Shystie (cont) - page 2 of 2

WORDS: AMP
PHOTOGRAPHY: SARAH BOWLES

'Get Boyed' is an extremely pissed-off sounding Shystie mouthing off about what she refers to as 'BQS - Busting Quick Syndrome' over the dancehall Pum Pum Riddim. It's so excellently cruel and mean that I almost feel sorry for boys.

'Get Boyed' isn't the first track devoted to the failings of the one-minute short-dick man, of course, but there's a nastiness here that, after years of misognynistic rap lyrics, is utterly delightful.

If 'Woman's World' is the equivalent of the late-night rant after you've been followed home from the bus stop by some skanking creep, 'Get Boyed' is the cruel truth revealed in giggles and murmers down the telephone line that follows the inevitable post-date question 'So what was his cock like?'

Shystie can't wait to get onto her pink Nokia to spread the word, whether the problem is that his body's not up to par:

'What I saw was absurd / when he showed me his chest it looked like a shaved bird / when I saw his body I just wanted to feed him / I had to phone my girls like 'Can you believe it!'

...or because he came too fast:

'It's our little secret. I won't say a word. Yeah, right! I'll call the boys, like, 'Have you heard?'

And a short-dick man is as superfluous to Shystie's requirements as a small-booty-bitch is to Sir Mix-A-Lot's:

'I wanna know your credentials and your feet size
Tell the truth baby please no lies
Cuz a small dick to me is like a disability
So if you got small feet, sorry, don't speak to me.
You ain't got a nine-inch so you ain't packing heat
Rude boy, I can tell by the size of your feet
That what you got there ain't gonna impress I
So don't waste your time trying to address Shy'.

And men who are packing heat don't escape Shystie's scathing assessments either, since according to her at least half of them can't use their tools, and come too fast or can't get it up at all.

There's also a horror of the male genitals to equal any of the cunt-hatred expressed by DJ Assault and his ilk: 'Don't waste Shy's time if you're not circumcised / it's not hygenic, so go get it seen to / cuz no girl wanna see hood-line mildew'. Sounds harsh? As Shystie herself says on 'Woman's World', 'Yeah, we cross the line - but men do that shit all the time!'

'Inititally I was just going to rhyme over Dizzee's instrumental', she says, 'but then I thought, well, instead of just spitting anything, why don't I do a girl's version of it, where I'm sticking up for the girls. There's not a lot of girls that represent for the other females in the grime scene… I wanted to be one of the first to do something like that and it really worked, the girls loved it.'

'There's a lot of tracks where guys dis girls, in rap as well as grime. They have lyrics that disrespect girls - but that same guy's going to sleep with that girl, so what does that make him? That makes him a ho as well! I'm gonna keep doing tracks like that that are defending girls. I will stick up for my ladies and do tracks for my ladies and represent them.

'I'll be the voice of the ladies.'

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FURTHER INFORMATION:
Official Shystie website
Download: 'Get Boyed'

This article previously appeared in Plan B magazine. Subscribe via the website - support the independent music press!