st3p 2: my g1rl
PREAMBLE
In 2014 I was just coming out of my post-depression “I don’t like any type of music,” era and was immersing myself in 2000’s and 2010’s indie/pop-punk goodness. My Tumblr ex made a top 5 songs post that featured singles from Panic! at the Disco and Matchbox 20 (which is a very old-fashioned sentence). Among the choice cuts was a song called “Step” by a band I’d never of heard before. Their name sounded cool and the thumbnail to the lyric video featured a misty grayscale cityscape, so I gave them a listen. That is how I discovered Vampire Weekend.
Though I was woefully ignorant of the heaps of references in the song (I’m ashamed to say the only one I got at age 14 was “Modest Mouse”), “Step” proudly wears its musical heritage on its sleeve. Like a good Harvard student, Vampire Weekend’s lyricist Ezra Koenig cited his sources in the album’s liner notes, in interviews, and on social media:
“Step”’s heritage is well-trodden ground. Certainly, there’s no shortage of articles about the origins of the melody used in the chorus (in brief: Souls of Mischief sampled a saxophone riff by Grover Washington Jr., who was covering a song by 70’s soft rock bad Bread). The Genius annotations on “Step” explain the song’s references to Talking Heads, Run D.M.C. and Jandek. The liner notes in Modern Vampires of the City also explain that the main refrain of both Souls of Mischief and Grover Washington Jr.’s tracks comes from New Jersey rapper YZ’s 1990 song “Who’s that Girl?” I originally wanted to write this article about all of “Step”’s influences, some of which lead to unlikely places. As I was tossing around this idea I listened to “Who’s That Girl?” and I thought, “Wait a second. ‘You always step to my girl’ doesn’t remotely mean the same thing here as it does in "‘Step’.”
I dove headfirst into a research rabbit-hole.
Emerging from this dive armed with a heap of new context, I revisited the original track that piqued my interest. Now it tells me an entirely new story (one that I’m in no way insinuating was intended by Koenig when he wrote it). This article is a love letter to 90’s hip-hop, pretentious baroque-pop, and teenage cringe.
1. BACK, BACK WAY BACK
“Every time I see you in the world, you always step to my girl.”
Even without an extensive etymology lesson, it’s you can get the basic gist of the phrase from context. The speaker is addressing a third party (“you”) who is doing something to (“stepping to”) a woman who has a specific relationship (presumably romantic) to the speaker. She’s their girl. Not a girl or that girl. My girl. The implication of the line I immediately jumped to was “she’s my girl, not your girl.” Step to = hit on.
But give Wiktionary a look and you get something like:
Step to [stɛp tu] v.
(African-American Vernacular, slang, transitive)
To challenge, confront or fight (with someone).
Walter was angry, so he stepped to Bill.
(African-American Vernacular, slang, transitive)
To meet a challenge or confront (someone).
I couldn't let that insult go unchallenged, so I stepped to him.
To begin (a project or plan) quickly or urgently.
We got permission, so you had better step to it.
Granted, Wiktionary probably wasn’t the best place to begin looking for the meaning of a phrase from a 1990 hip hop track. I dare anyone reading this to write a rap using either of the example sentences in definitions 1 and 2. But it does seem to exemplify a trend that “step to” is usually used as a synonym for “aggress.” Even in Urban Dictionary you have to scroll down five or six definitions before you get to anything that remotely alludes to making sexual advances. Interesting.
I went to Lyrics.com.
The first use of the phrase “step to” that I could find (in a studio album, anyway) is in the 1987 track “Left Me – Lonely” by MC Shan. Oddly enough, this first use mirrors to my original intuition about Step’s hook. Shan uses “step to” when recounting asking out his (now ex) girlfriend:
Can't let her step, she look too good
But my wears made me seem like a stone cold hood
I'm a lucky guy, so I press my luck
I step to her, ah what the fuck
Went her way, took a few steps past her
Got the nerve, and then I asked her
In the first line, Shan uses “step” to mean something like “walk away,” evoking already lyrically well-worn phrases like “step back” “step away” or “step off.” He contrasts this use of “step,” which alludes to creating distance, with “step to,” closing distance. He doesn’t necessarily equate the phrase with hitting on the girl outright. Shan approaches her, chickens out, then goes back to ask her out. Step to = approach (more or less).
