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The relationship between desire and deservedness (or the delusion of deservedness) perplexes me. To want something—or someone—and believe it should be yours. The lengths we are willing to go to convince someone we deserve them and them us, that they are missing out by not being with us. Throwing a final Hail Mary, knowing it may backfire and lead to an unintended result. At this intersection of desire and deservedness lies the fertile soil for “dirty macking.”
Although “hard to define,” as Austin Williams wrote for VIBE, dirty macking has been described as “a form of courtship” in which a perpetrator attempts to get with someone or convince someone to be with them by speaking ill of the person their crush is currently with. In Williams’ words, dirty macking is “underscored by something less pure than love, but not totally removed from it,” involving things like "the jealousy one feels when they want what another person has, the temptation in meeting the right person at the wrong time, or even the regret that comes with losing someone to the arms of their next partner.”
For the 10th track on Ice Cube’s 1992 album, The Predator, he enlists the phrase: “Dirty Mack.” In the song, Cube raps about how he has it out for “dirty macks” that try to get in the way of what he wants or believes he deserves. At the end of the first verse, he raps:
“Broke a n—’ plan like dishes
‘Cause now the b— is getting suspicious
She know I f— h— outta habit
Who framed Cube? Muthaf— Roger Rabbit
‘Cause I couldn’t have and got stabbed in the back
By a black ass dirty mack”
Similar to Ice Cube, his wrongdoings in the song aside, many view dirty macking as shady and tasteless. Back in high school, before I became familiar with the phrase and was probably too young to do any considerable damage, I had a crush on a girl whose boyfriend went to another school. Occasionally, she would text me about something her boyfriend had done to upset her. I would seethe the entire conversation, thinking about how I would treat her better. And when I didn’t have the words to put in a text, I would go to Facebook and not-so-cryptically update my status with lyrics that captured how I felt.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but these lyrics were from some of the most iconic dirty macking anthems: Mario’s “Let Me Love You,” Joe’s “I Wanna Know,” and Trey Songz’s “Can’t Help But Wait.” We never ended up dating, but somehow it felt better for me to post lyrics like:
“Baby, I just don’t get it, do you enjoy bein’ hurt?
I know you smelled the perfume, the makeup on his shirt
You don’t believe his stories, you know that they’re all lies
Bad as you are, you stick around and I just don’t know why”
There’s a sense of blind faith that comes with dirty macking. A hope that maybe, just maybe, they’ll see you as the “good” one. Most dirty macking anthems are associated with rappers and R&B singers who are Black men. Even while researching for this essay, the dirty macking playlists I came across mainly featured songs by Black men with the occasional inclusions of Destiny’s Child’s “She Can’t Love You” or Mariah Carey’s “Don’t Forget About Us.” But recently, Taylor Swift’s “You Can’t Belong With Me” came on while I was getting ready for work—and you can’t tell me that’s not an all-time, dirty macking anthem.
As Swift shared with MTV News, “You Belong With Me,” which was released as part of her 2008 album, Fearless, tells the story of “wanting someone who is with this girl who doesn’t appreciate him at all.” She continues, “You like this guy who you have for your whole life, and you know him better than she does but somehow the popular girl gets the guy every time.” Swift describes the situation as being like “girl-next-door-itis.”
Throughout “You Belong With Me,” performing from the point of view of the girl next door, Swift outlines all the reasons she should be with this boy instead of him being with the popular girl:
“… she doesn’t get your humor like I do”
“… she’ll never know your story like I do”
“… I’m the one who understands you / Been here all along…”
“… you’ve got a smile that could light up this whole town / I haven’t seen it in a while since she brought you down”
Swift contrasts her persona with the popular girl's, framing herself as the safer, more reliable option and, ultimately, the one her crush should be with. Even in the music video, the girl next door, who is played by Swift, is visibly more “innocent” than the “mean girl cheerleader,” as Swift refers to her—who is also played by Swift. The girl next door wears glasses and Swift’s natural blonde hair. Meanwhile, the popular girl is portrayed by Swift in a straight, brown wig with an edgier demeanor to match.
The girl-next-door archetype isn’t too far off from how Swift has been viewed throughout her career, but especially early on—regularly compared against other pop contemporaries. “In a world of Lohans and Winehouses, Swift is often cited as a role model, a designation she takes seriously,” Lizzie Widdicombe wrote for The New Yorker in October 2011.
Later in the feature, Widdicombe writes, “Early adulthood is an awkward time for teen stars, but Swift’s has been free of embarrassing incidents.” She continues, “[Swift] doesn’t drink or go to clubs, and she has avoided the trip to rehab that marked the coming-of-age of the former Disney star Demi Lovato. She also hasn’t made the jarring transition to the darker, sexier material embraced by former teenyboppers Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears.”
