The Atlanta trios Bad Boujee seems destined to hit 1 soon, and they followed it up with a Call Casting video that doubled as a travelogue from their visit to Nigeria.

Now comes a video for T-Shirt featuring the Migos three trekking through snowy wilderness, riding snowmobiles, and striking some instantly iconic poses.

Migos have released a lot of videos in their day, but this is the first one thats really sticking with me.

I hear T-shirt and understand why black men would sell drugs, but am discouraged as to why black men feel the need to give it so much public praise, particularly when I think about how many black men that will be in jail for a long time for nonviolent drug offenses (thanks Bill Clinton).

Their ubiquitous influence and success (they h a ve said one of their most memorable performances was in Africa) is dizzying at best.

They have several hits spinning at radio, and Quavo himself has features on a half a dozen songs that are in the top 100 on radio charts.

They have the money, the fame, and the girls, or well at least Quavo and Offset do, or maybe just Quavo, depending on Offsets status with Cardi this week.

As of yet we dont know if a relationship with Takeoff has taken off.

In an interview with Fader, Offset made it known that they all taught themselves to rap, make beats, and record their work in the studio.

With the breakout success of Versace in 2013, the group was officially hailed as the next group out of the south (yes, they are from the nawf, but that nawf, Lawrenceville, Georgia, is in the south) that would have a wide musical impact.

The prediction was nothing short of true with continued success into 2016, which brought another omnipresent hit, Look At My Dab.

Their musical influences span widely, and the production of their tracks and their lyrical flow all attribute to you being in the store humming songs by the group you didnt even realize you knew.

To broach any subject related to Migos may seem like fun, but is actually layered and complex.

Below the obvious though are a lot of questions about what the love of Migos really means and who this culture is that they are doing it for.

On the chorus for Too Hotty Quavo and Offset say, Scotty too hottyput that lil bitch on the mollyshe fucked everybody.

After reciting this to a friend, he immediately said, Thats rape I said, I know What I didnt discuss after I said that was the internal battle I was having with this verse and with the song as a whole.

I have found myself listening to the song over and over again, even after that conversation, and even though I cant reconcile my desire to hear it with a verse that contains a clear admittance, or something at least adjacent to approval, of rape.

Im wondering if I listen enough will I become desensitized to the point where listening to a verse about rape wont matter.

I cant help but wonder if Quavo and Offset realize what theyre actually saying Did it even cross their minds as they wrote it How do they feel about rape Do they even care The group collectively will say they are doing it for the culture, but when you think about the blatant disregard for sexual violence against women spoken in lyrics such as those mentioned above, the impact those words and their sentiment have on rape culture just cant be ignored.

I dont want to say that rappers are as heartless as they make themselves out to be (because its mostly an act anyway) as they are still human, but I cant find reason in the way they are so casually callous with their lyric choices.

Though I would love to say that music is the great unifier and should be listened to without bias, for people to be able to consume this kind of music with no thought about subject matter in some ways feels dangerous.

The presentation of hyper masculinity which includes having to sell drugs and go to jail to be considered anything of a real man, verses that objectify and in turn insult women; all of these elements have traveled down the generations of rap.

Who can forget 2 Live Crew, Snoop Doggs infamous verse Bitches aint shit but hoes and trickslick on these nuts and suck the dick, and every rap lovers favorite pimp, 2 Short While I didnt listen to a lot of material from these artists growing up, I knew who they were, and I knew what they were talking about.

I didnt necessarily agree with all of their lyrics, but I just stored it away as part of the way rap works.

Now that Ive gotten older, there is this musical morality that has grown in me, one that I thought would be reserved for people much older than I am, and one that I try to hide out of embarrassment because I dont want people to think Im on some lyrical high horse or someone trying to be woke just for the sake of saying Im woke.

I listen to Bad and Bojuee and cringe even though Im singing along.

Migos T Shirt