Long Beach legend Snoop Dogg made a statement on his 1994 hit “Gin and Juice” when he claimed “We don’t love them hoes.” The phrase was later reinforced nearly a decade later on 50 Cent’s “Patiently Waiting” from the landmark LP Get Rich or Die Tryin’. The lyric gave women a sense of fear of the West Coast, which CJ Mac says there was no reason for in an episode of Myths Exposed.
The True Game rapper starts his argument with the example of his friend who has been with a woman for more than 20 years. But CJ Mac is also a reason himself that the West Coast respects women.
“I’m very much in love with the woman I have today, so that is not true. That is a rumor,” he says of the stereotype.
CJ Mac unpacks the possible reasons for the myth that West Coast rappers don’t love women. He suggests that glorification of pimp culture in movies and on television translated to the rap music that came after.
“On the West Coast, Oakland, Los Angeles, it was a big prostitution industry here and pimps and all of that,” he explains. “That was popularized for a while, especially in the ’70s. So watching different television movies and films depicting that type of lifestyle back in the days, that’s how it was. A pimp slap was on the regular in those types of movies back in the day, so I think that’s where that ideology came from.”
He then shares a personal experience where he was with Mack 10 in a hotel room. They had some women from New York over and they were slow to warm up to the West Coast rappers.
“They were sitting there listening, they were looking a little funny and everything,” he reminisces. “We were like, ‘What’s the problem?’ They was like, ‘Well, we’re a little worried about y’all.’ We was like, ‘Why?’ ”Cause you don’t treat women real well on the West Coast.'”
CJ Mac remembers them referring to JAY-Z‘s “Excuse Me Miss” where he raps “I’m ’bout to give you all the keys and security codes” as he woos his love interest. The ladies were well aware of the stark contrast between that and Snoop Dogg’s famous “We don’t love them hoes.”
“So it took us a little while to sit there and talk to ’em and convince ’em, man, that hey, we’re normal and we love women,” he shares.
Mac says that maybe the dismissive attitude toward women “came from a place of hurt” and suggests that the rappers who made the statement famous need a hug.