2. BROTHERS GET JEALOUS
In June 1988, New York MC Big Daddy Kane releases Long Live the Kane, whose lead single, “Ain’t No Half Steppin,’” samples Heatwave’s 1976 disco track of the same name. Heatwave’s song is about disco dancing “full-out” (ie. not half-assing your moves on the dancefloor). Kane’s single recontextualizes the original Heatwave sample and applies its meaning to MC-ing (rapping) instead of dancing. He takes what was a somewhat literal phrase and turns it into a euphemism for artistic virtuosity in general.
In his verses “steppin’ to” refers to challenges from other rappers:
Rappers steppin' to me, they wanna get some
But I'm the Kane, so, yo, you know the outcome
Another victory, they can't get with me
So pick a B.C. date 'cause you're history
Step to = to challenge someone’s skill. Elsewhere in the album Kane uses “step to” to similar effect:
Second to none, making MC's run
So don't try to step to me, 'cause I ain't the one
—“Raw [Remix]”
Try to step to us, watch what you get
'Cause me and Big Daddy's not havin' it
Well, it's the Big Daddy, so all hail
Save your wack rhymes, hold your female
—“On the Bugged Tip”
This last lyric is especially interesting, as Kane implies that his rhymes are so much better than everyone else’s that other rappers’ girlfriends will be irresistibly drawn to him. Women are attracted to MC skill like moths to a flame. More on this later.
Two months after the release of Long Live the Kane, N.W.A. releases their first full studio album Straight Outta Compton. Thanks to the album’s impressive lyricism (and the hysteria of white moms everywhere over “Fuck da Police”), Compton put West Coast MC-ing on the map. For our purposes, it’s relevant for its two uses of “step to.”
(Quick Tangent: The appearance of “step to” on albums from both East and West Coast artists in a matter of months indicates to me that this phrase was not scene-specific jargon, nor do I think its meaning was coined by MC Shan just a few months before Long Live the Kane. Wherever it started, by 1988 “step to” had become slang recognized and used from coast to coast. I have no doubt that it was being used colloquially in conversation and on tapes that never got picked up by major labels. By the time a piece of slang makes its way onto a studio album you can bet it’s old news, much like a Tik Tok is considered dead-on-arrival by the time it makes it to Facebook.)
In “Parental Discretion iz Advised,” Dr. Dre uses “step to” in the same way as Big Daddy Kane:
Psycho like no other muthafucka
So step to me wrong — G-O for what you N-O!
But be warned — never will I leave like a regular
'Cause I'm a little better than the regular competitor
I used to see 'em on stage
Earnin' money like a thief, but without a gauge
Until I got full of clockin' the lame, gettin' pull
Again, Dre is comparing himself to inferior rappers and warning them not to challenge him. He insinuates that people who disrespect him will be humiliated not only because Dre’s lyrics are better, but because he has the cred to back up his verses (i.e. he’s not posturing when he raps about gangs, drugs, and clubs). The phrase “step to” features on two more West Coast Hip Hop albums from 1988: Ice T’s Power and The 7A3’s Coolin’ in Cali. In both cases “step to” also means “to challenge.”
However, in “I Ain’t Tha 1” from Compton, the use of “step to” reads much closer to its meaning in MC Shan’s verse. The song is a conversation between Ice Cube and a less experienced, more naïve young man. Like Shan, Ice Cube begins by using “step to” as a synonym for “approach” but it sounds more loaded here:
But you know, I'm a menace to society
But girls in biker shorts are so fly to me
So I step to 'em, with aggression
Listen to the kid, and learn a lesson today
In stark contrast to “Leave Me – Lonely,” where MC Shan is so nervous to approach a cute girl that he almost walks past her, Ice Cube approaches women “with aggression,” presumably making strong, overtly sexual advances. He later tells his protégée that he is “only down for screwin'” and that his aggression and defensiveness justified by women’s true intentions. While young men might be tempted to lavish women with money to keep them around, women will do everything they can to avoid holding up their end of the bargain:
And they'll get you for your money, son
Next thing you know you're getting their hair and they nails done
Fool, and they'll let you show 'em off
But when it comes to sex, they got a bad cough
Or a headache, it's all give and no take
Run out of money, and watch your heart break
This perspective assumes that the only reason women flirt with men is to get to their money, and excludes the possibility that women might flirt with men for attention, for their own sexual expression, or even, God forbid, because they are genuinely attracted to men. These are the fantasies of idealistic and inexperienced kids; men with experience know better.
