A petition demanding rapper Rick Ross’ removal from a Reebok advertising campaign has been signed by more than 51,000 people.
The lyrics to his song “U.O.E.N.O” had already been criticized by women’s groups and anti-sexism campaigners, with a second wave of outrage now demanding Reebok end their endorsement deal with the star.
The lyrics in question find Ross hinting at drugging a woman to have sex with her. Molly is slang for the drug MDMA and Ross raps: “Put molly all in her champagne/ She ain’t even know it/ I took her home and I enjoyed that/ She ain’t even know it.”
The track features on Rocko’s Gift Of Gab 2 mixtape, which was released in February, and features verses from Ross and fellow rapper Future.
Nita Chaudhury, co-founder of anti-sexism collective UltraViolet, said: “Reebok devotes a lot of time, energy and money to marketing to women, and now they’re paying a man who is literally bragging about raping women. That tells women that Reebok isn’t interested in our business. It tells us that Reebok is OK promoting rape culture and when one out of five women are the victims of an attempted or completed rape, that has real life consequences.”
Ross, however, has defended the lyrics, saying they’ve been misinterpreted: “I want to make sure this is clear that woman is the most precious gift known to man,” he said. “It was a misunderstanding with a lyric, a misinterpretation where the term rape wasn’t used.”
Read more: NME
