Welcome to Styling, Jezebel’s new video series in which we show how creative people communicate who they are through the clothes they wear—how they embody their work, their personalities, and why they’re just so cool.
The cover art for BbyMutha’s latest single, called “Heaven’s Little Bastard,” depicts the Chattanooga rapper as a demented schoolgirl. Standing on a playground, staring into the camera through smeared mascara and holding a rose-gold iPhone along with a scary clown doll, it’s defiant and intentionally demonic. On the chorus, over a haunted house-invoking beat, she raps, “Is there heaven for a bastard? I go to church but only if I fuck the pastor. I eat the pussy in the motherfucking pew, give a fuck ‘bout what you do, fuck that book and fuck you, only motherfucking God can judge me, lil’ beetch!”
BbyMutha, aka 28-year-old Britnee Moore, has developed a devoted legion of fans by simply doing what she does—whether that means challenging tropes by getting zombified on an album cover, or redefining the terms by which we define “explicit” in rap, or being as frank about her experiences as the formerly teen mother of two sets of twins as she is about her ability to dream of a future without fuckboys. When Jezebel interviewed her in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn in August, she told us that the idea behind her “very dark” forthcoming album, Christine, is “channeling this bitch Christine. She’s a murderer.” (The album is out in mid-September, but “Heaven’s Little Bastard” is a pretty explanatory early taste.)
So when we went thrifting nearby with BbyMutha, it was no surprise that one of the charismatic, fashion-design-educated rapper’s style inspirations is Courtney Love’s classic “kinderwhore” look—baby doll dresses, stompy boots—the kind of dressing meant to challenge and throw any haters off-guard with the dissonance. That’s the look on her single cover and in her music, too: you can’t pigeonhole her because you can’t predict her, and that’s the way she likes it. Watch the video above for our full conversation with the deeply stylin BbyMutha, and watch out for new episodes of Styling, coming soon.
Senior Producer: Tracy Thompson. Associate Producer: Kayra Clouden. Director Of Photography: Santiago Garcia.