While Ice Cube focuses on women as objects of sexual gratification, MC Ren’s verse on one of the last tracks of Compton, “Quiet on Tha Set,” further correlates female attraction with status:
Girls drool on me like a diamond
(Yo Ren, tell them what they do when you start rhymin')
I go to the party, I hip, I hop the spot
I dunno what it is, but the girls get hot
Perspirin' like they're on fire and
Their so-called boyfriends with 'em are retirin'
And for this reason I'm a walkin threat
So when I'm on stage I want quiet on tha set
“Girls drool on me like a diamond,” reinforces Ice Cube’s point that women do, in fact, chase money. But the reason girls drool over MC Ren is because of his virtuosity as a rapper. The girls in Ren’s verse don’t leave their boyfriends simply because he has more money (although if someone is a rapper who sells records they probably have that too) but because he is a skilled MC. Therefore, the ability to attract women is not just an indicator of aggressive game or pockets full of cash, but also of a rapper’s lyrical skill. A rapper’s success as an artist, correlate with his status in the scene, becomes tangible and measurable: “To a kid lookin' up to me / Life ain't nothin' but bitches and money.” (“Gangsta Gangsta”)
2.5. SHE PAID NO MIND (A DIGRESSION)
I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the bitches in question had some things to say about steppin’, too. In 1990 Salt-N-Pepa released the lead single for their album Black Magic, “Expression.” Almost as if in conversation with guys like Ice Cube and MC Ren, Pepa’s verse refutes the idea that women only flirt for money and status:
Yes, I'm Pep and there ain't nobody
Like my body, yes, I'm somebody
No, I'm sorry, I'm-a rock this Mardi Gras
Until the party ends, friends
Yes, I'm blessed, and I know who I am
I express myself on every jam
I'm not a man, but I'm in command
Hot damn, I got an all-girl band
And I wear the gear, yeah, I wanna wear it, too
I don't care, dear, go ahead and stare (oooo)
Afraid to be you, livin' in fear (boo)
Expression is rare, I dare you
Here, flirtation isn’t just a transactional means to an end, but a form of self-expression and an end unto itself. Sometimes it’s nice to feel sexy and know that other people think you’re sexy too. The chorus even explicitly rejects male possessiveness over a woman’s sexuality with lines like “let me be me” and “don’t tell me what to do.” To top it all off, “Expression” reclaims the phrase “step to” for the ladies:
Now bring in the go-go (uh-oh)
Look at how my butt go rock from left to the right
You wanna step to me, groove me
I know you wanna do me
Come on now, fellas, don't fight
The phrase goes from being a show of masculine dominance to a sexual taunt. Salt-N-Pepa recognize that their sexuality can put them in a position of power if they decide to own it. Even though the rest of this piece focuses on “step to” in the context of men pursuing women, I’m not implying the conversation only goes one way. It obviously doesn’t.
