THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO FLO MILLI

It’s unsurprising that as hip hop surged in popularity it became a mainstage for women who could spit while performing the precise and elaborate choreography typically expected of pop stars. The preeminence of women rappers followed step with what is sometimes thought of as fourth-wave feminism, which rose and crested from the early to late 2010s. This era drew on previous decades’ Riot Grrrl “girls to the front” parlance popularized in indie and punk scenes. Theoretical frameworks like Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality were unleashed from the halls of academia onto niche internet enclaves on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram. Feminism was no longer about equality between the so-called sexes but rather smashing the patriarchy altogether and unpacking performances of gender as explored in Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble. 

This shift made way for oversimplifications of critical theory founded in queer and racial social politics (intersectionality was used interchangeably with diversity and performativity often connoted a showy facade). Yet many people, particularly young women, seeking empowerment found such language helpful to articulate how the axes of oppression manifested mundanely, in everyday life from dating to the workplace. But could we decenter men and lament the failures of a compulsory heterosexual culture while still pursuing such romances? Was girlbossing just a remaking of the illusory shattered glass ceiling for the digital age? Was Beyoncé in fact, as bell hooks infamously stated, a terrorist?  If one dressed for herself, did it matter if she remained adorned within conventional gendered  norms of beauty? What of choice, rest, of luxury, of feeling good?

Photo Credit: Aristotele Strobbe, “Madonna live at San Siro, Milan in 2012 during her MDNA Tour.”

Or feeling myself, as Nicki Minaj proclaimed to eager ears. Minaj, who, for all her faults and of which there are plenty, undisputedly impacted the trajectory of rap as pop, was also indebted to a litany of performers before her, including Missy Elliot, Lil Kim, Trina, and Charli Baltimore. As a member of the Young Money crew, Minaj fashioned a persona that both parodied the image of the theatrical pop star while integrating its core elements of fun and sex appeal. She took on visual elements of a Barbie, donning 613 colored hair or a pink wig with puckered lips and wide-eye. But she could easily remove the doll-like persona, slipping into the image of an alluring sought-after woman, then switch, yet again, to a vicious emcee delivering fierce bars.  By the time her sophomore album, The Pinkprint, debuted in 2014 op-ed upon op-ed had been dedicated to her. Was the video for single, “Anaconda,” a powerful reclamation of the exoticized sexualization of black women? Or was she performing for a male gaze that shallowly rewarded one’s participation in her own sexual debasement? Whatever the case, Minaj was the clear victor.

Of course, high profile women rappers weren't new in the 2010s, nor was their success solely a consequence of the era. The previous decade had already laid the foundation for hip hop to be the most popular genre in the United States (first declared in 2018),but a new and ardent audience found refuge in the lyricism of artists who explored the contradictions of 21st century feminism. They expressed attitudes towards men that ranged from lackadaisical to adversarial and boasted self-worth and unabashed confidence.

Bravado has long been a domain of hip hop. The unstudied listener of rap may charge it as a lyric of materialism but really, it’s often a language of esteem, first of the self. The speaker’s value is intrinsic—perhaps in part, owing to rap’s basis in a culture of people who’s worth was once bartered for capital and disparaged. Within hip hop there are no entreatments to be seen as great, but rather assertions of the fact. Emcees brandish mics with finesse, showcasing that it looks easy because it is, when you’re the shit.   

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I first saw the words of Flo Milli, the stage name of Alabama native, Tamia Monique Carter, before I ever heard her rap.

“Dicks up when I walk in the party!” 

“I like cash and my hair to my ass”

The bold proclamations of her viral songs “In the Party” and “Beef Flomix” were often captioned alongside selfies or posted as stand alone tweets that I scrolled past. Then 19, Carter,  ascended into fame as the COVID-19 pandemic rose in 2020 and in the wake of the rise of Cardi B, City Girls and Megan Thee Stallion. The questions that had preoccupied listeners in the previous decade when they encountered Minaj’s “Anaconda” were no longer of paramount concern. We could recognize the contradictions and nuances of a culture too eager to punish women, especially black women. 

In the video for single, “Weak,” Flo Milli steps out of a small house, wearing a bodysuit printed with Benjamins. Her hair is rolled into large round curlers also encased with dollar bills. Lined by men on both sides—who gaze straight down at the ground—she struts down a walkway covered with money. In the next scene, she wears a floor length durag with a print similar to the bodysuit, commanding over the room the men are now working in—counting her hundreds, pressing out the bills and hanging them onto clotheslines like freshly washed laundry, and checking for counterfeits. 

“I’ve been in my bag don’t got time to be in my feelings / Ladies listen / I’m not talking about fitness when I say,” Flo raps, “these niggas weak (ew).”  When I heard the lyrics, I sat up a little straighter. Weak, not in terms of fitness but a feebleness in effort put forth by men who expected—if not felt entitled to—romantic and sexual relationships. My early twenties had offered me the agency to explore my sexuality with less regard for the puritanical attitudes that underpinned the 2000s that I came of age in. In my mid to late twenties I was beginning to understand, perhaps for the first time, that what I wanted out of relationships, casual or otherwise, was a sense of reciprocity. And if I couldn’t get that? On to the next and with the friendships I’d long prioritized.

