Usher's latest single, "Lil' Freak," is an ode to arranging a ménage à trois. Helping to schedule the girl-on-boy-on-girl arrangement is hip-hop artist Nicki Minaj. In the song, Usher informs Minaj of a prerequisite to sleeping with him: "You go get some girls, bring them to me." She does.

This is not the first track to employ Minaj as threesome facilitator to the stars. In "Girls Kissing Girls," a track off Minaj's mixtape, Minaj aids Gucci Mane's request for participation in the song's titular activity. And in each song, Minaj readily indulges the man's sexual interest. From Minaj's contribution to "Lil' Freak":

Excuse me lil mama, but you could say I'm on duty
I'm lookin' for a cutie with a big old ghetto booty
I really like your kitty cat and if you let me touch her
I know you're not a bluffer, I'll take you to go see Usher

And from Minaj's verse in "Girls Kissing Girls":

Puh puh pop a beer, I'm a need some honey
Chew it like a gummy, stupid juicy oozy runny
Listen Gucci mane I got what u need
Keisha and Alisha and a million packs of weed
Girls everywhere Gucci go and get the camera
White girls too ohh Julie Annie Amber

There's reason to believe that Minaj is just as into this type of action as Gucci Mane and Usher are. Natalie Stein, writing for Bitch Magazine, notes that Minaj's music has consistently reinforced the popular assumption that Minaj is "a rumored lesbian (or bisexual, depending on who you ask)"—but that Minaj herself has stopped short of officially coming out of the closet. In the hip-hop world, Minaj's sexuality has been employed to fulfill the lesbian fantasies of heterosexual guys, but hip-hop hasn't yet give Minaj the space to truly own her identity.

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As Nicki Escuerdo, who wrote on "Lil Freak" for feminist blog Heartless Doll, writes:

Who cares if the girl isn't into hooking up with other girls? If you want to hook up with Usher, he makes it clear that it's a requirement to bring another lady friend around. To prove not all women are opposed to Usher's message, the song features Young Money rapper Nicki Minaj, who conveniently happens to be bisexual (it's not a marketing ploy at all!) . . . Everybody should have the right to get their freak on and have threesomes if they want. But the way the Usher goes about getting two ladies in his bed, by using his celebrity to coerce girls to sleep with him, is sleazy.

But as Escuerdo goes on to note, the songs that situate Minaj's sexuality as a tool for heterosexual men also give Minaj some room to define herself. This is where things start to get interesting. In "Lil Freak," Minaj announces:

If i'm in yo city, I'm signin' them tig 'ol bitties
I'm plotting on how I can take Cassie away from Diddy
The girls want a Minaj yeah they wetter than the rain then
Usher buzz me in, everybody loves Raymond

I never thought I'd be commenting on the transgressive function of the phrase "tig 'ol bitties." Here, Minaj clues her listeners into the fact that her own sexual interests are hardly confined to pleasing Usher. In this verse, she's not looking to hook up with Cassie to help P. Diddy get off; she's looking to remove Diddy from the situation entirely. But after that little detour, Minaj brings the focus of her sexual interests back to Usher. At the moment the songs start to get gay, Minaj brings it back to a more acceptable sexual expression she converts her erotic energy to heterosexual fantasy.

"Girls Kissing Girls," interestingly, contains no such final caveat. Yes, the song gets its wide appeal by accessing the "Girls Gone Wild" version of faux-lesbianism, but it also refuses to end with heterosexual bliss. Though the beginning of the song has Gucci Man getting hot by observing Minaj's sexual relationships with women, in the end he loses the Minaj character to another girl: "Then I lost her number, never seen again / The best brain in the world, do her thing with a girl / But don't call her yo girl, or let her hang with yo girl."

In these songs, Minaj's interest in other women is quarantined to a specific context (the threesome) that allows men to retain control over Minaj's sexuality in public, even while Minaj winkingly suggests that these guys are hardly owning her in the bedroom. As Minaj gains more industry power as an independent artist, here's to hoping she'll be able to take lyrical control of her own sexuality—without the watchful eye of a big-named guy.

City Paper: Deez Nuts. What does the title of the piece mean?

