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Music

How Trina’s Sex Positivity Paved the Way for a Generation of Raunchy Rap

Looking back at 'Still Da Baddest' pivotal role in hip-hop for its 10th anniversary.
KC
Queens, US

Trina may have the most iconic introduction to rap of all time. On 1998’s, “Nann Nigga,” a high-pitched unfamiliar voice infiltrates the speakers in a battle of the sexes between Miami rappers Trick Daddy and then 18-year-old Katrina Taylor. T woman with the piercing voice immediately makes her presence known, as she spars with Trick with a veracity that demands attention, refuting every one of Trick Daddy’s claims. He leads the song with insults, ones that would be problematic today, including “I’ll fight a bitch like you,” but she upped the ante. Pushing it further and filthier than any newcomer—man or woman—would have the guts to, Katrina “Trina” Taylor was “da baddest” from the beginning. Who else was cutting down the male ego and bragging about their ability to “fuck five or six best friends” in the first four bars of their first song? Trina was already teaching her course in savagery twenty years ago, long before that became Rihanna and other sex positive stars’ ministries.

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While at the time rap’s other leading ladies were using cleverly placed euphemisms to refer to their sexual prowess, Trina just said what she meant. It didn’t get more raw than her telling the world, “I let him eat it with my period on.” She was unfiltered in her delivery, a technique she’s carried throughout her career. With nine albums, she’s released more albums than any of the women critics pitted her against, or any men for that matter. Of those releases, the one to receive the most acclaim since her debut is Still Da Baddest, which turns 10 this month. With Still Da Baddest, Trina strengthened the legacy she had cemented in hip-hop culture but with brash, unselfconscious lyrics that were straightforward about sex and paid no mind to the male gaze.

Still Da Baddest opens with a futuristic rendering of Trina’s genetic makeup on the intro, referencing her full hips and the fat ass that caused men to pull over. It may be slightly superficial but it’s an accurate depiction of the way Trina manipulates different elements of herself on the album. She talks recklessly about her past with Lil Wayne (“It ain’t over ‘til I say we’re finished), and conjures up X-rated imagery like her previous efforts, but this album had more to offer. Appropriately named, it is an extension of the Trina we’d met in 2000 with Da Baddest Bitch, but at 29 she had a different sense of who she was as an artist and what she represented than she did at 21.

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Da Baddest Bitch, the prequel to Still Da Baddest, was Trina’s hustler manifesto. It’s what made her not just a bad bitch, but the baddest of all. The title single was her blueprint for how to scheme to the top, “Don’t grow to be a dumb hoe, that’s a no-no/See if you off the chain/Stay ahead of the game, save up and buy a condo,” she raps. On “Pull Over,” another single, she adopts the energy of Miami’s rhythm helmed by Uncle Luke. But it’s on deep cuts like “69 Ways” and “I Don’t Need You” that Trina reestablishes her risqué reputation we’d previously seen on “Nann Nigga.” Her presence on the song showed that rap didn’t just cater to a male audience. “I was trying to figure it out. Like, do all these women talk like me?” Trina asked in a 2017 interview with Miami New Times. “…My verse, it’s very provocative, it’s Luke’s Miami, it’s strip clubs, it’s all of that. That’s the culture.” Her debut laid the groundwork for Still Da Baddest, which was released in a drought of female perspectives. Hip-hop’s invisible rule suggests only one woman can reign at a time, and in 2008 Trina’s lane was clear. Remy Ma and Lil Kim were facing legal trouble at the time, rendering them ineligible. Still Da Baddest peaked at No. 1 on Billboard’s Rap Chart and Trina was at the top of her game. There was a market excluding the wants and needs of women.

Still Da Baddest picked up where Da Baddest Bitch left off, rightfully earning its parental advisory sticker. “Phone Sexx,” an ode to phone boning, is buried low in Still Da Baddest’s tracking but “Look Back at Me” is as close as it gets to audible porn. With moans interspersed with Killer Mike’s vocals on the hook, “Look Back At Me” is not for the faint of heart. Trina cloaks her sexual requests in brash metaphors and similes that can’t help but summon smirks. She opens the song with “I got an ass so big like the sun/Hope you got a mile for a dick, I wanna run.” For four minutes, she compares herself to the best parts of nature, as she does in her demand for cunnilingus with “Smell it like a flower, my pussy is a rose/Come a little closer, I wanna fuck your nose.” The best part of “Look Back at Me” isn’t Trina’s prose, but the agency in which she stands in her sexuality. Women in hip-hop are often used as accessories for how men assert their own sexual endeavors, but Trina makes it clear that she’s not a prop. “Look back at you for what?/I’m trying to concentrate on bustin’ me a nut,” she says, proving orgasms aren’t reserved just for men. Before she exits, she clowns her partner for what she feels was a subpar experience. “Wasting my time fucking all offbeat/Pussy nigga next time when you see me don’t speak.” It’s a pretty wild song, but under the shock value of her lyrics is the ability for women to control their own sex lives, whether you get a call back or not.

Trina was the template for the sex positivity that permeates not only rap culture, but pop culture today. She’s present in the NSFW nature of Chicago rapper CupcakKe. With songs like “Vagina” and “Spider-Man Dick.” CupcakKe follow’s Trina’s lead in leaving nothing to the imagination. "I want to eat yo' dick/ But I can't fuck up my nails/ So I'mma pick it up with chopsticks," CupcakKe raps on “Deepthroat.” Trina’s legacy is about more than just being overtly sexual and resonates in the careers of other women we’ve come to love. On Sucka Free, Nicki Minaj’s sophomore mixtape, she flipped “Still Da Baddest,” the only original female song to live on that compilation. Minaj even took a page from Trina’s book when she broke headlines with “Anaconda.” Trina’s hustler mentality is present in the grind of Liberty City newcomers City Girls, as they plot and scheme their ways through the pockets of men on their strip club inspired “Where Da Bag At?” And though Rihanna may not formally be a rapper, she channeled Trina’s “diamond princess” persona for the visuals like “Pour It Up” and boasts about her savagery to a Miami backdrop on “Needed Me.” Without Trina, there would be no CupcakKe, no City Girls, and maybe no post- Rated R Rihanna. But never forget Trina did it first. She was once the baddest, and even still the baddest, but most importantly, always the baddest.

Kristin Corry is a staff writer at Noisey. Follow her on Twitter.