How Pimp Culture Survived the #MeToo Era
From rap makeovers to movies, pimps are everywhere. What’s missing are the people their business is built on.
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In 2019, the pimp is back. Just ask Doja Cat.
On her recently released sophomore album, Hot Pink, the 24-year-old artist leaves her psychedelic R&B behind for a steadfastly trap sound and a familiar persona. “Ooh, that’s my trick / I’m her pimp / She my flip,” she leads on “Bottom Bitch,” continuing: “She don’t create no problems / That’s why the bitch my bottom.” The album’s accompanying videos embrace the iconography as well: In “Rules,” Doja Cat romps through the desert in a purple outfit clutching a briefcase full of cash; in “Cyber Sex,” she plays a camgirl and Rocky Horror Picture Show-style mad scientist bent on alchemizing pleasure. It all amounts to a gender-flipped inversion of one of hip-hop’s oldest traditions — rappers explicitly pointing to pimping, and the overall objectification of women, as an aspiration on par with wealth and status.
It’s not just music. Pimp culture has popped up all across entertainment. Queen & Slim features Bokeem Woodbine as Uncle Earl, a New Orleans pimp who gives the…
