Three Little Sistas Called Watoto From The Nile Put Lil’ Wayne on Blast

And boy, have they been getting hate for telling their truth. And they are only 9, 10, and younger. You’d think that they were going to be targets for a drive-by. It’s a kids record! This is from the YouTube site:

“Letter to Lil Wayne” is a direct statement of justice from Watoto From The Nile. Growing tired and fed up with the constant degredation (sic) of Black women inside (and outside) of Hip Hop music, they voice thier (sic) views and opinions on this melodic track.

Here are some of the 8,997 (and counting) negative and positive responses–misspellings and all–from YouTube:

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To all you Lil Wayne fans, these girls aren’t trying to call out Lil Wayne, just trying to get a messgae (sic) across about a lot of rappers, not JUST him, and about how much music has changed. If you would stop being so ignorant and just listen, you’d too be smart enough to see that.
Ashley94Ann 20 hours ago 10
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dey shuldnt be listenin to his songs in the first place..
TheChicksk8r 27 minutes ago
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What beat is dis ?
KarismaticTV 1 hour ago
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mannn the lil girls is hella stupid for this i swear this lil ABC rap aye if you gone enter the rap world step yo muthafuckin game up

did you actually read these lyrics be for you posted this video i smh to the parents its not the kids fault

…i think imma make a diss video to the lil girls cus wats a rapper with out beef

LMAO Stevie Wounduu
dotPROBY 4 hours ago
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Why is she jumping on Wayne? Most rappers talk about drugs and call women bitches. Jay Z is a respected rapper, and does that. But she probably is too scared to talk trash about a rapper like Jay Z, since it’s easier to bash Lil Wayne than it is to bash Jay Z…
Superflykid2008 7 hours ago
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Go ‘head ladies! Keep it up!
SuperFlyBonsai 7 hours ago
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Peace To The Queens. I definitely Support this video. Listen to what they are saying. they are the one’s that will inherit the earth once we are gone. TEACH THE BABIES!!!!!!!

PEACE. Positive education ALWAYS Corrects Errors.
bornj16 8 hours ago

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someone needs to put these brats to bed
BarbieBiitch420 18 hours ago
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WAYNE WIN N THEY LOSE
BarbieBiitch420 18 hours ago
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I call them April babies, cause they fools!
JAYECape 18 hours ago

These bitches needa stfu. Lil Wayne is a god damn American icon! He’ll write wutevr sells out his crowds. Btw, ur daddy lied. U r not a royal queen. He just didn’t want to hurt ur feelings.
MrHaloChamp 20 hours ago

And these are rather tame compared to some others.

I have to agree with this response from The Crunk Feminist Collective about the girls’ politics. Steve Harvey, noooooo. The “African/black queens” schtick comes from way back to my time in the Seventies. But hey, life is long, and they’ve made a start:

I want to join the chorus and give a big ol’ YAY to black girls creating media and saying what’s on their minds! Speaking back to Wayne’s misogyny is super important!

That said, I wonder about the limits of such a message.

Steve Harvey’s views on women are not progressive. He’s simply peddling a more respectable sort of black gender relations that still have women in the role of subservient sex goddesses but with a bit more modesty. To set him up as a positive alternative to Wayne misses his own belief in narrow gender roles for men and women. The song disparages Wayne for being single and seems to imply that ideally he should be married or that if he was acting right he would be. Erykah Badu is signaled as a “good” artist despite having worked with Wayne (and she’s single too; tweets is watchin’).

Wayne gets constructive as wholly negative and Lauryn Hill et. al as wholly positive. That good vs. evil split is a little too easy and doesn’t get at the complexity of the issues I have with Wayne’s music. For me it’s not so much the “calling women out their names” as it is his objectification of women that informs his word choice and the earlier trauma in his life that may impact his behavior.

When we are young and maybe a little influenced by our parents, we can go a little too hard [with] the virtuous/Queen/good black people paint. In speaking back to Wayne and other rappers with misogynistic lyrics we have to be careful we don’t end up creating a new box for women, that is just as limiting if a bit more respectful. The “Madonna” is just as limiting as the “whore”, even if she gets more props.

Yeah, but that’s what comes from another generation teaching the young ones. It’s a garbled message sent from the Seventies/Eighties grandparent(s) to the Nineties/Double Ought parent(s) to now. It’s up to Mya and her little friends to grow up and reject, if possible, those kinds of labels with exposure to a wider world. I agree that it can be a trap for little black girls and women. Those women who grew to reject that mess definitely ended up as black feminists in the Seventies (see The Combahee River Collective Statement, a ground-breaking declaration against black male chauvinism as well as a critique of the limitations of the black power movement as it pertained to black women).

Go send some love to the girls at YouTube in the comments area, buy their single at iTunes, or see their other single, “I Won’t Quit.” They can also be reached at watotofromthenile@yahoo.com.