Ugh, I had hoped this day would never come.

Earlier this year I wrapped up an internship with one of the best publishing companies in the music industry, and was anxiously looking for a place I could get my foot in the door at and get paid for my work. One morning, I had gone to meet with the VP of a major label based in Los Angeles, after which I ran into the exceedingly popular “Cash Me Outside Girl” Danielle Bregoli. I immediately thought “what the fuck is she doing here?” and prayed that it didn’t mean what I thought it meant. After some thought, I figured the label was simply utilizing her popularity on social media to bolster some acts that they had signed.

Well, fuck, I was wrong.

A couple days back I had noticed TMZ posted a leak of what was supposed to Danielle’s debut single, “These Heaux.” Fast forward to today, and the single is officially out—and some of your favorite music publications have even shown bounds of support towards her and her music.

I don’t even know where to start on this. First off, this girl is 14—confirmed, 14 years of age—which means, whether she likes it or not, she’s a role model to a lot of teenagers and pre-teens. It was bad enough that the internet drove her to 11 million Instagram followers for treating her mother horribly and acting all-around ignorant, but the fact that a group of grown ass people that work in the music industry have rallied behind her to make her a rap star is just sad.

Honestly, it says a lot about the current state of music and hip-hop in general. I can attest to the fact that there are some amazing, super-helpful and wholesome people in the music industry—but for every gem, there’s a slimy slug that’s just chasing a bag with no regards for the culture that is so delicately intertwined with the music. People will say “it’s a business, it’s just business,” but when did “just business” mean sacrificing your morals for a dollar?

 

Moving forward, the actual lyrical content on this song is so damn problematic coming from a 14-year-old. “Red in my cup/no it ain’t Kool-Aid,” that’s fuckin’ awesome, let’s have a 14-year-old girl rap about sipping lean, that’s not a horrendous example to set or anything.

I know it’s very easy to combat this point of view with “well, so and so drinks lean, this person does xanax,” and yes, that is also a bad example to set, but when you’re a grown person parading your drug use versus being a 14-year-old doing so, it’s quite a different situation.

Now, she totally could be sober as a bird and flexin’ an addiction she doesn’t have (also because I don’t believe she wrote a single lyric of this song) but even so, we’re gonna just let her perpetuate the trend of drug abuse to her millions of young fans? Not even just her—the blame falls on every person pushing her and her music.

I’m not going to call out any publication by name, but some huge and respected outlets posted about her new song, and the shining praise they gave her just made me cringe. One of them even hailed it as “one of the under-the-radar rap hits of the year.” Bitch, what the fuck?

I know that in the last couple of years the floodgates have been opened, and hip-hop has become more accepting of artists with questionable characters more than ever, but this is a new low if you ask me. I personally will not be feeding into this ridiculousness anymore after publishing this, though that’s really just a drop in the bucket, and I’m almost positive it’s only gonna get worse from here.

It’s beyond obvious she’s just a money-making puppet, and whoever is pulling the strings can cash me outside.