Best Coast Slams Chris Brown’s “Trash” Song ‘Back To Sleep’ For Perpetuating Rape Culture

Best Coast‘s Bethany Cosentino has fired off a series of tweets condemning Chris Brown‘s Back To Sleep because HOLY SHIT ARE THOSE ACTUALLY THE SONG’S LYRICS?!

The explicit hit off Breezy’s Royalty album has sailed to the top of the charts and clocked over 37 MILLION YouTube plays off the back of a chorus that goes – ahem – “Just let me rock, fuck you back to sleep girl. Don’t say a word, no, girl don’t you talk”.

And Cosentino reckons it’s a fucking terrifying example of how rape culture is being normalised – and even celebrated – by the modern music industry.

Dubbing the song “trash”, the singer tweeted: “Billboard‘s review of that song ‘excels as a quality addition to [Brown’s] catalog’s stellar collection of panty-dropping and baby-making songs’… How about this for a review: singing about fucking a girl back to sleep/telling her dont say a word is singing about rape + it’s disgusting.”

During her passionate tweetstorm, Cosentino also stressed that the issue was much bigger than “that idiot” Chris Brown, who recently got denied entry to Australia and was forced to cancel his tour on the grounds of his prior domestic violence convictions.

“You already know how I feel about Chris Brown – but WHY/HOW are those lyrics ok? Cool, a song that perpetuates rape culture being a hit,” she said.

“The fact that’s a song in popular culture that some A&R person was like ‘this is great’ saddens me.”

“Last thing then I’m out- it’s an issue even if someone else was singing those lyrics. Rape culture is everywhere + it’s a BIG problem.”

She then posted a link to the song’s lyrics, adding: “SHOW ME WHERE HE ONCE ASKS THE WOMAN IF ITS OK TO WAKE HER UP WITH SEX? NO, HES TELLING HER HE’S GOING TO DO IT.”

Cosentino has been outspoken about sexism in the music industry, an issue which is becoming more and more undeniable in the wake of Kesha’s public legal battle to escape the record contract that still binds her professionally to producer and accused rapist Dr. Luke.

Grimes also spoke out last week, sharing experiences of how she’d overcome threats by multiple male producers whom she claims tried to blackmail her into sex.

While it’s important to note that song lyrics can often be ambiguous and open to interpretation, it’s also hard to deny that sexism has become institutionalised in the modern music industry – via both the seemingly innocuous messages that are transmitted into our ears and paraded in front of our eyes on a daily basis, and also the seedier, scarier realities that are happening regularly behind the scenes.

And that has to change.

Read all of Cosentino’s tweets below.