Flo Milli’s debut mixtape, Ho, Why Is You Here? showcased her flair for self-assured rhymes over playful melodies and the hard beats of Southern hip hop alike. The mixtape, which is titled after a quote from Love & Hip Hop’s Josie Hernandez, also gestured at the rapper’s knack for utilizing pop culture ephemera. Her following releases leaned further into the realm of reality television, with the album rollout of 2022’s You Still Here, Ho? featuring recreations of classic TV moments from Bad Girls Club, America’s Next Top Model, and crucially, Tiffany “New York” Pollard who is featured on the album.

Credit: Viacom Media Networks

After first appearing in the Vh1 series, Flavor of Love, Pollard quickly became one of the most notable faces of reality television and the first Black woman to helm her own dating series. Second to “New York,” Pollard’s most frequently used moniker is the Head Bitch in Charge or HBIC. The name appears as the opener to You Still Here, Ho? with the parenthetical, Tiffany Pollard Speaks. The brief introduction can be seen as a continuation of the raucous and witty “Like That Bitch,” (Ho, Why Is You Here). The much discussed it girl of recent years, may receive her title like a bequeathment, bestowed by acclaimed publications. The HBIC or that bitch announces herself, busting through the front door of a gaudy television mansion and twirling for the cameras or pushing herself through and to the top of cluttered airwaves. The declaration is self-evident: “I walk around like that bitch / ‘cause I am that.” 

As I’ve written for Polyester, notions of authenticity and “realness” are salient aspects of Black life and not mutually exclusive with performance:

“Real, as in realness made legible in Black queer space of ballroom culture. Keepin’ it real, exemplified in hip hop reminds one to be one’s [truest] self, to not put on airs. Realness isn’t inherently hindered by performance; it is, in many cases, beget by theatrics…”

Flo refers to the period of popular shows like Flavor of Love and I Love New York as golden. Songs like “In Love With a Gripper,” a play on T-Paine’s “In Love with a Stripper” and features a verse from the singer and rapper, reflect her penchant for the 2000s era. More than a savvy marketing tactic employing nostalgia, Flo Milli converses with greatness, placing herself within its league be it with past memorable moments of TV or music. 

Perhaps the most ambitious representation of this inclination is her freestyle, “FLO MILLI", which pays homage to “A Milli” by Lil Wayne, with whom she shares the Carter surname. Over the beat, now interpolated with her name, she reworks Weezy’s flow and famous lines: “A millionaire, fine brown with Nigerian hair / Flow sick, spit bacteria in here / Your criteria compared to those less scary hoes I don't fear” ; “You can't stand them then you drop them / Hoes get messy / Imma mop them.” At a time when we've been arguably oversaturated in references, covers, and remakes, Flo exhibits a deftness for incorporating the gifts of her predecessors while retaining her own punchy style.

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There is often an air of competition—or rather an assertion that there isn’t any—in Flo’s lyrics as in much of rap. The denigrated royal you or “she” could be viewed as disdain for other women, literal or figurative. But we can also hear it as a brush off of detractors, including the inner critics who, in misguided aims of self-preservation, can undermine one’s sense of worth.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, answering a question on the changing scape for women rappers Flo said, “...[I]f men feel like they could degrade women in music, then it’s time we learn their ways and flip it back on them…We  [women] have to put a lot more work and money into it. We got to spend money on hair and makeup and all that. A guy could just throw on a chain, get a little haircut.” 

Back in 2023, I wrote an essay for Black Lipstick, exploring the ideas of Black femininity as performance and who it’s produced for and discussing many of the same incongruities mentioned earlier in this piece. Again, I referenced women in hip hop who have been criticized for sexualization, bolstering conventions of misogynoir. But looking at the relationship between women artists of the last ten years—Flo, Monaleo, Ice Spice, PinkPantheress, Megan Thee Stallion, and others—as well as their fans, I then asked, “what did men have to do with it?”

The question continues to hang in the air, wafting between nothing and everything, depending on who’s asking. When writing I hadn’t yet heard, “Never Lose Me,” Flo’s biggest song to date, which reached the top 10 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/hip hop Songs chart and spawned three separate remixes featuring Lil Yachty, Bryson Tiller, and Cardi B and SZA.  The lead single on her sophomore studio album, Fine Ho, Stay (2024), “Never Lose Me,” marked a significant shift in Flo’s evolution. Departing from the ostentatious raps over bass forward beats, she sings, “Tell me you don’t never wanna lose me,” over a wavy tune reminiscent of late 90s R&B. While Fine Ho, Stay, still serves confident talk yo shit type tracks, they’re interspersed between a wider range of sentiments from the playful (“Edible”, “Can’t Stay Mad”), to the more earnest and vulnerable (“Life Hack”, “Lay Up” , “Never Lose Me”).

The vulnerability displayed in Fine Ho, Stay is often reflected in lyrics referencing relationships. She expresses desire—wanting but not needing another—and doubts. The possibility of bliss in union with another never comes at the expense of her own morale. Perhaps this is the lesson of Flo Milli’s music thus far–how commitment to self-assurance provides a bedrock. Confidence isn’t the absence of insecurity, but a willingness to engage with the unease and cynicism that makes life difficult to endure. 

“I feel like every girl should feel that way ‘cause there’s only one of you,” she said when breaking down the lyric, “never had a bitch like me in your life,” for Genius. “That’s your power. No one could ever be you.”    

Edited by Bayley Blaisdell