John Johnson: "Deez Nuts" is just like, D.C. . . . I’m sure everywhere people say "Deez Nuts," but when I was in high school, it was like a refrain. "Guess what? Deeeeez nuuuuuts!" It was more of a chant or a cadence. People are familiar with it, you know what I mean? And it refers to a dude’s testicles. So it's a witty title for a show that talks about men’s experiences.

CP: Was Deez Nuts inspired by the Vagina Monologues?

JJ: The show was inspired by talking to men in the community, but the Vagina Monologues is a good reference point for the audience. . . . The world is familiar with the Vagina Monologues, so we used the name to make people understand what it is. This is an all-male spin on that concept, with a real local D.C. flavor. It's a perspective on everything from love to war to having children, being fathers. But unlike the Vagina Monologues, where the women talk a lot about their parts—you know, about hair on the vagina and having periods—Deez Nuts doesn't focus on the male parts so much. It definitely talks about sex and relationships, but it's more about all the things that affect these nuts, instead of the actual nuts.

CP: How have women responded to the show?

JJ: All of the women want to see how men think. That’s been the positive feedback from the show. But on the flip-side, they want to see the female version. They don’t want to see the Vagina Monologues. They want to see the female version of Deez Nuts. . . . The difference would be that it would focus on local, D.C. women. Some women have been brainstorming a name for it. Some suggested "The Honey Pot." It's got to be something clever that refers to women and whatever their nuts would be. Like "Deez Ovaries."

CP: What men did you interview in creating the monologues?

All of them are my artist friends, and they run the gambit from musicians to poets to actors. The majority were men in the arts community, so they can convey a message. They've been practicing that for years. Putting all of their stories under the umbrella of Deez Nuts wasn’t a difficult task to do.

CP: The Vagina Monologues is considered a feminist project, because it discussed issues affecting women that hadn't been addressed so publicly before . . . . Do you think Deez Nuts does a similar service for issues affecting men?

JJ: Ultimately, men and women are compliments complements. So if there’s any type of inequality on either side, it affects both of us. If women are oppressed, so are men, because we’re not enjoying the full potential of our compliment. So it's not against feminism at all . . . This show has all African-American men in it, which is a unique angle. The Vagina Monologues came from a very different vantage point. Deez Nuts is about Chocolate City. All the performers happen to be black men—not that it was initially constructed that way—but their stories definitely reflect that part of D.C.

Responses have been condensed.

I spent part of Washington's snowed-in weekend sipping bourbon, building an igloo, and listening to one anonymous woman's horrific karaoke rendition of Deborah Cox's 1998 power ballad, "Nobody's Supposed to Be Here." At one break in the snow shelter action, a friend popped in a cassette tape containing the butchering of Cox's song, which he claims to have found laying on the ground at a Six Flags theme park.

Being unfamiliar with Cox's work, we hopped onto YouTube to listen to the original track, a resounding tribute to the man who made Deborah Cox love again. Beneath the video, a Cox fan had filed the following comment: "man she can sing so gud man i love her no homo she is now my idol like 4 real my gaol is too sing like her cuz she is truly amazing."

No homo? Seriously? I always thought the homophobic "no homo" declaration was a product of hip-hop's aggressive masculinity. Now, girls, too, are invoking "no homo" to clarify that they want to be able to belt maudlin R&B ballads about falling in love with men without being perceived as lesbians? What's going on here?

Earlier this year, Slate's Jonah Weiner argued that "no homo" represented a step forward for hip-hop, as it allowed male rappers to step outside the bounds of traditional masculinity and explore their feminine sides without being perceived as gay. "No homo" is blatant homophobia, Weiner argued, but at least it's blatant homophobia that allows rappers to kiss each other on the lips, take an interest in fashion, and engage in such homoerotic displays as "giddily dous[ing] each other" in champagne—as long as they're not actually gay.

But does "no homo" hold any similar gender-role liberation for women in hip-hop?

"No homo" hasn't caught on among lady MC's like it has with male rappers like Cam'ron, Lil' Wayne, and Kanye West. But back in 1995, Lil' Kim used the "no homo" tactic in order to spit some man-hating sentiments without being pigeonholed as a lesbian. In her verse on Junior M.A.F.I.A. track "Get Money," Kim announced, "I ain't gay, this ain't no lesbo flow."

