not falling down

It took the Ben Folds cover of “Bitches Ain’t Shit” to make me understand that it’s a ballad about the breaking of a friendship, love betrayed and the loss of innocence. Also some pretty bizarre pronoun mappings. Consider:

“I used to know a bitch named Eric Wright

We used to roll around and fuck the hoes at night

Tighter than a muthafucka with the gangsta beats

And we was ballin’ on the muthafuckin’ Compton streets

Peep, the shit got deep and it was on

Numba 1 song after numba 1 song

Long as my muthafuckin’ pockets was fat

I didn’t give a fuck where the bitch was at

But she was hangin’ with a white bitch doin’ the shit she do

Suckin’ on his dick just to get a buck or 2

And the few ends she got didn’t mean nothin’

Now she’s suing cuz the shit she be doin’ ain’t shit

Bitch can’t hang with the streets, she found herself short

So now she’s takin’ me to court”

This all refers, of course, to the feud between Eazy E and Dr. Dre that was associated with the breakup of NWA (longtime readers may remember my fascination with Eazy’s response to the album). To parse it correctly you have to understand that except for the passingly-mentioned “hoes,” everyone referenced is male.

The gender issues involved in early 90s gangsta are a Master’s thesis all their own. (Actually, I bet they already have been, cheap Berkeley joke here.)