By late ’92, Bounce was coming into its own, finding a space on New Orleans radio, blaring from cars, from project porches, and certainly in the clubs which had created the style from jump. There were still only a handful of Bounce songs and artists, but boy, did we love them. DJs spun them religiously and we danced to them…irreligiously, so to speak.

Fitting right into the mold MC T Tucker had formed with “Where They At” came Lil’ Elt’s “Get the Gat”. It really might as well have been “Where They At, Part Two”, except it didn’t sample “Drag Rap (Triggerman)”. Instead, it was built on “The Choice Is Yours” by Black Sheep and the same “woof” sound that kicked off “Ask Them Hoes” by MC Dart and 3-9 Posse, Lil’ Elt’s crew.

“Get the Gat” was a fun, cool little song; nothing earth-shattering. It just took advantage of the popularity of “Where They At”, basically giving the DJs something to play right after it. But what was more interesting was what DJs ended up playing after “Get the Gat”; a response that I don’t think Lil’ Elt expected.

See, as much as Bounce had been driven by the “P-poppin’” women of New Orleans, known to put hands on floor and feet on wall and bounce that ass like they were in a trance, apparently some women were growing tired of the testosterone-driven boasts that came with the Bounce. A woman had yet to release a Bounce song, and the songs thus far released by the likes of Tucker, Jimi, Juvey, Everlasting Hitman and now Lil’ Elt consistently referenced women merely as sexual objects, bluntly commanding them to shake that ass like a salt shaker and ride that you-know-what for a Starter jacket. Then the thanks they got for following directions was to be derided as materialistic slut bitches. As Elt put it in “Get the Gat”: “You ain’t nothin’ but a dopeman’s bitch / You ain’t got no job, now you want him to trick…”

It was high time a sista got on the mic and laid down the law, and she came in the form of a rapper named Ju’C, who responded to the masculine bravado of Bounce with a frank vagina monologue known as “Eat the Cat”.

“Eat the Cat” was apparently a response to 3-9 Posse as a whole, going so far as to start the street version with a snippet of “Ask Them Hoes” before laying out a blunt diatribe of “these ol’ fake-ass niggas talkin’ ‘bout ‘ride the dick’ this and ‘suck the dick’ that, knowin’ they 90 percent suckin’, eatin’, AND lickin’”. But there was no doubt that it was a direct response to “Get the Gat”. It was a master class in parody, riding the exact same beat with Ju’C spoofing just about everything Lil’ Elt said. So Elt’s aforementioned line about the “dopeman’s bitch” became: “You ain’t nothin’ but a pussy-eatin’ bitch / Ain’t got no dick, now you want a lick…” And Elt’s “I’m a nigga with a rock-hard bone / And I’m takin’ one of these hoes home…” became “I’m a hoe with a real hot cat / And I like it when you eat it from the back…” Now that I’m a teaching artist with a particular focus on parody through my Spoof School approach, I can’t help but marvel at how thoroughly Ju’C deconstructed Elt’s lyrics. (Not that I would EVER use this particular example in a classroom! LOL.)

The “clean” version of “Eat the Cat” was called “Get the Cat”, and I taped it off the radio with all my other early Bounce favorites. I remember early in my high school career riding with my Mom in her Volvo, playing my little Bounce tape in her cassette player. I think we might have gotten halfway through “Get the Cat”, maybe even all the way, when my Mom looked over at me and said, “I don’t need to hear that again.” I hold on to that memory as a testament to my mother’s subtlety and patience. Even though it was the clean version, I wouldn’t have dared to try playing that in my Dad’s car. In that one sentence, I think that was my Mom’s way of saying, “Don’t take my kindness for weakness.”

All said, “Eat the Cat” showed that Bounce was becoming “mature” enough to warrant response songs. It also paved the way for Bounce’s battle of the sexes, standing as somewhat of a siren song for the sistas: a call that would be answered quite readily as we entered 1993.

Coming up: “I came here tonight to settle the score…”