"No lesbo" is clearly homophobic, but there's a hint of transgression here, as well. The anti-gay sentiment works to excuse the rest of Kim's verse, which directs a stream of hate at lying, cheating men. On the track, Kim ridicules men's penises, rejects men who want to play her "like a chicken," and insists that listeners "eat my pussy." It's a female version of Biggie's verse on the same track—a verbal take-down of lying, cheating "bitches." The only difference? There's no "no homo" caveat to Biggie's misogyny, because straight men are expected to hate women. Lil' Kim, on the other hand, must temper her misandry with a "no lesbo," as women who rail against male behavior are immediately assumed to be man-hating lesbians.

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"No lesbo" helped Lil' Kim to speak out against men without being labeled a lesbian. It also allowed her to flaunt her sexuality in an aggressive, raunchy, self-serving way that had previously been reserved for male rappers. At one point in "Get Money," she flips the traditional sex script when she demands that her sex partner "get me open while Im cummin down your throat." But for the most part, female displays of sexuality in hip-hop are used exclusively to facilitate male pleasure and domination. That's another reason why "no lesbo" has failed to liberate women from traditional gender roles in the way "no homo" has for men—in male-dominated hip-hop, lesbianism is hot.

The sentiment that lesbians are sexual candy for straight men is coming from the same rappers who sprinkle "no homo" in their lyrics to avoid being labeled as gay themselves. On Kanye West's 2007 track "Stronger," he announced that he "would do anything for a blonde dyke." And in Lil' Wayne's Drake's recent contribution to "We Like Her," the "no homo"-loving rapper asked, "Are any of y'all into girls like I am, lesbi-honest?"

But as with the male homosocial displays made safe by the "no homo" disclaimer, lesbianism in hip-hop is only acceptable if it's not truly gay.

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Consider Gucci Mane's "Girls Kissing Girls," featuring rumored lesbian hip-hop artist Nicki Minaj. In the song, Gucci lays out some pornographic verses about girls doin' it before laying out his cautionary tale: Just don't hook up with real lesbians, or they'll steal your girlfriend: "Told her last time she can bring her other friend / Then I lost her number never seen again / The best brain in the world, do her thing with a girl / But don't call her yo girl, or let her hang with yo girl."

[youtube:v=3fBdgZUtpBg]

The sentiment that lesbianism is okay as long as it's a performance for men isn't confined to hip-hop, of course. Katy Perry's pop anthem "I Kissed a Girl" is the "no homo" anthem that never dared to say "no homo." The lyrics—"I kissed a girl and I liked it / Hope my boyfriend don't mind it"—reinforce the idea that girls should be free to kiss each other as long as they go home to their heterosexual relationships at the end of the day (and let their boyfriends watch).

"No homo" allows male hip-hop artists to explore their femininity. The new "no lesbo" sentiment, on the contrary, keeps women on an even shorter gender-role leash—they are allowed to explore their sexuality, as long as that sexuality is still controlled and consumed by men. Men are allowed to get manicures, wear purple fur coats, and geek out over fashion shows as long as they tack a "no homo" on their activities. Meanwhile, the "no lesbo" sentiment only helps women to continue to act sexy for men, not to claim their sexuality in the spirit of Lil' Kim. Despite the genre's fascination with token lesbianism, Bitch's Natalie Stein notes that mainstream hip-hop still discourages lesbian hip-hop artists from coming out.

"No homo" doesn't carry with it any more freedom for women to defy gender roles. Nevertheless, some female hip-hop fans are still eager to invoke "no homo" alongside their male counterparts. What else explains applying "no homo" to otherwise sexual-orientation-neutral activities, like being able to sing like Deborah Cox? On Urban Dictionary, "no lesbo" is defined as:

said after something potentially "lebian" has been said. Also used to state something does not have a lesbian connotation, even though it sounds that way

1.That's my bitch, no lesbo.
2.That ass is huge, no lesbo.

In most cases, "no homo" and "no lesbo" function not as a way to escape traditional gender norms, but as turns-of-phrase which help build community through conversation markers. Once boys are using "no homo," their female friends are going to want to use it, too—even if it doesn't make much sense, or help them to claim any transgressive power. When extended to women, "no homo" isn't what Jonah Weiner calls "progress"—it's just more casual homophobia coupled with some good, old-fashioned objectification of women.

