Skip to main content"Wombstretcha is every bit the gentleman."
There's something odd about this sentence. It's hard to believe a "stretcha" of wombs—who is not an Ob-Gyn—could be a gentleman, especially when we're talkin' about Portland MC Dan "Wombstretcha the Magnificent" Storz, a man who releases songs such as "Shake It (Like a Baby)" and pens lines like, "I never wash my hands and I shit during sex/ I'll attend your birthday party just to hit on your guests."
Misogynistic, ultra-crude rappers—the kind that make 2 Live Crew look like feminists and claim to enjoy killing—are one of hip-hop's strangest and most easily written off subgenres. But what you can't write off entirely is that artists like New York's Necro—whose promo posters picture the MC receiving fellatio—and, locally, Wombstretcha actually find women to date them. Skye Corwin, an ex-girlfriend of Portland's most vulgar MC and the woman who provided the above quotation, is one of 'em. And she's not alone.
A 24-year-old server at the Virginia Cafe, Corwin is among the wombstretched—she dated the 27-year-old rappist from June to August of last year. Although onstage Storz spouts rhymes like "Shake that pile of flesh till it breaks the spine.../ Girl, shake that ass like an unwanted kid," Corwin claims he would pull her chair out for her when they went out to dinner.
Now, as a regular at Corwin's bar, I find her to be a pretty reasonable and attractive woman. But what kind of lady gets mixed up with a wacko like Womb? We had to dig deeper into what it was like to date a highly offensive rapper. So, on the eve of Wombstretcha's Saturday, Feb. 10, appearance at Sin Club, we tracked down other women who've dated the MC and his producer/backup MC, "Statutory" Ray McMillin.
They didn't come willingly.
WW located seven of Storz's and McMillin's ex-girlfriends after making an online plea in a recent LocalCut.com post for more of the "wombstretched" to come forward. McMillin, who currently works as a DJ at the Fantasy Adult strip club in Southwest Portland, claims that some of the women who initially responded were fans redirected from an Insane Clown Posse message board. Other women shied away from probing questions about their relationships. Finally, I tried to jokingly appeal to the ladies in a language I knew they'd recognize—Womb-speak: "Yo bitch, wassupwitchu?" I emailed the exes. "You needa dick slap t' get the juices flowin' or what?" In reply, three actually came forward.
Nicole Pawlucki, a now-married 25-year-old middle-school teacher in Renton, Wash., dated Storz for a few weeks about four years ago. "Ugly" is how Pawlucki describes Womb's face—which remains hidden behind a mustache and sunglasses in the video for "On a Daily"—but she says he "pulls in hordes of females."
Life with the arguably unattractive Womb was exciting: Pawlucki claims that she and the MC were once involved in "a four-person all-night rumble." Unlike Corwin, who, when asked if the real Storz is different from the man we see in his music, holds that Womb's "music persona and private self are definitely different," Pawlucki said simply, "Absolutely not." But she also argues that "anyone who is offended [by Wombstretcha's lyrics] is too sophomoric to comprehend the true meaning."
She's got a point. Take, for instance, "Guess What You Got (You Got AIDS)" from 2005's The Great Divide. The song has a confrontational vocal delivery over a simple, old-school, West Coast-sounding beat, and is probably Wombstretcha's most offensive song to date. Lines like: "There's so many ways to get AIDS/ That you can get it/ From a dirty water fountain/ Or a truck-stop spigot/ A busy public toilet/ Or an unclean midget," are crass but indisputably funny. The listener must conclude that either Womb is mocking the ignorant—always a good gag—or that he himself is ignorant, which is even funnier.
In an ironic twist, Womb's partner in crime, McMillin, is actually very paranoid about contracting a sexually transmitted disease, according to 24-year-old Seattle resident Heather Rankin, who has known him for almost a decade and briefly dated him a few years ago. The surprisingly cautious producer and ladies' man told WW he gets "more tests than oil changes." He also corroborates a story Rankin told WW about McMillin: He asked her to get out of bed to get him a beer immediately after the first time they had intercourse.
Rankin claims that McMillin differs from his rap persona only "in the fact that he doesn't rape or kill children." Bonus: She was also the only recipient of my trash talk to respond with, "Go fuck yourself."
The conclusion from my—admittedly limited—research is that while it may be occasionally degrading to date a member of Wombstretcha, the duo's albums are largely frontin'. Not only do these dudes take women camping, to shooting ranges (seriously), out to meals and to other reasonable, non-fallopian-tube-damaging activities, but these ladies seemed to enjoy the time they spent on the Stretcha. "We had a lot of fun together," admits Corwin. Pawlucki jests that the property damage she suffered from Storz's incessant "stickering" of her house (black Wombstretcha logos cover the city) was far worse than any emotional or physical damage she endured. And Rankin will still tell you, "Ray and Womb are some of the funniest people I know." Even McMillin himself admits, "Womb and I, however disappointing this may seem, are semi-normal people." Then again, he did admit: "Most of the women I've 'loved' have been strippers, and it's hard to wow/shock women who do pingpong-ball shows at Devil's Point."
Perhaps the following line from "Bitch, You Don't Even Know" is one of the few Wombstretcha delivers in earnest. It seems to sum up the way in which the members of the group walk the line between being reasonable boyfriends and complete jerks: "Bitch, I tell you I care/ And notice your hair/ And so on and so forth."
WWeek 2015