Big Mama, No Ring
How Latto’s latest rollout turns scandal, contradiction, and motherhood into a spectacle of modern celebrity
Whew, chile! It has been some time since I last wrote a column, and I owe you a sincere apology for my recent silence. Merely 12 days into the new year, I accepted a position more closely aligned with my long-term professional ambitions—one that also offers a welcome measure of stability and financial security. As I adjust to this transition, producing the kind of high-caliber columns my audience has come to expect may prove more difficult, and future pieces will require additional time and care. But don’t worry! I have no shortage of compelling events to dissect with my “award-winning,” smart-ass, research-driven opinions, beginning with the following:
The Newest Baby Mama on the Block
Enter Latto, a rapper whose public persona has long trafficked in contradiction: she invokes female empowerment, sermonizes about low body counts, and indulges in the tired ritual of slut-shaming other women, only to find herself eclipsed by speculation surrounding a pregnancy and an alleged involvement with a married man. That dissonance now appears to animate her latest album rollout, which leans heavily into her “Big Mama” persona while arriving alongside an announcement no one requested and a self-satisfied suggestion that she “wanted to give [us] time to miss her” during her hiatus after Sugar Honey Iced Tea—or, fittingly, S.H.I.T. for short. As a marketing strategy, it may well work; controversy has always been a reliable accelerant in pop culture. Yet the spectacle also reveals something less flattering: not merely an artist capitalizing on attention, but a deeply imperfect public figure who seems fully aware of the image she is curating—a wealthy side chick with little regard for decorum, restraint, or boundaries.
In the announcement, she foregrounds her visibly mature, growing belly, while a fleeting left-hand cameo, widely read as a nod to fellow rapper 21 Savage, who is himself entangled in a complicated domestic history, hovers at the margins of the frame. Whatever the precise contours of that relationship may be, the spectacle is difficult to regard as anything but undignified: an expectant mother linked to a man who cannot show his face in the video or appear beside her openly at public events. What deepens my disappointment is not merely the optics but the squandered possibility beneath them. She has access to better men, better counsel, and broader resources, though she still seems willing to court humiliation, recasting self-abasement as the price of being a “bad bitch.”
As a society, we need to break the cycle of single parenthood. It rarely serves children well to be raised amid instability or within a home shaped by the absence of one parent; they deserve the presence, guidance, and support of two committed adults whenever possible. Parenthood is a lifelong obligation in a way that marriage, for all its vows and rituals, often is not. Marriages dissolve; children remain. That alone should force a more serious reckoning with what it means to bring a life into the world.
Raising children is not for the faint of heart, nor should it be treated as a status symbol for masculinity or womanhood. It demands discipline, sacrifice, patience, and an unwavering sense of responsibility. Children need structure, consistency, and emotional security for their growth and development—not merely the fulfillment of their parents’ desires or egos. The sooner we confront that truth with honesty and maturity, the sooner baby carriages will cease arriving before the foundations required to sustain them.
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Loved this piece Daryn! So may good points made. Primarily around the contradiction in her music and the constant shaming of black women she’s projected only to become that and market it to the GP as if it’s “grander” bc it’s HER.