Coming For The Crown: Chicago Rapper CupcakKe Is Charting Her Own Course To Success

Like any woman who publicly owns her sexuality, ​CupcakKe (born Elizabeth Harris) is no stranger to frustrating double standards. The 20-year-old MC has gone viral several times over the past few years with songs like “Deepthroat,” “Vagina,” and “Juicy Coochie,” all of which elicited strong online reactions with their frank discussions of female sexual pleasure. Despite healthy doses of clever wordplay, the comments were often unkind. They’re also a far cry from the online reactions to sexually explicit songs and videos by male rappers.

For CupcakKe, it’s all just part of the game. “At the end of the day the world is gonna be the world. I know women can say whatever they want and be themselves the same way a guy can,” she tells Genius during a sit-down interview earlier this month. “Now, will they be accepted by the world by saying that? Maybe not, because that’s the fucked up world we live in where we’ve got double standards. But I feel like one day it will be better.”

The rising rapper grew up on the South Side of Chicago, where she attended the same Elementary school as Chief Keef and Lil Reese and first got her start performing poetry at her church. After a parishioner told her that her artistry could translate into rap, she jumped into music and never looked back. She has long counted on the support of her mother, who funded her early studio time and accompanied her to this interview, watching her break down vividly sexual lyrics without blinking an eye.

Thanks to that support, CupcakKe has released five official projects since 2016, with her most recent, Ephorize, dropping at the top of 2018. Her wild style and image has attracted significant critical praise and even a pair of collaborations with pop darling Charli XCX, who has been a vocal supporter ever since they first connected on social media.

CupcakKe is best known for her sexually explicit songs and their accompanying videos, which have featured the Chicago MC (amongst other things), sucking on dildos, deep-throating a banana, and drinking out of a dog bowl. Although these have defined the media narrative around her career, they actually represent a surprisingly small portion of her catalog. She spends just as much time rapping about topics like growing up poor, embracing her self-image, and dealing with sexual abuse as a young girl. She first tackled the latter topic on her emotional 2016 song “Pedophile,” reminiscing on a dark life experience that caught some fans by surprise.

“The sex is very easy,” she says. “I think it was hard making ‘Pedophile’ because there was so much emotion going in it. When it’s about sex it’s fun, we’re just letting loose. But when it’s about something as serious as that, it’s a lot of feelings come out while writing.”

It’s not hard to imagine the emotions she’s referencing; the song features her spitting about being exploited by an older man when she was a teenager:

Brainwashed with what you tell me
What you mean? I was 15 and you play me like R.Kelly
Ready for suicide I’m getting my tubes tied
Don’t want another man on me cause I imagine you inside
Refuse to be abused, misused and bruised
You get accused and act confused fuck wrong with this dude?

Other prominent examples of her diverse skillset include 2017’s “Scraps,” a reflection on her poverty-stricken childhood, and Ephorize’s “Cartoons,” where she drops rapid-fire pop culture references over a chaotic, percussion-heavy beat:

Still, CupcakKe is undeniably great at rapping about sex, delivering hilarious one-liners on songs like “Duck Duck Goose,” where she raps:

Climbing on that dick, need a 10 feet ladder
I love the D, that’s my favorite letter
My nudes in your phone, takin' up your data
My cakes got fatter by using cum as the batter

She also points to a line from 2016’s “Juicy Coochie” as one of her favorite bars. “Dick fatter than Peter Griffin and the head bigger than Stewie” she raps, cackling to herself. “It’s so hard to think of those lyrics, but it’s so good when it comes out.”

In many ways, CupcakKe’s career feels like the natural evolution of a movement first pioneered by ‘90s rappers like Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown, who unabashedly embraced sex appeal on their respective 1996 debuts Hardcore and Ill Na Na. Both women were unafraid to get explicit, even appearing together on the cover of The Source in 1996 under the tagline “Harlots or Heroines?” CupcakKe’s brazen lyrics often evokes the legacy of Foxy and Kim, like when the latter rapper opened her song “Big Momma Thang” with these famous lines:

I used to be scared of the dick
Now I throw lips to the shit
Handle it like a real bitch
Heather Hunter, Janet Jacme
Take it in the butt, yah, yazz wha

More recently, rappers like Trina, Nicki Minaj, and Cardi B, have picked up the mantle in their own ways by using sexually explicit lyrics and videos to their advantage, all feeding off the work of sex rap groundbreakers like 2 Live Crew and Too $hort.

Although they all have major accomplishments to their names, each of these women has faced questions about whether—in a world still dominated by the tastes and desires of straight men—they were being empowered or exploited. In the case of Kim and Foxy, several of their biggest raps were reportedly written by men, surely coloring their content. In that respect, CupcakKe’s music stands out because it largely doesn’t feel created for the male gaze. While Kim was trying to live up to a porn star standard, CupcakKe is spitting bars like “Cut the dick off, took it home with me / ‘Cause any dick that long, it belong with me"—it’s her own pleasure that’s always centered. Although she prides herself on her sexual prowess, her songs (especially the more recent ones) aren’t framed on what she can give to a man, but what he can do for her. The distinction is often subtle, but it’s important.

