Get You A Girl Who Can Do Both

The duality of women, the Madonna–whore complex, and the surprising feminism of Ludacris’ ‘Splash Waterfalls’

If I had a dollar every time I had to defend my love of rap to someone who frames its existence in opposition to my feminist politics, I would not need to be looking for a job right now. I also wouldn’t have time to.

I could say that country tacitly approves date rape and expects women to love Jesus, her daddy, and a pick-up truck. I could say that pop pedestals women and seemingly saccharine love songs are possessive if not outright abusive. I could say that rock centers around sad white boys and the women who are their manic pixie dream girls. I could say that rap is not the only misogynistic genre and the reason you’re scapegoating it as such is racism.

And I have done all of this. However, ultimately, I’m not actually sure if I care what people think who have the audacity to ask me a question like this. If you have to ask, you’ve clearly never engaged with rap on any level.

I will concede though that rap certainly has its share of gender blunders. To me, its biggest offense is extremely popular rapper Drake’s entire modus operandi of upholding the Madonna–whore complex. TL;DR: in popular culture, the Madonna–whore complex is the idea that women can be saints or sinners, but not both. And boy oh boy, do you revere the saint.

His 2015 earworm ‘Hotline Bling’ is a prime example. As a Genius annotation says, “Drake reflects on how the girls he used to kick it with in Toronto have changed. Drizzy presumably acted as a mentor, and without his guidance, these girls have gone down a route of selling themselves short to attain money and fame.” Why is it his business what these women are doing if he’s no longer with them? And why is attaining money and fame if you’re a woman selling yourself short? Stop policing women’s choices, Drizzy!

Outside rap, Taylor Swift also upholds this simplification and constantly vilifies the whore to her own Madonna. ‘You Belong With Me’ tells the story of a saintly nerd who’s hopelessly in love with her dude friend who’s inexplicably with a mean cheerleader. If this dichotomization of women—labeling certain interests “bad” and “slutty”—wasn’t obvious in her lyrics, the video makes it especially clear by having the other girl a brunette in contrast to the narrator’s blonde locks, and at the prom, she’s in pure white while the girl who stole her boy is in sin red. Swift, who now proudly labels herself a feminist and whose girl gang has been oft-touted as #squadgoals, has never apologized for this blanket condemnation of women.

Earlier this year, a meme emerged entitled “Get You a Man Who Can Do Both” which has the phrase accompanied by photos that depict different styles of dress—implying that it is special to find someone who has two outfits that aren’t exactly the same. It has morphed to also include getting a girl who can do both, usually showing a woman in a dress and heels as well as sweatpants and Timberlands. While the idea that a woman who owns two pairs of shoes that suggest she is both upscale sexy and laid back sexy being unusual is misogynist, the general theory of the meme when considering the pervasiveness of the Madonna–whore complex is fascinating.

The meme finally says ‘find a girl who is both the Madonna and the whore’ and, more importantly, that this girl exists.

Of course, the meme originally intimated that this girl is a rarity; it has now become so copied and parodied that the point of the meme is to show just how common ‘doing both’ is. Therefore, if you couple the meme as evidence for the girl who’s the Madonna–whore and its new meaning as the girl is everywhere, “Get You a Girl Who Can Do Both” is a refreshing take on female sexuality and the duality of women.

Meanwhile, in 2003, Ludacris released his fourth album Chicken-n-Beer, which had the single ‘Splash Waterfalls’. For my preteen self, this was another explicit jam along the lines of ‘What’s Your Fantasy’ that I had to keep on the DL from my parents. For my current self, who invests way too much time in nuancing pop culture, it’s a prototype of “Get You a Girl Who Can Do Both” and the parallels between them are painfully obvious.

The song is conceived around a back-and-forth between Ludacris and Sandy Coffee, where he says something sexually vanilla and she says “make love to me” followed by something explicit and she responds “fuck me”. The chorus has a key lyric that, for me, explains why the song is about a girl who can do both: Ludacris raps “they both one and the same”.

As Genius user Corey Blacksher so succinctly puts it: “This song is about a lady in the street but a freak in the bed” (a theme Ludacris would later revisit with his feature on Usher’s ‘Yeah!’). Essentially, the woman of this song sometimes likes missionary sex to the vocal stylings of Babyface, but also sometimes wants to be tied up or invent new positions.

She’s a complex woman—or, you know, a woman.

Ludacris is hardly known as a feminist rapper. And we certainly need to call out his offenses. But, on the other hand, we should recognize that more than a decade ago, amongst the goofs and gaffes that permeated the genre (and of course, still do), he recorded a song about a complicated woman with a sexual freedom not often present in rap. That’s worth talking about too.