comes across as sneeringly chauvinistic." From 2015 to 2020, others accused his Dr. Dre cover of "toxic masculinity," "cultural appropriation," and being "deeply problematic." Folds says "the part I chose to excerpt skews sad," lacking "most of" the "misogynistic rant" of Dre's song—which, beyond "serious stuff," has "Quentin Tarantino" and "comedy in it"—while his "white voice" sings at slower tempo atop "sad chords" and "heartfelt melody." Amy Cook, chair of theatre arts, in 2018 prefaced, "I analyze the performance of the same song by two different artists." White, female, Cook enjoyed introjecting them. Still, "the artsy white man at the piano," she "felt," had "masked a troubling experience." "Folds is trespassing into Dre's gangsta character in order to point out that the song is both sad and funny" via, she wrote, "the all-access pass granted him by his whiteness." Meanwhile, a major radio station held a benefit show where, backstage, a planner forbade "Bitches Ain't Shit" from Folds, who then said "you should've told us that before we flew in to do it." She asked Folds to "do the right thing." Taking the stage, he cued his bassist, "Let's open with it." Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, the master of ceremony, "thought it was amazing," Folds recalls but reveals, "They all leave in droves." "So what was gained, you know?" "I don't play it anymore because things are so explosive in the United States." "I feel bad for anyone who isn't white, who would have to experience that." "It wasn't like that when it came out." Yet even in 2017, it had been joyously greeted at his own concert. Retirement In 2008, on June 5, in Lawrence, Kansas, at Clinton State Park, in the Wakarusa Festival—including Emmylou Harris, the Flaming Lips, Cake, and others—Ben Folds announced playing but then retiring "Bitches Ain't Shit." Nine days later, June 14, in Manchester, Tennessee, at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, however, he again played "Bitches Ain't Shit," and again announced its retirement. Yet 13 days later, on June 27, in England, within Somerset county, village Pilton, on Worthy Farm, at the Glastonbury Festival, he played it, and retired it, again. Then on July 5, in Germany, within the Westphalia region, city Bonn, on a flood plain of river Rhine, in the music festival Rheinkultur, he again played "Bitches Ain't Shit." The next day, he retraced to a confused interviewer these steps that had, decisively,