The real deal

When I first watched Kitty Pryde’s video for “Okay Cupid,” I wanted to dismiss her immediately.

Over a dreamily lo-fi instrumental, a skinny, red-haired white girl with knobby knees and large brown eyes was rhyming about boys and Bud Light in a scathingly apathetic flow. She looks no older than 16 and raps with the deadpan precociousness of a young girl scorned.

After watching it six more times in a row, I was transfixed.

Kitty Pryde’s music tapped into some visceral part of my brain that, as a student who spends a lot of time writing and thinking and talking about music, I don’t get to use all that much.

Despite how hard haters try, Kitty Pryde presents herself with such an honest and fumblingly self-conscious persona that she very nearly exempts herself from any true criticism or analysis.

You either get where she’s coming from immediately, or not at all.

Though she’s only officially released a five-song, 12-minute EP, it’s hard to listen to her music without absorbing the incredible amount of available writing on the 19-year-old girl from Florida, who has garnered attention from Pitchfork and the New York Times.

As with any Internet sensation, the blogs scoured the depths of her Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube pages to dig up every available bit of information.

Disappointed, perhaps, they only discovered exactly what she wanted them to. She’s a college girl and Claire’s store clerk with really, really big crushes on rapper Danny Brown and tween idol Justin Bieber.

What is her response to the sudden fame, scrutiny and criticism? She writes in a recent blog entry she’s “not gonna stop being honest just because everyone’s lookin now.”

A few hours and half a sleeve of Oreos later, I could rest assured I had consumed nearly every song, TwitPic and piece of writing available about Kitty Pryde.

Was she good? Was it all a joke? Did it matter?

Ripe with this new wealth of information I was ready to integrate into my already overflowing brainspace on young female rappers, I did what anyone else would do when they are really excited about an up-and-coming artist: I told no one.

I later realized that this self-deprecating dismissal of my own opinion is the exact same sentiment with which Kitty Pryde approaches her own music.

Where rap behemoths like Jay-Z preface their verses with boastful commands like “Turn the music up in the headphones,” Kitty Pryde begins her biggest hit “Okay Cupid” with a raspy cry: “Get out of my room!”

Her glittery pink Tumblr page boldly proclaims, “My music is bad.”

So, why are we so perplexed by Kitty Pryde? Desperate for something to work with — considering the limited number of female rappers who even make it into the mainstream — reviewers can’t help but drop obligatory comparisons to Nicki Minaj or Kreayshawn.

Listen to either artist for more than 30 seconds, however, and you notice the music they make is entirely different. The New York Times made an even worse association when it paralleled Kitty Pryde’s popularity to the rise of hokey YouTube duo Karmin.

It’s not a stretch to say that part of Kitty Pryde’s sudden Internet fame has to do with her whiteness, self-effacing humor and jailbait sexuality.

What people can’t articulate is the extent of her talent and her place within the larger discussion of emerging female hip-hop artists.

What’s even harder to accept is that a teenage girl is independently releasing music and defining her own self-image without the backing of wealthy, controlling parents or exploitative media outlets.

In her song with reality-star-turned-rapper Riff Raff, Kitty Pryde calls herself the “rap game Taylor Swift.” But Swift, whose career and image have been sculpted since her debut to make her into the perfect, virginal icon of teenage innocence, has nothing on Kitty Pryde’s honest portrayal of actually how much it sucks to be a 19-year-old girl trying to be taken seriously.

I like Kitty Pryde because she makes the kind of accidentally good, unassuming and candid music I wish I could have made at 19.

Hell, Kitty Pryde makes the kind of music I want to make right now.