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Music

Did This Old Guy in a Backwards Cap Just Write the Ultimate Anti-Domestic Violence Anthem?

DaddyDaDa's "Treat All Women With Respect" is a musical after-school special that just went viral.
Emma Garland
London, GB

Rap has a tangled history when it comes to violence against women. Tupac went truly HAM on the patriarchy twenty years ago and the prevalance of figures like Missy Elliott help to tip the balance slightly, but Eminem blew up in 2000 by fictionalising all the ways in which he would like to murder his then-wife Kim and new rappers like YG continue to drop lyrics like "How she want it? Beat up like OJ" in 2014. So the balance is still heavily tipped in favour of misogyny.

Fast forward to the present day and DaddyDada, real name Darryl Snider, has penned the plainly titled "Treat All Women With Respect" - a track that (according to his website) aims to, "make everyone aware of the right way to tread women and children." Originally uploaded to YouTube on January 19, the video has since gone viral, racking up over 344,000 views in four days. Probably not for the right reasons, mind you, considering the accompanying Kickstarter - started to fund the next awareness video - still has $0.

Adopting an office safety video level of acting, and often abandoning rhyme and/or rhythm in order to get his point across, DaddyDada has essentially created a musical after-school special in the form of a hip-hop-smooth-jazz-funk track. Opening with "1, 2, 3, 4, no more women on the floor" it goes on to describe what does and does not constitute acceptable conduct, and feels a bit, just A BIT, like Tracy Jordan trying (and failing) to compose the most popular song of all time in 30 Rock by combining five completely different styles of music. But it's all a part of their NO MORE campaign, focused on ending domestic violence and sexual assault, so their heart is in the right place.

It's no "Keep Ya Head Up", but on the spectrum of attitudes towards gender equality in music it certainly lands on the more progressive end. Naturally, the YouTube comments section is a veritable who's who of fedora-wearing Redditors who spend more time addressing women as "M'lady" than they do trimming their neckbeards, proving once again that the comments on anything remotely about feminism justify feminism.

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