Yung Miami is riding solo as a raunchy rap ambassador
Despite one member being behind bars, the buzz about the City Girls gets bigger by the day.
Music
Words: Niloufar Haidari
Miami duo City Girls deliver dirty, playful rap while wearing body-hugging designer clothes. Their braggadocio bars put men in their place. In the City Girls’ world, women set the terms for who’s qualified to fuck and when.
Their confident fuck-you-pay-me rap has already found them a fan in the form of fellow hustler Cardi B, who appeared alongside Yung Miami in full body paint for the Twerk video while JT serves jail time for fraud.
With the duo continuing to blow up despite the setbacks, Yung Miami spoke to The Face while she’s on tour with labelmate Lil Baby, carrying the City Girls name until JT comes home.
First and foremost – what is a City Girl?
A city girl is anybody. A corporate girl, a school girl… when you get with your friends, you turn up and you do things that you [usually] do in private, that’s a City Girl. It’s like an alter-ego.
Do you have any updates on when JT will be coming out?
March 2020 is her release date, but I don’t know. She was supposed to come home sooner, but I don’t have any updates on her status at the moment.
What’s it been like representing City Girls on your own while she’s been away?
Coming out together as a fresh group… we had only just started, and our career was just picking up [when she went away]. At first it was hard, it was tough – I didn’t know how the crowd would react to me just being there as one City Girl. There’s two of us, we came out together, so one going away so soon into our career… I was scared. But now I’m comfortable and I know that I have to do what I have to do to make sure the City Girls name stays alive.
“Our music is fun, it’s ratchet. We say things that a lot of women think, things that they might say with their friends.”
You put out two albums – Period and Girl Code – in 2018, the year JT was out on bond. Do you think you’ve set good groundwork for when she gets out?
Yes, we knew she had a set date that she had to go [inside]. We knew she had to turn herself in in June, so we recorded a lot of music, we did a lot of videos, we did a lot of press up until the time that she was going in, because we knew that we needed projects and work to put out while she was away.
Why do you think women especially have taken to your music so much?
Because we speak for the women out there. We say a lot of things that girls want to say, and we’re about that turn up music! Our music is fun, it’s ratchet, you can dance to it, you know… I think that we say things that a lot of women think, things that they might say with their friends… we put that into our music. I think our music is very relatable.
Do you think that ties into why most of the online criticism of your music and the lyrics have come from men?
Men make women feel very insecure. Sometimes we’re scared to ask a man for money because they might think we’re needy, or we need them, or we can’t take care of ourselves. So most of the time we’re scared to ask for help because we don’t wanna seem like we don’t have nothing going for ourselves. It’s not about pimping a guy, it’s more about telling women to be confident – don’t be talking to a guy if he can’t do nothing for you. Don’t be afraid to ask guys for money to be comfy.
Who are your musical influences?
I’d say Lil Kim – I always liked her music, her style, her attitude. She was the female rapper with Biggie, she used to go back and forth with him in his songs. Also Trina, just being a Miami rapper and growing up there and listening to her music. I definitely got a lot of my influence from Trina.
What’s next for you guys? What are you hoping to do this year?
I hope that JT comes home so we can headline our own tour and drop another album. I hope that me and JT can get our own TV show so we can show our personal lives.
Finally – what’s the City Girls motto?
Save your money and spend his!