3. EVEN THOUGH HIS SONG IS WACK, MINE’S NOT
1990 sees New Jersey rapper YZ release “Who’s that Girl.” This is where the lyric used by Souls of Mischief and Vampire Weekend is officially coined in full. The song revolves around a sample from the chorus of “Who is She (And What is She to You?)” by Gladys Knight and the Pips (which itself is a cover of Bill Withers’ song “Who is He [And What is He to You?]). In “Who is She?” Gladys confronts her lover after she notices a woman giving her strange looks in public. She demands to know her partner’s relationship with the woman: “Who was that girl? What is she to you?” YZ pulls this refrain out of its original context, instead framing Gladys as his crazy ex-girlfriend with whom he “broke up about two years ago.” According to him, she angrily confronts both YZ and his new girlfriend whenever she sees them:
It was my fault, and I'm sorry that my love was a woozy
But don't get the Uzi, cause I don't wanna die yet
I know where your head's at
Forgive and forget, let's start a new goal, let's lay a new path
I don't wanna feel the wrath
Every time I see you in the world, you always step to my girl
Here, “step to” isn’t just a metaphor for verbal abuse; YZ later insinuates that his ex is so physically aggressive with his current girlfriend that a better alternative would be letting her drive his car, giving her a quick getaway so his ex can “just let off steam by screamin’.” “Who’s That Girl” takes step to = challenge up several notches. While a lot of the earlier lyrics I’ve mentioned imply violence, it’s still plausible that it’s metaphorical. Not here. Gladys means fucking business.
This brings us (finally) to Souls of Mischief’s demo single “Step to My Girl.” It was one of the group’s earliest tracks, recorded in 1991, but was never released on any of their albums due to issues getting sampling rights (it was later released on Hieroglyphics’ compilation album Hiero Oldies Pt. 1). The chorus and title of the song take what was just a one-off line in a verse of “Who’s That Girl” and turn it into the thematic backbone of the track. However, this time the speaker is not addressing their crazy ex, but other men in their circle:
Catch crazy glares when I'm with female company
Some think I'm a softie and they step to her in front of me
Though “step to” once again becomes synonymous with “hit on.” We know from “I Ain’t Tha 1” that hitting on a girl isn’t mutually exclusive from aggression (Ice Cube brags about how his domineering advances get him laid). However, “Step to My Girl” illustrates how hitting on a girl who is already taken is just as much of a power play for status as a sexual maneuver. A-Plus makes the correlation between women and relative male status more explicit in his verse:
Brothers get jealous when I'm chilling with my dip
Just because she's flyer, you try to, play me like Milton Bradley
I'm mad, G, just because you've gotta settle for Maggie
Or Agnes, maybe Mathilda the Witch, yo
I'mma have to beat you if you call her a bitch, yo
Aside from being one of my favorite hip-hop lyrics of all time (MATHILDA THE WITCH, YO) he points out that men pursue his girlfriend not because they can’t get girls of their own, but because A-Plus has the hottest girl in the room. Attractiveness is directly correlated with status because (if Big Daddy Kane and N.W.A. are to be believed) hot women are attracted to both money and lyrical skill. Getting a hot girlfriend implies that her partner has one or both things.
If it wasn’t already obvious that these guys aren’t interested in A-Plus’s girl for her personality, the inclusion of the last line is telling. Presumably, these men are calling his girl a bitch because either 1) she rejected his advances because she’s taken or 2) he’s making a power play to degrade her value as a status symbol. Either way, it reinforces the point that these advances aren’t being made in good faith. In the next verse Opio points out that other men lash out at him physically because they are less worthy of his girl:
I'm the champion, my man slaps me ten 'cause she's twice as nice
Twice the jealousy 'cause fellas see they don't suffice
If hitting on another man’s girlfriend is a challenge to that man’s status, then the reverse must also be true. His inability to win over the girl must indicate that he’s lacking in some way. Note none of the verses I’ve cited here mention anything about men’s physical appearance. The most prominent indicators of desirability are skill and wealth. No girl to show-for implies deficiency in not just one, but all markers of status.
4. FRONT LIKE
In both Souls of Mischief and YZ’s tracks the phrase “step to my girl” connotes a highly aggressive advance, whether angry or sexual. In Vampire Weekend’s “Step” this first line is followed by a beat drop, but then the main instrumentation of the song: tinkly harpsichord and piano with a boom-bap beat underneath and angelic choral singing over the top. These guys aren’t making any pretensions about putting fists up for their girl.
