So I’ve been really busy and it’s been hard keeping up with my blog. But I had to bring back dat Bounce for Magnolia Shorty’s birthday. (I know I’m breaking chronology, but I’ll pick back up with the all-important 1993 shortly.)

Among the many memorable figures of Yoruba lore stands the “trickster” dichotomy of Eshu-Eleggua. On one side, you have the playful but powerful Eleggua, representing opening and closing, the beginning and ending of life. Then you have the mischievous and unruly Eshu, who means no harm but whose unpredictable “tricks” can hurt you if you play around with his energy. Eleggua is represented by the number 3, the colors red and black, and toys, including toy soldiers. And since Eshu-Eleggua have been associated with the figure of a monkey, their “trickster” tales have been translated into African-American folklore as the tales of the so-called “Signifying Monkey”.

So then, is it a coincidence that the cover of Magnolia Shorty’s album Monkey on tha Dick features 3 figures (a monkey and two women scantily-clad in soldier gear) as well as the colors red and black? Or that the “two” women on the cover are really the same woman duplicated in reverse, much like the mirror-image dynamic of Eshu-Eleggua? Or that Magnolia Shorty herself was named after the infamous Magnolia Projects in the 3rd Ward of New Orleans? Or that renowned music writer Nik Cohn, who has a whole chapter in his New Orleans Bounce book called “Monkey On Tha Dick”, named the book no less than Triksta?

I don’t know, but I do know that in 1997, one Magnolia Shorty (nee Renetta Yemika Lowe-Bridgewater) rode the wave of Lil’ Kim’s controversial 1996 debut Hard Core with her own hard core debut, Monkey on tha Dick. With her unapologetically racy and sexually aggressive image, Kim changed what women were “allowed” to say about sex in rap, and Shorty followed suit, particularly on her album’s title track. I see a direct correlation between Kim on “Big Momma Thing” saying:

“I used to be scared of the dick / Now I throw lips to the shit / Handle it like a real bitch…”

and Shorty on “Monkey on tha Dick” going from being “just a virgin with a capital V” to being “ready to ride dat stick”.

In the film 28 Days Later, the first time we see the Rage disease is not in humans. Rather, it was first tested in monkeys, then the humans started, well, biting. Similarly, DJ Jubilee “bit” the “Monkey on tha Dick” dance in his 1997 song “Get It Ready” (though, to be fair, Shorty borrowed the “ooh, ooh” monkey sound of her hook from Jubilee’s “shake it like a dog” refrain in his 1993 debut single “Do the Jubilee All”). And in what would become a Cash Money habit of recycling their own beats and hooks, the beat for “Monkey on tha Dick” originated in the remix of Lil’ Slim’s 1993 hit “Bounce Slide Ride” (though Shorty’s version removes the sample of The Fearless Four’s “Rockin’ It”, which I would have thought Shorty would have held on to in solidarity with fellow estrogenic expresser MC Lyte’s “Cha Cha Cha”). This practice of repurposing intellectual property was discussed in Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s 1988 book The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism, which discussed a so-called “oppositional signifying” in which “authors reuse motifs from previous works but alter them and ‘signify’ upon them so as to create their own meanings.” Biting and borrowing; it’s all the Rage.

Like the First Lady of Cash Money Ms. Tee, Magnolia Shorty was only about 15 years old when she started recording for CMR. This reflects the label’s long-standing habit of signing young artists, as addressed by early CMR signee Lil’ Slim in a 2010 interview (in which he suggested this practice was designed to take advantage of the eager and inexperienced artists with predatory contracts).

In any case, “Monkey on tha Dick” showcased Magnolia Shorty as Eshu-Eleggua incarnate; Eleggua enough to know sex represented the crossroads between life and death but Eshu enough to play tricks with it anyway. Representing duality, she posed parallel ideas throughout the song, inviting us repeatedly to eschew the played-out bedroom drills of 1995 with the adventurous advancements of 1996. And like a true trickster, she even contradicted herself, charging the ladies to alternate between “monkeying on tha dick” and “dodging that dick”. This could represent the reclamation of women’s sexual prerogative, as did Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown at the same time. As the old saying goes, “A woman reserves the right to change her mind.” Or, as another saying goes, “Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don’t!”

Magnolia Shorty would go on to record with her fellow Magnolia soldier Juvenile, and to make hits like “That’s My Juvey” and of course “Monkey on tha Dick, Pt. 2”. You can also hear Magnolia Shorty’s voice immortalized in Drake’s “In My Feelings” as she is sampled saying “black biggy biggy black” and “I got a new boy”. Unfortunately, we won’t be hearing any more new songs from Shorty, as she was viciously gunned down outside her apartment in 2010 (similar to the man who gave her her pen name, Magnolia Slim aka Soulja Slim). The legacy of New Orleans Bounce has far too many stories which end like this, with jealousy and envy eating alive those whose talent was just on the verge elevating them beyond a land of lack. But on her birthday, I lift Magnolia Shorty’s spirit up high: a signifying Shorty with the power to turn lions and elephants against each other. And a trickster who was about her business even when she seemed to be just monkeying around.