In this context, after Dej’s performance, it would be easy to imagine that a galvanized swell of supporters, invested in maintaining this momentum of conversations about image, gender, and music, might come to the defense of a young female artist enduring a torrent of shaming and cyber-bullying for little more than her tomboyish appearance. The female pop star can be a lens through which to examine issues of hegemony, equality, sexuality, power, image, representation, and control. And they’re not feeling particularly shy about telling us that.” Several of those women enjoyed consecutive, extensive features and profiles in major outlets this year, discussing their place in music, fashion, and culture quite naturally, critical engagement with these artists extends beyond their songs. Vanessa Grigoriadis, in her recent profile of Nicki Minaj for the Times magazine, leads with the declaration that “Pop music is dominated almost exclusively by the female star-Beyoncé, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and, as always, Madonna.” She continues, “These women are_ _the pop business now.
You don’t get regarded as “interesting” and “forward” by taking the road well travelled, and, even to a well-versed ear, “Back Up” is anything but familiar. On repeated listens, the track lands as a deft tribute to Dej’s native city and is a disruptive radio presence unique enough in sound to garner fevered praise and passive scorn in equal measure.ĭej’s raps are often unconcerned with neatness and density-like her street-rap peers, such as Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan, she makes up for the looseness with inventive melody and immediate style. The single has enjoyed a three-week rise on the Hot 100-it’s oddly addictive, if even just because it contains so many knots to untie. Like “Try Me,” the song’s narrative is all subversive id: Dej brushing off an obsessed male suitor who doesn’t realize that she’d rather take his necklace than his phone number. More ambitious than “Try Me” in concept and execution, it’s built on a sample of DJ Clent’s 2004 house track “Back Up Off Me,” and weaves jagged Detroit jit bounce through the glistening keys and sticky bass lines that dominate today’s urban pop nationwide. There wasn’t going to be another Nicki Minaj any time soon, but there also probably won’t be another Dej Loaf.ĭej returned to BET this October for the Hip-Hop Awards to perform her second proper single, “Back Up,” which features the Kanye West protégé and fellow Detroit native Big Sean. Perhaps, in Dej, Minaj finally saw a counterpart, a female rapper who could upend traditional notions of masculinity and femininity, rap and pop, hard and soft, as she herself had done before. She looked and sounded like nothing else in music, and her pull was evident: the single spent eight consecutive weeks on Billboard’ s Hot 100 chart, the video quickly gained thirty-three million views on YouTube, and Colombia Records signed Dej to an album deal. The sparkling track was just as captivating both because of its earworm melody and because of the cognitive dissonance evoked by Dej’s high-pitched, childlike voice making boastful, intrepid threats with such sincerity: “Bitch I got the tommy, no Hilfiger/ Lil Dej ain’t bout it? Bitch, how you figure?” The video for “Try Me” pushed her further, revealing a baby face and an ambidextrous style: Dej wakes up in lingerie and fuzzy slippers but is soon sporting a W.W.E. What was different about Dej? At twenty-four years old, Dej, who is from Detroit, had produced one of the most surreal and unanticipated rap hits of the year with “Try Me,” which was self-released to the Web and soon championed by the likes of Drake and Wiz Khalifa. In the five years since she débuted, with the album “Pink Friday_,_” we’ve seen a handful of female hopefuls score modest hits or Internet accolades, but Minaj hadn’t offered such praise to a young peer before. And super forward.” A camera quickly found Dej in her seat, beaming, her own mother at her side. “You’ve been very, very interesting to me.
And a special shout out to Dej Loaf.” Applause swelled from the audience. “To BET, thank you for always supporting women in hip-hop,” she said, and then broke her pageant poise with a furrowed brow and a few slow-rolling, carefully chosen words. She invited her mother up to accept the award with her-an unexpected gesture from the larger-than-life star. This June, Nicki Minaj took the stage at the 2015 BET Awards to accept her trophy for Best Female Hip-Hop Artist. The music of Dej Loaf, whose “Try Me” is one of the year’s most surreal and unanticipated rap hits, is consistently resonant and surprising.