When I wrote my piece parsing the feminist and misogynist undertones in the works of Lil Wayne, I overlooked one verse from "We Like Her," Wayne's ode to wanting to "fuck every girl in the world":

This verse comes courtesy of Mack Maine, president of Weezy's Young Money Entertainment:

For free suites, I'd give Paris Hilton all-nighters
In about 3 years, holla at me Miley Cyrus
I don't discriminate, no not at all
Kit Kat a midget if that ass soft I break her off
I exchange V-Cards with the retards
And get behind the Christian like Dior

So . . . Mack Maine is interested in having sex with celebrity socialites, girls who will reach the age of consent sometime in the future, Christians, women affected by dwarfism (with soft asses), and virgins with developmental disabilities. But don't worry, he does not discriminate as to which female vessel he achieves sexual release in.

I've heard this song on the radio dozens of times, but I must have blocked this verse out in order to avoid that special combination of offensive terminology and sexual assault overtones. Last night, my boyfriend called to confirm that he had actually heard the line, "V-Cards with the retards," broadcast over the radio. He did. Hey, as long as it's not "no homo," it's okay by them.

When Mack Maine says he'll have sex with Paris Hilton in exchange for free hotel rooms, he is dreaming. When he says he will "exchange" V-cards—I doubt Mack Maine is still holding on to his, but you never know—with developmentally disabled virgins, he is actually frightening me. It's also one of the more pathetic attempts at swagger I've ever come across. But good for him, he made something rhyme.

First up: "A Milli," a track off Tha Carter III:

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Relevant Lyrics: "The Bible told us every girl was sour / Don't play in her garden and don't smell her flower / Call me Mr. Carter or Mr. Lawnmower"

Feminist: Weezy's lawnmower is here to destroy all those antiquated ideas about female sexuality.

Misogynist: A man's lawnmower chopping up a woman's flower is not exactly the most sex-positive imagery.

—

"Mrs. Officer," a song about a sexy cop.

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Relevant Lyrics: "Doin a buck in the latest drop/ I got stopped by a lady cop/ She got me thinking I can date a cop/ Cause her uniform pants are so tight . . . And I know she the law, and she know I'm the boss / And she know I can hide above the law / And she know I'm raw, she know it from the street / And all she want me to do is fuck the police."

Feminist: He's attracted to women in positions of power!

Misogynist: . . . as long as their pants are tight, and he can neutralize their authority by pulling out his wang.

—

"We Like Her," a song about wanting to fuck every girl in the world. Every single one!

[youtube:v=4pdrJfDAZDQ]

Relevant Lyrics: "Open up her legs then filet mignon that pussy / I'm a get in and on that pussy / If she let me in I'm a own that pussy / Go'n throw it back and bust it open like you 'posed to / Girl I got that dope dick / Now come here let me dope you / You gon' be a dope fiend / Your friends should call you dopey"

Feminist: Every woman is beautiful.

Misogynist: Just beautiful enough for Wayne to declare ownership of her genitals and describe their courtship in sexual assault terms.

—

"Lollipop," a song about oral sex.

[youtube:v=2v6xK1eSBFk]

Relevant Lyrics: "I get her on top / She drop it like it's hot / And when I'm at the bottom / She Hilary Rodham."

Feminist: He just name-checked Hilary Rodham. In a positive way! And without the Clinton, even!

Misogynist: I'm not sure that riding Weezy is exactly the type of women's liberation Hil is working for.

—

"Prostitute Flange," a song about not caring if your lady previously turned tricks.

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Relevant Lyrics: I wouldn't care if you were prostitutin' / That you hit every man that you ever knew / See it wouldn't make a difference / If that was way before me and you girl.

Feminist: An anti-slut-shaming anthem: Her sexual history is not an issue, even if she had sex with every man she has ever met. That's pretty progressive!

Misogynist: Well, the history is unimportant as long as it's ancient—"way before me and you"—and as long as she's now only his forever: "Three letters: I do."

—

"Project Bitch," a track from Lil Wayne's Hot Boys days.

