Special Artist Spotlight: In Conversation with Bbymutha (Part 2/2)
Where we last left off, the Chattanooga-born rapper discussed some of the difficulties of being in the industry, like being boxed in by fans and dealing with all the nonsense that comes with social media.
Continuing down this train of thought, I ask Bbymutha to tell us what it was like for her during “the come up,” and whether things have changed.
The rapper says she started rapping “for fake” (her words) during the blog era - a sweet spot in the early digital era before the big labels were able to swoop in and claim authority. For a moment in time, what was “in” was dictated by ordinary people on the internet. Some big names got their renown from this era - think A$AP Rocky, Gucci Mane, Joey Bada$$, even Drake. This era took place before the time period covered on Underground-Archives, but it definitely deserves mentioning as a precursor to the modern internet era of music.
Mutha details the struggles of coming up as a female rapper at that time, reminiscing how producers wouldn’t want to give you a beat because you were a girl. However, she looks back on this era fondly too, because at the time, it was cool to be different. It seemed like that was the “thing” - everybody was trying to be different. Now, she feels female rap has become oversaturated and more “cookie cutter” since those days.
She is concerned that too many people get famous too quickly, and artists are looked at like trend cycles. It is dehumanizing and unsustainable.
“This person might not wanna be a rapper in 10 years” she states, to which I respond “they might not even wanna be a rapper now,” thinking about all the examples of people catapulted into accidental stardom through memes and viral moments.
“Right,” the rapper agrees, “they just wanna get some bread or get famous, or like…I don’t know.”
Mutha also notes how the standards for female rappers specifically have increased since the days of her early career. She says it's refreshing to see artists like Doechii and Doja Cat giving it their all, stating that “When I was coming up the rap bitches was not giving RnB, Beyonce 8 counts and shit. The playing field has leveled up but at the same time the shit has also been watered down.” She notes that she gives it 100%, “but I’m not about to get up there and do choreography though” she laughs.
Somehow we have circled back to the idea of that perpetual obsession with chasing a moment. The rapper criticizes how readily listeners, who she astutely describes as “consumers,” dispose of artists once they outgrow that moment.
“They don’t even outgrow you as a artist, they just outgrow that moment”
“You outgrew that one thirty second snippet now you don’t like the s- now I’m washed up,” she continues. She admits that this model of consuming music is daunting to her, and that she’s not always sure of where she’s supposed to be “because everything’s on 10 now.”
She states that she is too “lazy” to compete, and tries to be satisfied with where she is now, but it’s hard not to internalize other people’s ideas of where she should be in her career or the idea that her time has passed.
“The internet and the ‘microwaveization’ of hip hop rn makes you feel like you're missing out on so much and like the world is moving so fast around you...”
She states that when she was coming up, yeah, people were getting famous - but not every other week! It is intimidating and overstimulating enough, and then she’ll have family in her ear saying things like “oh, you should put your songs on TikTok!” It’s not hard to imagine the toll this can take on artists. If this anxiety reaches even a seasoned artist like Bbymutha, who has over a decade in the game and has certainly earned her stripes by now, it must be madness for the new up and coming artists of today.
But Mutha admits that the pressure she feels is mostly external. She may feel like she’s not doing enough, but then she will go on tour and remember she’s exactly where she needs to be.
“Its fucked up to watch people build people up so fast and then tear them down…y'all don't know these people!”
“It’s an icky time to put yourself out there” Mutha says, “especially as a woman.” She describes the trade off artists are forced to face - gaining that unhealthy level of fame and visibility in order to survive off their art (would you choose to stay at that 9-5 if you had the chance?) - as selling your soul. A person becomes a moment, a trend, an idol even, until they are forgotten about or discarded. Where can we find the balance? Is fame the only option for musicians? Mutha admits that she doesn’t know what the answer is, but she does know that her dream is “not to be harassed by strangers!”
I pivot the conversation back to “Rules,” since we’ve circled back to that topic of fans placing artists into their own box. I ask Mutha if there is a song she would choose to take its place, and she audibly groans (LOL). Let’s be clear - Mutha doesn’t want any song to become what “Rules” has for her fanbase, and dreads the possibility of having to perform yet another song over and over again like that. So we decide to compromise on a song to replace “Rules” for a year. The rapper takes a second to think, and settles on “Ghostface” off her Sleep Paralysis album (2024).
The song is so simple - the rapper says she got the beat, and got it done in “like five minutes” - but so Mutha. The beat’s drums are minimal on this one, very Plugg; the haunting melody taking center stage to provide the type of hype required for Mutha’s rage-adelic lyrics. If you close your eyes, you can almost picture yourself in one of her iconic twerk-pits (the rapper’s take on a mosh pit) while she raps the hook:
But the rapper also wants to shout out some other underrated tracks, stating that her more straight-rap, non hook having songs don’t necessarily get as much love at her shows, so she tends to keep those on the shelf in favor of ones she knows will get the crowd hype. The honorable mentions in question are “Dragon” (listen here), in which the rapper spits two minutes of straight verse over a more experimental, dance inspired type of beat featuring elements from hard techno and ambient music; and “Urban Legend” (listen here ), a track specifically tagged “#storytelling” on Soundcloud with a more traditional trap beat that, combined with Mutha’s braggadocious lyrics, feels like something a boxer would listen to as they step into the ring. That’s one of the things Mutha seems to do best - hype. Confidence. Swagger!
It’s almost time for the interview to come to a close (sadly), and I only have one last question for Bbymutha.
What are the seasoned rapper’s thoughts on the future of alternative hip-hop?
She clarifies that she doesn’t want to come off as shady, but she admits that she is skeptical. Having witnessed the ways in which the industry chews artists up and spits them out, as well as that “microwave-ization” she spoke of earlier, the rapper has her doubts.
“You take these people from TikTok and chew ‘em up and spit em out…”
The oversaturation - and also, let’s be real - the co-optation of the “underground” is daunting. She recalls a time she saw some post about “the underground iceberg” that featured about a million names she did not recognize, and lo and behold, she went to look some of these names up, and about half of them were “little white boys.”
The rapper doesn’t want to be totally pessimistic, but she is definitely unsure - “it’s all up in the air” to her.
Sure, “what’s meant to last is gone stay,” as she so aptly put it earlier, but it’s evident that those of us who care have to work to make that happen and find a way to take care of the artists putting genuine stuff out there in order to protect the integrity of the art, despite all the business-minded forces working against that. All we can say for sure is that Bbymutha is not going anywhere any time soon.