Through “You Belong With Me,” it is clear Swift wasn’t passive in creating this image. Coming up in the country music world, Swift's “aura of innocence,” as Widdicombe refers to it, was necessary. But it leads me to question who gets to be innocent and why “You Belong With Me” is viewed as a song about a girl liking a boy instead of something as distasteful as dirty macking.
Buzzfeed News internet reporter Steffi Cao recently joined NPR’s It’s Been a Minute podcast to discuss viral aesthetics, such as the clean girl, coastal grandma, and vanilla girl trends, and how they inform us about the rebrand of white womanhood. “White women have long held this currency in victimhood, in being the perfect victim,” Cao states.
Widdicombe wrote, “Swift’s story is often framed as an underdog saga, the triumph of a nice girl over means ones, and of teen-age pluckiness over industry gatekeepers.”
Historically, whiteness has been seen as desirable, as deserving of trust and grace. So even as Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, and Britney Spears were heavily critiqued for the “bad” behavior they demonstrated early in their careers, juxtaposed as the “mean girls” to Swift’s innocence, they have been allowed to recover, to be accepted again, and even rooted for as their careers take new forms.
Cyrus, for example, went from twerking and rapping alongside Mike WiLL Made-It, Wiz Khalifa, and Juicy J in 2013 to returning to more traditionally white song types in recent years and met with significant praise, as well as an allowance to evolve. Cyrus’ dabbling in blackness is widely accepted as an era, or a phase, she was also celebrated for at the time instead of being viewed as cultural appropriation.
Rather than framing Swift’s attempts at discrediting the “mean girl cheerleader” as off-putting or never acceptable, Swift is given free rein to tell a story of innocence to herself and others and rarely be second-guessed—or characterized—as having ill intentions.
Then, you have Black male rappers and R&B singers whose music makes up much of what we think about when considering songs that embody dirty macking. And although Ice Cube says he has a “big fat gat for the dirty mack,” many hip-hop and R&B fans love these songs—even referring to them as “elite dirty macking” or “dirty macking at its finest.” When an R&B account recently tweeted, “What do y’all think R&B artists should bring back?,” dirty macking was highly requested.
“The original home-wreckers are R&B men,” reads the description for RNB RADAR’s The Art of Dirty Mackin’ Spotify playlist. These Black male rappers and R&B singers aren’t necessarily granted innocence and victimhood, but fans welcome them as perpetrators. R&B men are allowed to sing, “I hear he’s got you on lockdown / But I got the master key,” as Joe does on “All The Things (Your Man Won’t Do).” And we sing along. We ask for more. While we might view dirty macking as unbefitting in our personal relationships, the music is undeniable.
But Black women rappers and R&B singers largely seem to be kept out of the conversation. Usually, their songs aren’t most prominent when naming dirty macking anthems. That’s not to say they're excluded (no one can deny “I Can Love You” by Mary J. Blige & Lil’ Kim). But there is a discrepancy in how we think about Black men performing these songs versus Black women.
On Hulu’s RapCaviar docuseries, Black women artists like City Girls, Megan Thee Stallion, Saweetie, and Rapsody discuss how constrained society is in its perceptions of them. There’s a tight window for where Black women are allowed to be and the spaces they can occupy.
Black women are not given the privilege of innocence, nor do their misdeeds seem to be accepted as worth celebrating and singing along to. Although artists like SZA, Summer Walker, and Doja Cat are helping to flip this notion, racism and patriarchy still obstruct our ability to wholly see and accept Black women artists.
As I dream of a world free from racist and patriarchal violence, I’m not imagining a society where Black women are allowed to make dirty macking songs as much as I envision a world where innocence, or the aura of it, doesn’t determine one’s worth or access to life-affirming care; where Black women are allowed to evolve, to try on different eras, to be themselves regardless of how much space they take up doing it.
Short skirts or t-shirts, cheer captain or on the bleachers, Black women are worthy of a love that lets them be more than our limited perceptions. I dream of a world where ownership, or deservedness, isn’t just granted to a few, but that we all own the means of shaping our liberation.
We’re all capable of being victims, of causing harm, of being desired and the ones who desire. We’re more than the stories we tell ourselves and others in our attempts to get what we want, what we believe we deserve, and what we think others deserve. We’re more than the lengths we’re willing to go to tell these stories.
Our existence invites possibility—the time to make it work.
You deserve more lovin’, girl.
This was everything. You are amazing, Alex. The way you weave your story is always just breathtaking and I'm so grateful to receive your words.
My only commentary on TLOASG will be this: the tradwife breathiness of it all is STARK. Performing 'idealized white woman' in this moment would be laughable if it weren't so damn harmful.