The opening line of “Step:”
Back, back, way back I used to front like Angkor Wat
Mechanicsburg, Anchorage and Dar es Salaam
is also an interpolation of the opening line of “Step to My Girl:”
Back back, way back, I used to fret that my honey
Would play me for one with more papes, still it was funny
The attitude that underlies Tajai’s younger “fretting” is that, if she were to leave him, it indicates that he is worth less (literally) than the man she leaves him for. However, he claims to recognize the error in his thinking in the next line:
Cause she paid no mind as jerks lurked constantly
And my insecurity turned into maturity (I matured)
His girl stayed loyal to him, even while being pursued. Even so, he doesn’t seem entirely self-assured in this verse; he reserves the right to beat up (“step to” in YZ’s terms, I suppose) other men who hit on his girlfriend:
So in public places I am often found in my trunk
Reaching for bats, and smack goes his spunk
Because I have the right to riff, and in spite
Of a few protests, progress and I might smite you
Once you're caught, your fronts, they got no future
Blunts blur my sight, get left and right suture
Tajai is willing to prove other men wrong, prove that he isn’t a “softie,” and to protect his status symbol using physical force. But would he need to lash out aggressively at other men if he really was secure in his own worth? Opio’s verse seems to indicate the opposite, that physical aggression is a sign of unworthiness. If Tajai were to lose the fight, does he think that his girlfriend would up and leave him for the guy who just beat the shit out of him? These verses show that Tajai perceives that his relationship is highly precarious. His girlfriend doesn’t seem to have any loyalty to him as a person. In his world, women are like status-detectors; they will always pursue the man with the highest “worth” who takes an interest in her. If this attitude sounds a little juvenile…well…that’s because it is. I did the math. Tajai, A-Plus, and Opio were all sixteen when they recorded this demo.
First off, insane props to these kids for writing lyrics like this at SIXTEEN. My jaw was on the floor when I figured that out. But there’s parts of the faux-worldliness in these verses that reminds me of stuff I wrote in high school that now makes me cringe. Tajai used to fret that his honey would play him for one with more papes back, back way back when he was… ten? Eleven?
I’m not trying to diminish the real anxiety captured in these lyrics. I wrote stuff in high school with the authority of someone who’d lived through both World Wars. But I do think the reading of these lyrics changes when you realize that this “matured” view of relationships is coming from a guy who is still in high school. No doubt Tajai was very mature; it takes somebody really fucking talented to produce stuff like this at any age, let alone at sixteen. But considering that he can’t even vote yet, Tajai’s possessiveness towards women reads much more like anxious teenage posturing than tyrannical machismo. In fact, a lot of this anxiety around women that is prevalent in 90’s hardcore gangsta rap comes from guys who are pretty fucking young. Hell, Ice Cube was nineteen when N.W.A. released Straight Outta Compton.
“Step” takes the opening lyric from “Step to My Girl” and changes “fret” to “front.” The speaker has moved on from his anxiety and is able to see his earlier views for what they really were: fronting. What is his front? Apparently, an Indonesian Buddhist temple, the largest city in Alaska, an industrial town in Pennsylvania (also hometown of the band Poison), and the cultural and economic hub of Tanzania. He’s literally all over the place. I could go into greater depth about what each of these places mean (and people have) but I honestly think that Ezra Koenig probably picked them because they were random and sounded nice. This incoherence of identity does echo the anxious mixed signals of “Step to My Girl.” The speaker wants to be anything but himself.
5. AS THE YEARS PASS
Given all of the aforementioned context, I now read “Step” (at my big age of 23) as a man’s reflections on his maturing attitude towards women and romantic relationships. In a 2013 interview, Koening says that the first line of the chorus is “just a highfalutin referencey way to describe growing up.” Though most interpretations of the song I found while doing research insist that this is about Vampire Weekend’s maturing musical style, I choose to read it as a response to the teenage posturing exemplified in songs like “Step to My Girl.”
“Step”’s chorus is a conversation between the main speaker (A) and a snarky interloper (B):
A: The gloves are off, the wisdom teeth are out
B: What you on about?