The themes of self-love and sexual liberation that run throughout her music have also attracted a sizable and vocal fanbase in the LGBT community, still rare in the machismo-fueled world of hip-hop. For CupcakKe, that’s a point of pride. She has worked to uplift the community in her music, like on 2016’s clunky but endearing “LGBT.” Ephorize’s biggest song “Crayons” also features her taking a series of hard swipes at homophobes and double standards about gay and lesbian relationships:

Love is love, who give a fuck? (give a fuck!)
Girl on girl, they like “yup”
But when it’s man on man they like “yuck”
Motherfuckers need be gone with that shit
Bitch, we ain’t playin' along, ain’t no skits

“I don’t wanna use a basic word like ‘sweet’ because its more than that,” she says when describing her relationship with the LGBT community. “I think they’re very good souls… Getting to know some of my friends and hearing their stories about coming out and a lot of people tweet me like, ‘Oh you helped me come out.’ It’s so inspiring to actually have that impact.” She even grabbed headlines by offering to pay for a fan’s hotel room after he tweeted her about being kicked out of his home for being gay. “A lot of people judge the community because whatever’s in their head that they feel like they can’t love the gays,” she says. “I can’t control other people, but as much awareness as I can bring out of the situation, I want to help. CupcakKe can’t do it all but she can do like 2 percent of it.”

She’s received a bit of criticism for some of her language choices, notably referring to trans people as “transgenders” on “Crayons"—something she repeated in our interview—but her intent seems sincere. For many of her LGBT fans, CupcakKe’s sense of pride and message of self-acceptance seems to have struck a chord.

This same independent mindedness carries over into her career management. The Illinois MC takes pride in how she funded everything on her own, from touring to purchasing beats. She hasn’t signed a label deal yet, either, largely due to the struggles she’s seen other artists face. “I’m scared of signing to a label and not being CupcakKe,” she says. “I don’t want to come out of it and being like, ‘Who the fuck is she?’… A lot of people be stupid and they think signing the line means I’m gonna be bigger than what I am, but they never think of the opposite situation. What if this goes bad and this fucks up my career?” She points to her fellow Chicagoan Chance The Rapper as an inspiration in this regard. “He’s independent, he does it himself, and he’s consistent,” she notes. “And he’s great.”

She was, however, pictured outside of Capitol Records recently, sparking rumors that she had decided to take the major label route. Sounding frustrated, she explains that the response underscores people’s warped perceptions of success. “What’s so sad is people have to see you making moves in order to believe that this girl is great,” she says. “I got like 23,000 likes on Twitter saying ‘I just left Capitol Records.’ I didn’t take take the deal, but they just see me in front of Capitol Records and it’s like, ‘wow’… I really love those fans that believed in me from the beginning, who saw [what I was doing] and were like, ‘I think she could go far.‘”

Like many women in the music industry (especially in hip-hop), CupcakKe faces pressure to be everything to everyone. “That’s where I question myself. I’m always saying yes to things, [but] the moment I say no, I think to myself like, ‘Am I being a bitch or am I having standards?’” she says. Her answer is reminiscent of Nicki Minaj’s famous diatribe about trying to please everyone during her My Time Now documentary on MTV. “I put quality in what I do,“ Nicki said. “So if I turn up to a photo shoot and you got a $50 clothes budget and some sliced pickles on a motherfuckin’ board, you know what? No. I am gonna leave. Is that wrong? Wanting more for myself? Wanting people to treat me with respect? Next time, they know better. But had I accepted the pickle juice, I would be drinking pickle juice right now.”

CupcakKe acknowledges that her biggest challenge remains being taken seriously, both because of her vulgar raps and her status as an independent artist. “The only way [people’s perceptions of me] could shift between those years is like friends telling them to actually listen to my songs. Like, ‘Okay fuck this, take the sexual music out of your head and listen to this right here’,” she says. “That’s when it shifts, like, ‘Whoa this bitch can really rap.’”

Whether her crass style really can produce a crossover hit remains to be seen, but in an industry with pervasive barriers for poor, minority women, what she’s already managed to achieve on her own is no small feat. Unlike many of her 2018 rap peers who trade on social clout and cosigns, she has cultivated a niche following of loyal fans off the strength of her raps. Her upcoming tour to support Ephorize is beginning to sell out, and her trolling antics have endeared her to the ever-entertaining stan Twitter, too. While she’s far more than just a gimmicky sex rapper, CupcakKe’s unabashed sexuality and message of self-empowerment have become central parts of her public persona. After years of hard work, her message seems to be resonating stronger than ever.