress.
The players are the usual suspect porn stars so sensitively dubbed “Rack City Bitches”. There’s “Rack City, Bitch” merchandising as well: T-shirts right now, but maybe he’ll bring snapbacks back? $99 a year gets you the plane ticket to Rack City and by then it’s too late: you’re enslaved to the familiarity of the DJ Mustard synth line and Tyga’s SAG card is still processing. Then the usual pornography fare occurs and you mute your computer so your House Fellow doesn’t hear since quiet hours started two hours ago.
It’s not unique, but in some ways is, and I think Tyga will merely become another martyr for our sexual insecurities. Thus, the blame game continues.
It only took the site’s initial 110-second trailer to cause my hidden internal feminist to overflow into a torrent of “What the fuck? Why, God? Is this reality?” responses. I’ve swan-dived in the deep blue sea of faux-misogyny humor too many times to count in both public and private settings. And in these settings, among men and women of varying social orientations, that damn “Rack City” art piece has been the proverbial red herring time and again. It’s dispensed as a meaningless sentence enhancer among the intelligent and tolerant. But I honestly wanted this to be a Funny or Die assault on our heartstrings. Or an Onion side joke. Or a rouge for Tyga’s upcoming Adult Video News Awards performance.
But, nah. This shit exists. And it’s not the actual pornography or Tyga that caused my feelings; it’s our collective hypocrisy toward the topic and how it furthers the constant divide.
Porn and hip-hop intersect more frequently than many understand. Snoop Dogg (Lion omitted) won two Adult Video News awards in 2002 for his “Doggystyle” tape being a top seller with a top-notch soundtrack. You know who else has done so? Everyone has, including Ice-T, Too $hort, Mystikal, Uncle Luke, DJ Yella, Kool Keith, the entire G-Unit and (no matter how much you don’t want to claim him) Brian Pumper. Even Kanye mentioned he’d want to go for it, which would probably end up involving a phoenix, a Murcielago, an exotic sofa and John Legend’s eyebrows. This is nothing new, and Tyga’s marketing ploy is just as convenient as it is provocative. We already use “Rack City” as a conversational red herring, we already reinforce the context, and humans love sex. When has morality appeared in your subconscious when you go to Brazzers? Oh. It’s a golden ticket to the Chocolate Factory. Or Tyga’s mansion. Pick a door, chap. (Oh God, unintentional double entendre.)
But here’s where the plot thickens/twerks harder: We can blame Tyga or Snoop or Pumper (#BlamePumper) for being practitioners of the sexist systems in place, but they are not the originators. And until we (consumers, thinkers, political figures, and sexual beings) come to grips with the fact that we provide the market for this trade to continue, we have absolutely no right to be upset. But can we ever stop? I don’t know if we will ever come full circle with our insecurities. Life is contradiction and we are the fallible condemned to our imperfections. We can write theories on sexism and misogyny by day, but we’re still hormonal, New Glarus-slurping scoundrels by 1:26 a.m. when the party hits its peak and The Weeknd hits another off-pitch note about snorting another line of coke.
They will write pieces on this. Feminists will condemn him for utilizing his star power in this conceptually-screwed industry. Fanboys (and maybe fangirls) will defend RackCityXXX. com as its own think piece and champion Tyga for his strategy. And every confused, flawed, in-betweener hip-hop head will wander through this maze of human hypocrisy like we have been for centuries attempting to bring a better balance to the world through our own choices. I just hope you can take a few steps with me as we navigate these cities of racks aimlessly.
And if you choose to step with me, by all means… make it nasty.
Do you think Tyga takes too much heat for his new enterprise or do you think RackCityXXX. com is the root of all evil? Talk to Michael about these issues at mdpenn@wisc.edu.
