Butcher Babies Singer Heidi Shepherd: “Doja Cat’s Way More Metal Than Most Metalheads I Know”
Maybe you heard Butcher Babies‘ pair of new releases, Eye for an Eye / …’Til the World’s Blind, recently. If you did, you might have noticed their cover of Saweetie and Doja Cat‘s “Best Friend” included on …’Til the World’s Blind. Metal artists covering pop and hip-hop songs isn’t exactly unusual and Butcher Babies co-vocalist Heidi Shepherd has some pretty strong feelings about just how metal Doja Cat really is. In fact, she might even think Doja Cat is more metal than you.
Speaking to Anne Erickson (h/t Blabbermouth), Shepherd spoke about the crossover between metal and other genres of music, including rap and country.
“I really love a lot of new bands that are out there. I think there’s a lot of really great bands putting out really great music. And something that I can really respect is that people are experimenting and people are doing things that are different. People are not putting out the same record over and over again. People are expanding. I love that the genre is crossing with so many other genres as well. I’m such a huge fan of hip-hop. I’m such a huge fan of country. I’m a huge fan of all music, to be honest… It’s just incredible to see the cross-genre happening and seeing that all these other fans in country or in rap are being exposed to metal. I feel like metal needs that. We all need that. We need that openness between music lovers in general. So that’s a huge positive that I’m super excited to see.”
From there, she spoke about Butcher Babies’ cover of “Best Friend” and made the unsubstantiated claim that Doja Cat is more metal than most of the actual metalheads in her life.
“I love Doja Cat. She’s way more metal than most metalheads I know. That girl is so cool. There’s so much respect to be given to all artistry. And I feel like sometimes we’re told, ‘Oh, you’re only supposed to like metal, you’re only supposed to like metal.’ But I feel like you’re really doing yourself a disservice if you only jam to metal all the time. I can go from the heaviest deathcore — ’cause deathcore’s, like, my favorite [laughs] — I can go from the heaviest deathcore, like Slaughter to Prevail, you know, the heaviest stuff, to Lainey Wilson, who’s one of my favorite artists out right now. She’s dominating the country charts, and she’s just like us. I read something today that she tried out for ‘American Idol’ seven times. She failed at ‘The Voice’. And then she went out there and she’s the biggest thing in country right now. I just love success stories like that, and I can find total inspiration in drive like that and to just keep knocking down doors. I find inspiration in that kind of stuff too.”
Doja Cat might have a raw black metal tape collection worth thousands of dollars in her living room—I don’t know and I’ll probably never have the chance to ask her about it but I’m sure that won’t stop you from heading straight for the comments section.
