INTERVIEW – RISKAY

By this point if you haven’t heard Riskay, you have been wasting both your internet and your ears. It’s only the greatest cheating song since Oran Juice Jones laid into his girl for the entire last half of “The Rain.” It’s also a female-empowerment jam, but unlike pretty much every other “feminist anthem” ever written, it offers practical advice in lieu of endless griping. Philanderous boyfriend? Um, hello? Smell his dick. It’s earth-shaking in its simplicity. After a few hundred listens and a quick read-through of the “Smell Yo Dick” FAQ on Riskay’s myspace page we still had a few lingering questions, so we called her to clear them up and see how she feels about changing the world as we know it.

Vice: Why do you think “Smell Yo Dick” has taken off?
Riskay: I think it’s because a lot of women have thought about it but they never had the nerve to do it, and now they don’t have to be ashamed to try it. A lot of men cheat because they can get away with it, but I feel like if a man knows a woman will go to that extent [dick-smelling], they probably won’t cheat. Men have degraded women and acted like we’re stupid for so many years, and they come up with songs about cheating, so why can’t I just represent women? This is how I feel, this is what I’ve been through.

How many times have you smelled a dick?
Once, when I was younger. I had a guy that was cheating on me. You know, always coming home about five o’clock in the morning, always trying to make up excuses. He’s out with his boys. I’m like “Hey if you’re not cheating, let me smell it.”

And he let you?
Yeah. He was confident in himself, as if I’m stupid and I don’t know what latex smells like. It smelled like… it had condom smell.

Couldn’t you just smell his hands, or his face?
Yeah, you could smell his hands or his face—if you wanna be disgusting. I would prefer to smell his dick than taste some other chick in his mouth.

I think a lot of women would be afraid to just ask outright. Any tips on how to get him to offer up the goods?
If you feel like your man might cuss you out and try to get violent with you if you ask, then act like you’re gonna give him some head and just smell it.

What if you smelled a guy’s dick and it smelled like saliva? Would that be as bad?
You know, if it smells like stank breath, that’s wrong too. A lot of men are like “Oh, she just gave me head,” and I’m like “OK, that’s cheatin’.”

What if he thought ahead and took a shower before coming home? You could be fooled.
If he’s been out all day, he shouldn’t smell like soap. I was talking with a male rapper friend, and he said “What I do is take baby wipes and clean myself before I get home,” and then another guy told me he just let his thing out and rolled the windows down in the car so his dick could air out.

I love picturing that. Do you worry that with your song being heard so much, maybe men will wise up and everyone will carry baby wipes or let their dick air out in the car, and then smelling it will be ruined for women everywhere?
When I first did the song, a lot of my man friends were like “You’re giving females too much information! You’re giving them bad, bad ideas. This is wrong.” A lot of men don’t like it, probably because they’re cheating. They think “Oh my God, this is for real. She done put females up on somethin and we in trouble now.”