Shayna Pickett loves the Blue Note and good rock music. When she saw a poster for the band Black Pussy months ago, she got really excited.
“I thought the name was pretty dope,” Pickett said. “A band called Black Pussy, right? I just imagined that whoever named the band — excuse my language — probably fucked a black girl. Like, ‘Yay, black pussy!’”
A 26-year-old black woman, Pickett felt her excitement come to a screeching halt Tuesday when she learned the band’s performance that evening had been cancelled owing to complaints about the band’s name.
“I waited for the show for-fucking-ever, and when I heard they got cancelled tonight, personally I just figured it was a feminist thing, but I don’t feel like it was a racial thing,” Pickett said. “I waited so long to see this band live. The Blue Note always has great shows, and this was probably one of the highlights of the season (for me).”
‘I think it really sucks’
Taking shelter from heavy rain and the residual rumblings of a packed rock show’s aftermath, I had interviewed Pickett late Tuesday night in the Blue Note’s back bathroom.
Headlining act Mothership had still played. Their drummer had declined to comment about Black Pussy, expressing the sentiment that their band was there just to do its thing.
But Pickett had been poised to comment, focusing mostly on how much she liked the Portland-based band’s music. An artist herself, she was disappointed that outrage had trumped art, and she wasn’t sure exactly who had been trying to shut the show down.
“I think it really sucks. I was really looking forward to the show,” she said. “As one black woman, it’s not offensive to me. What if it was White Pussy? Do you think that would offend someone just as much? Maybe? Or just ‘Pussy?’ Or in Kill Bill, Beatrix gets in the fucking Pussy Wagon?”
Pickett was one of several people I spoke to on and off the record who expressed disappointment in the canceled performance.
“It’s the left eating itself,” said show-goer Brandon Davis, a white man who was looking forward to seeing Black Pussy live for the first time. “I understand the name is in bad taste, but it seemed like the people who shut it down were more on a power trip than trying to protect people.”
While that was Davis’ perspective, it wasn’t everyone’s. Prominent OKC hip-hop artist Jabee Williams announced Monday on Facebook that he was cancelling his April 7 show at the Blue Note because “I feel it is unethical and disrespectful to perform following a band called ‘Black Pussy.'”
Reached Wednesday morning by phone, Williams said he doesn’t “use art” as a cop out for saying offensive things.
“They have the artistic integrity to do what they want to do, but I feel the same way, so I did what I did,” he explained. “I feel like there’s a difference between artistic integrity and shock value.”
Williams, who praised the Blue Note as an OKC venue that has long supported hip-hop even when other places would not, said the rock band’s name can hardly be separated from the emotions it can invoke.
“I don’t think they’re racist or anything like that,” Williams said. “But I think the privilege comes in to where, ‘Well this is art, so deal with it.’ … What they’re saying is that women are an object. Not only that, black women are an object.”
That doesn’t sit well with the east-OKC native.
“To put it that way is disrespectful because, since the beginning of this country, black women have been nothing but property and objects of white men. To be insensitive to that — and to be an artist who is insensitive to that — is even worse.”
He offered unoffended patrons like Pickett “more power to her,” but said his personal feelings are crafted by his personal reality.
“If my mom wasn’t black, I might not understand that. If I didn’t have black daughters, I might not understand it. But I do, so it means something totally different to me,” Williams said. “My mom was raped by a white man, you know what I’m saying? So it’s personal to me.”
‘This is heavy’
For his part, Black Pussy is personal to Dustin Hill as well. The 43-year-old rocker welcomed me into his band’s van at a car wash across from the Blue Note on Tuesday night.
“This is heavy. Tonight, I feel sad because we’ve played here six or seven times. This is family,” Hill said. “I’m learning to not get bummed on cancellations. I’m learning to be here in the moment.”
Those moments, however, are becoming more frequent for Hill and his fellow musicians who formed Black Pussy “about nine years ago.” Three of the first 11 stops on the band’s new tour have cancelled their performance, including a venue in Portland. In the age of digital media, Hill said opponents of his band’s name have been trying to generate outrage across the country where they are set to play.
“The far left and the far right are finally hanging out together,” Hill said of progressive protests against his band’s name. “Everyone in this band and in this van here is a liberal. In this moment of my life, I’m being ostracized by some of my own liberal community.”
To that end, Hill emphasized that Black Pussy never intended to be a political band. He noted how a band like Rage Against the Machine tried to focus on political messaging but functionally became a party-rock band.
