41Views
Who is CupcakKe? The 20-year-old rapper who’s bringing sex-positivity back
For the longest time, the 2002 hit single “My Neck, My Back” by Khia was the dirtiest song I had ever heard. Whether on a school bus, class or from my peers, it felt like “my neck, my back, my p****, and my crack” was recited everywhere, far before I was able to listen to the song itself.
Like Khia, there has been explicit lyrics in rap for years. The Too $horts, Trinas, and Lil Kims of the world have been holding that fort down for some time now. But even still, none have made a career of it. That is, not until CupcakKe.
Born Elizabeth Harris, the 22-year-old Chicago rapper has taken the reigns from the generations before her. While Nikki Minaj will have an “eat my ass” line or a song like “Anaconda”, CupcakKe takes it to another level. She’s deadass about that life.
Her Twitter handle is @CupcakKe_rapper, her location is set to “in the hotel sucking 83 dicks” and right before her booking handle for business inquiries, she has in all caps: “PUT A SNICKER IN MY PUSSY & TWIX IN MY ASS.”
But young CupcakKe was not always this way. In fact, she started her life of rhyme performing at churches around Chicago at the tender age of 14. It wasn’t until someone suggested she start putting her poetry on YouTube that she realized she had something special, and that’s when she let the freak out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzuvfy4jFwE&has_verified=1
She tells Rolling Stone in a July interview last year.
“It was getting 10,000 views. As soon as I decided to do something [that wasn’t] being done at the moment and started writing sexual music, it just went viral.”
What wasn’t being done and the lane CupcakKe is talking about are sex-positive raps. Much like how Weird Al Yankovic or The Loney Island use the parody and satire as vehicles for content, her’s is sex.
Take the opening verse to her most successful song, “Vagina” for example. The 2016 tune is straight forward and doesn’t hold back.
I change the thongs two times a day
Its Niagara Falls in this pussy all day
Pussy so good I’m on a trip to the bay
Soon as he put it in that nigga calling me bae
https://youtu.be/L2dpXDK0D_4
The success of “Vagina”catapulted her to internet fandom and helped her realize that she truly has an audience that fucks with her music. Additionally, the timing of her career is couldn’t be more spot on.
In the past, if CupcakKe were to approach a label with her sound, there would have been no’s across the board due to her explicit content.
Now that the only barrier to entry in the music industry is what the people like, she does not have to deal with censorship or changing who she is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD7jC-qL9h0
Since starting rap two years ago CupcakKe has released two mixtapes and two studio albums, set out on her first national tour this spring, The Marilyn Monhoe Tour, and has a guest appeared on “Lipgloss,” the final track on Charli XCX’s mixtape Number 1 Angel, released last year.
But the best for CupcakKe is yet to come. Now that she’s dropped her third studio album, Ephorize, the possibility of national acclaim is that much realer.
With a message that empowers women to take control of their sexuality and trap beats that bang, why wouldn’t you want to root for her?