When Katy Perry tweeted on Tuesday, “Just heard a new song on the radio called ‘I hate being sober’ I now have serious doubt for the world,” she was more right than she knew.
Ugh. Okay, so “I Hate Being Sober” is a track from Chief Keef’s Essential major-label debut, Finally Rich. The 17-year-old rapper known to the court system as Keith Cozart, fresh off an arrest near Atlanta for disorderly conduct only a few months after getting out of juvenile detention for violating his probation from an earlier gun conviction, wrote back uplifting and liberal-minded things, like, “Ill Smack The Shit out her,” and, “Dat bitch Katy Perry Can Suck Skin Off Of my Dick.” You know, the types of statements that might appeal to the all-important male 18-to-34 demo but have the side effect of focusing misplaced outrage on a teen dad whose ugly words are at least partly the reflection of our society’s tolerance of inequality and segregation, though obviously he’s a person and can’t be reduced to a symbol of social ills.
Late last night, the “Firework” singer apologized, in another series of tweets: “Mr. Keef! I’m sorry if I offended you. I heard a lot of people guesting on the song & didn’t even know it was you in particular. Actually… I’m a fan of your ‘Don’t Like’ video tbh. I was really just having a general opinion on our generations desire to be constantly intoxicated.”
Keef retweeted Perry’s tweets, responding with his own apology (“Oh Im Sorry Too Then”). He issued a series of somewhat cryptic tweets, including, “FML Mesha Be Pissin Me Tf Off” and “Bye twitter.” Apparently before going to bed he tweeted, “No Lie I Wanna Fuck Reggie Bush Baby mama Dat Look Like Kim K.” More recently, he linked to a photo of an unidentified woman with a skewed version of his face tattooed on her back. “I kno When Niggas be Hittin Dis Dey Be Mad Asl Cuz I Be Right Dere Like,” he wrote.
Now, Perry and Keef are both quite good at what it is they do. But Perry has nearly 37 million Twitter followers, and Keef, though clearly less famous, still has almost 700,000. A lot of people care enough about these tweets to continue wanting more of them. Speaking of “serious doubts about the world”! Is it any wonder some might prefer to be intoxicated?