“Well, this band is not about politics at all,” he said. “We are a boogie-rock band.”
Unwittingly, Hill’s description highlighted further the gap in perspective between his band and Williams, whose songs are often intentionally political by nature.
‘We are just good clickbait for them’
In deciding to wade into these bubbling waters of social sensitivity and artistic freedom, I tried to promise everyone I interviewed that I would treat them fairly and tell a broad story featuring many perspectives.
Unfortunately, two calls to a co-owner of the Blue Note — owned and operated by the Deep Fork Group — went unreturned Wednesday. I wanted to prove to all parties involved that I could tell a robust story accurately. Suffice it to say, that hasn’t always been every artist’s experience with media.
“This is a discussion within our camp. The internet and publications anymore don’t care about substance,” Hill said. “They are only doing clickbait, and we are just good clickbait for them, so they try to fuck with us for clicks.”
On that topic, I asked Hill about a 2015 Jezebel post titled Portland Fuckboy in Band Called ‘Black Pussy’ Says Psychedelic Drug DMT Will Cure ‘PC Culture’, which garnered him national criticism.
“I didn’t talk to Jezebel. You know the media. I didn’t talk to fucking Jezebel. They’re clickbait,” Hill said, his frustration noticeable. “What they do is, they scour goddamn interviews and they take what they want and they write around it. They just take shit and do whatever they want. It’s gross.”
In the Jezebel article, Hill is called “idiotic” and a “fuckboy,” and his statements to another publication about Black Lives Matter are clipped to imply a general disapproval of something he actually called “a great movement.”
With a reputation like that following him online, it’s hardly any wonder Hill and Black Pussy are catching sustained heat for a name he recognizes as controversial.
“My grandma would probably tell me it was tacky,” Hill said. “But it’s art, and if we take those artistic freedoms away, we are fucking doomed.”
Williams said he “researched” Black Pussy online before making his decision to speak out against their show.
“I couldn’t find anything where I could give them the benefit of the doubt,” the rapper said. “Everything I found was them being disrespectful.”
He pointed to the band’s post about Tuesday night’s show being cancelled, which seemed respectful until the very last line that read, “Do not let the fucktards win.” In a Facebook post detailing the Portland show’s cancellation earlier in March, the band also said, “So we encourage a non-cunty dialogue about this.”
But in his van drinking an IPA, Hill told me the band name’s actual origin. He had “hit rock bottom” and had thought he had quit the music industry after traveling to Turkey and living there briefly. While sucked back into a new project that would become Black Pussy, the name popped into his head. He said he went online to see if anyone else had used it, and he was thrilled to learn no one had.
“This band name was amazing,” he said, adding that he looked both words up in the dictionary. He then read that the Rolling Stones’ song Brown Sugar had originally been titled Black Pussy.
“I thought I hit the fucking jackpot, honestly,” Hill said. “No one was going to forget my band name.”
‘I’m not here to be famous’
The packed house at the Blue Note on Tuesday won’t forget Black Pussy any time soon. The band sold merchandise, mingled with fans and ultimately even got paid, as Hill said the venue honored its contract.
“Mothership played a fucking awesome show,” Pickett said. “Let’s say they had the name ‘Black Pussy,’ what would you take away from that? The name of their band or the fact they went hard on stage tonight?”
Davis agreed.
“I wish people would take into consideration context and intent as opposed to just shutting something down,” he said. “Mainstream hip-hop has way worse (misogyny).”
For Black Pussy, the situation has become a matter of principle now, Hill said.
“I’m a real artist. I’m fucking 43 years old. I’m not here to be famous. Selling out would be changing the name,” he said. “We’ve made a decision as a camp that we are not changing our band name until we cannot book a show. We are going to fight for the freedom of rock and roll.”
Hill said he would be curious what the owners of the Blue Note would say about their cancellation decision if I were able to reach them.
“We’ve played here so many times, and we’ve supported their venue and business,” he said. “So I hope they just admit they were scared. There was fear involved.”
He said he was not sure whether threats had made against the Blue Note, though he said violence had been threatened against previous venues.
“That’s when a line is being crossed,” Hill said. “That’s dangerous, man. That’s definitely not being liberal at all.”
(Correction: This story was updated at 9:45 a.m. Friday, April 14, 2017, to identify Brandon Davis correctly. NonDoc regrets the error.)
