A clip from Monday night’s episode of Love & Hip Hop: New York, shows rapper Remy Ma in the recording studio, dropping some bars that did not sit well with viewers. Holding her daughter, Reminisce Mackenzie, in one arm, Remy holds her phone in her other hand, where she reads off the lyrics into the mic. The first few lines, in which Remy spits, “They got this saying, ‘integrity comes first.’ Social media makes it worse,” were not the cause of any controversy surrounding the clip. Instead, the Internet decided to focus on the message—and delivery—of the new few lyrics.
“Real mothers don’t…twerk,” Remy exclaims, with a pause between “don’t” and “twerk” that comes across as way funnier than it should. Because we can’t hear the beat that Remy’s flow is attempting to match, the pause seems to be non-sensical. The result of Remy’s insinuation that a “real,” i.e. “good” mother doesn’t twerk, as if a woman can’t do both, coupled with this comical brief silence had the Internet in tears.
However, it’s the next few lines that are sparking more serious discourse on the clip. Many folks are taking issue with the lyrics that follow. “She a nurse. Wash the clothes, make dinner and dessert” further re-enforce Remy’s implications that, instead of twerking, a real mother has a “proper” profession like being a nurse, and does domestic duties like laundry and cooking. Remy’s recording session then gets interrupted by her baby, and the timing almost makes it seem as if Reminisce herself is objecting to her own mother’s ideas about motherhood. While this is obviously just a coincidence and good editing, plenty of people did object to Remy’s ideas, calling her out on her hypocrisy and saying the lyrics are “misogynistic.”