Kanye West Addresses The Use of “Bitch” in Hip-Hop

Kanye West took to his Twitter account over the long weekend to contemplate the word “Bitch,” and it’s place in contemporary hip-hop. Of late, the word, and it’s use have been a hot topic, stemming from Lupe Fiasco’s deconstructing single “Bitch Bad,” and that record's subsequent fallout. Kanye got the ball rolling Saturday (September 1) when, in a series of tweets, he asked his 8.5 million followers the following:

“I usually never tweet questions but I struggle with this so here goes…Is the word BITCH acceptable? To be more specific, is it acceptable for a man to call a woman a bitch even if it’s endearing? Has hip hop conditioned us to accept this word? Do we love this word as much as we love the word NIGGA in an endearing way?”

Kanye poses the question at a particularly interesting time. It was recently confirmed the Chicago rapper had recorded a song entitled “Perfect Bitch” as a tribute to current girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, and Kardashian allegedly responded by saying she was honored by the song. After comparing “Bitch” and “Nigga,” Kanye widened the scope of his discussion, adding:

"What if there was no profanity? What if we decided to legalise profanity in a sense? In France they play songs with cursing on the radio. I was recently questioned about the use of the word BITCH in my music and initially was offended by anyone questioning anything in my music.” Before Kanye signed off, he tweeted out "#THEWORDBITCH," apparently hoping to keep the discussion going. Kanye closed out by posting a link to Lupe's polarizing music video "Bitch Bad."

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