[youtube:v=FNlbKNSFd6k]

Relevant Lyrics: Wayne's contribution to this track is devoted to the ladies who " be puttin' they mouth on it / and they suck everything out of it / and they catch it and swallow it. . . . When I come through in a Rolls Royce / I leave them with no choice / but to hop up in it an just let me make they throat moist."

Feminist: Hmm.

Misogynist: Yeah.

Listening to Hot 99.5 yesterday, I was interested to hear the radio station bleep out the latest trend in hip-hop homophobia: "no homo." "No homo," for the uninitiated, is a little piece of wordplay which works to neutralize any potentially "gay" interpretations of a rapper's lyrics. For a full review of the term, check out Bryan Safi's informative piece, above.

Recently, Hot 99.5 washed the term out of Kanye West's contribution to Jay-Z's "Run This Town." In the track, Kanye employs the phrase in order to insist that he does not regularly engage in gay orgies. "It's crazy how you can go from being Joe Blow," Kanye says. "To everybody on your dick—no homo."

Generally, radio censorship only inspires listeners to imagine the offensive term in their head. In the case of "no homo," however, bleeping may also serve a valuable and unintentionally hilarious function!

Apparently, bleeping out "no homo" has become pretty standard for radio stations. Recently, a poster on the IGN hip-hop message boards voiced his concern with no-no-homo radio programmers: "They bleeped out 'No homo'. What's that all about?" he writes. "No homo meaning, no gay intended. Why is that so wrong?

The IGN message board was an interesting place to raise the issue. At IGN, working "no homo" into a comment can cause a poster to be banned—unless the post is employing "no homo" in order to discuss "no homo" from a critical lens. This poster's critique amounted to an outright denial that "no homo" is a homophobic phrase. "Surely, stating that he doesn't mean anything gay by the line doesn't equate to anti-gay," he writes. "I think gays are over-protected. I really do. . . . I was banned for saying 'no homo' and I felt it was petty."

Another commenter concurs: "No homo," he writes, is "blanked out b/c it sounds Anti Gay even if the word isnt the true meaning."

Of course, the straight guy who types "no homo" with impunity isn't the best person to argue that "no homo" is unoffensive to gays. According to another IGN poster, "no homo" is "pretty wrong, kinda like saying i could go for a watermelon, 'no negro.'"

However, some more impartial "no homo" scholars have argued against the pure homophobia of the phrase. Kanye West, Slate's Jonah Weiner notes, has crusaded against homophobia in hip-hop when he's not telling everyone he's "no homo." Weiner goes on to argue that there may be a progressive lining to the term's anti-gay slur. "No homo" is "progress," Weiner writes, as it allows rappers to "smuggle in a fuller, less hamstrung notion of masculinity":

No homo . . . allows, implicitly, that rap is a place where gayness can in fact be expressed by the guy on the mic, not just scorned in others. In the very act of trying to "purify" an utterance of any gayness, after all, the no homo tag must contaminate it first—it's both a denial and a flashing neon arrow. This isn't to suggest that saying no homo is a radical act, but there's an appealing sense in which the phrase refuses to function as tidily as some of its boosters might like.

According to Weiner, the homophobia of "no homo" is somewhat mediated by the term's ability to incorporate traditionally "gay" or "feminine" sentiments into hip-hop's fold. The popularity of the phrase itself has even encouraged rappers to heighten the homoeroticism of their lyrics—in order to use "no homo" more. Weiner writes, "Often, no homo appears not just as a disclaimer but as a punch line, a See what I did there? that flaunts one's cleverness."

The radio censorship of the term poses a problem for rappers who have amped up their gay euphemisms in the name of "no homo." Writes one IGN commenter, "If they censor it, and someone hasn't heard it uncensored, doesn't that completely ruin the meaning?" In other words, when radio stations censor "no homo" following a rapper's intentionally homoerotic verse, won't that make rappers sound kind of, well, gay?

If the point of "no homo" is truly, as Weiner argues, to slowly make hip-hop less heteronormative, censoring "no homo" can only speed up the term's intended progress. Why not encourage rappers to express alternate interpretations of masculinity without an easily deconstructed verbal safety net? As for the commentators who profess that "no homo" truly has no relation to homophobia—if they're really OK with being gay, this form of censorship shouldn't chap their asses too much—no "no homo" necessary.