A: I feel it in my bones
I feel it in my bones
I'm stronger now, I'm ready for the house
B: Such a modest mouse
A: I can't do it alone
I can't do it alone
Through experience, through heartbreak, the last vestiges of youth have been yanked out of the speaker. Instead of feeling cowed by love lost, the speaker feels even more resilient. “Ready for the house” makes me think of getting older, too: making a big adult purchase, combining assets with your partner, moving in together, etc. Though the other person in the conversation mocks what they perceive as hubris, the speaker maintains that he “can’t do it alone.” Being in a relationship isn’t all about him, his status, his perceived worth, but about building a life with another person.
The bridge of the song also reads to me like a reflection on maturity in relationships:
Wisdom's a gift, but you'd trade it for youth
The “you” in question could be the second person from the chorus, or could even be the speaker’s past self (in fact, the second speaker in the chorus could be the speaker’s past self or a personification of his own anxieties). Either way, whoever he is speaking to is naïve or shallow enough to wish away their wisdom for a time in their life when they were more physically desirable.
Age is an honor, it's still not the truth
Regressive attitudes about sex and status aren’t confined to young people; some people never grow out of them.
We saw the stars when they hid from the world
The speaker and his girl found what was special just between them. What made the relationship meaningful was invisible to everyone else.
You cursed the sun when it stepped to your girl
To me this reads like an accusation of extreme overreaction and hypervigilance. This person is so possessive over their girl, their status symbol, that even something as omnipresent and immutable as the sun poses a threat.
Maybe she's gone and I can't resurrect her
The truth is she doesn't need me to protect her
The first line sounds like it’s referencing a breakup. Even though they aren’t together anymore, even though the woman is no longer “his girl” the speaker can let her go. He recognizes the agency of his ex and treats her like an autonomous person instead of projecting his own insecurities about his self-worth onto her.
We know the true death, the true way of all flesh
Everyone's dying, but girl, you're not old yet
This line is the most cryptic to me, but I think it means something like “Just because everyone is going to die doesn’t mean that every relationship is life-or-death.”
I’ve been listening to “Step” for almost ten years. I didn’t pick up on any of this until a couple weeks ago. To 14-year-old me, this was a cool song with great production but the lyrics were total word salad. I still loved it. There’s no way I could have read Step this way at that time because I was at the same stage of life as Tajai, Opio, and A-Plus. Relationships did feel extremely precarious. I was only worth the worst thing anyone said about me. I wanted to be seen as someone with status. I did stupid, shitty things to make myself feel that way.
This deep dive isn’t a hit piece set out to criticize the tropes of gangsta rap. All of the songs cited in this article are brilliant. Hell, I listen to way more 90’s hip hop now than I did in high school and WAY more than I currently listen to Vampire Weekend. But my relationship with 90’s hip hop is (alas) a fair bit shorter than my relationship with “Step.” It’s been fascinating to revisit this song I used to have such a close connection with and find that its meaning is still unfolding for me. Combine nine more years of living with some research and the same song can tell me a completely new story.
POSTAMBLE
Vampire Weekend released a remix of “Step” shortly after Modern Vampires of the City, which I only listened to attentively when I started researching this article. There are things about it that I like better than the original. Vampire Weekend has long been accused of pretentious lyrics and, though I get a lot out of them, “Step”’s lyrics are starting to wear a little thin on me in places. I like all three new verses in the remix, but my favorite one right now is the one by Danny Brown. I think it develops the themes of maturity in relationships without an obscure reference in every other line (which also seems to me like fronting, just a different kind).
I’m not going to do a verse-by-verse analysis of the remix because, really, you should just sit down and listen to it. Its heartwarming, its funny, and its got some of the flavor of all the stuff I’ve mentioned plus a little extra. I’ll just leave you with the last lines of Danny’s verse. I think they do a good job of once more recontextualizing the phrase “step to,” this time for men who’ve found solid companionship:
The sugar in my Kool-Aid, boo gets me through days
Swear to God, one day I might watch her throw a bouquet
Said, "Nowhere on this earth, nowhere in this world
I should ever, ever see you stepping to my girl."