Stan Staton is a senior at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.  Originally from the Houston area, Stan is now a member of the Texas Youth Leadership Council – a project of Advocates for Youth and the Texas Freedom Network.

In high school I started listeninhg to explicitly political hip hop.  By political hip hop, I don't mean the usual list of rappers that "underground" cats list off: Mos Def, Common, Talib Kweli, The Roots, etc (though these are all great rappers) but rappers whose music often called for revolution, usually violent revolution.  These rappers, Immortal Technique, The Coup, and Dead Prez were for a while my professors, teaching me the problems of our country and my community and who was to blame.  When I got to college, thanks to a faulty iPod, I lost that music and did not return to listening to these groups until this year, my senior year in college.

When I took another listen to these groups, a lot of things changed.  "I had become a lot more active in my community, I had become a bit more politically savvy, I had come out as bisexual, and I had a better understanding of privilege, homophobia, anti-racism and feminism.  When I relistened to this music that had been so important to me in high school, i was shocked.

Immortal Technique and the group Dead Prez consistently used homophobic language in their music and Immortal Technique was consistently a misogynist in most of his songs, making light of rape "(threatening "your" mother with it) and calling womyn "bitches."  In a recent mixtape by Dead Prez, I found myself bobbing my head to the song "Malcolm Garvey Huey" (a remix of Beamer Benz or Bently by Lloyd Banks) until this lyric "Niggas squish be acting fruity" followed closely by this one "Unless you're banging on the system, you're a gangsta wearing panties."  After that, "I just had to turn it off.

There is definitely a lot to say about misogyny and homophobia in hip hop at large, but I thought that I could escape it in so-called "revolutionary" music.  Dead Prez and Immortal Technique are rappers who call themselves revolutionaries and pretend to advocate for the marginalized but still operate under the same patriarchical and homophobic thoughts as those with power.  To Immortal Technique's credit, he has stopped using homophobic language, but continues to be derisive of women.  As Audrey Lorde said, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."  To truly be revolutionary, we have to start truly advocating for the marginalized, not just keep the status quo.

To leave it on a positive note, I leave you with a truly revolutionary group, Blue Scholars with a live performance of their song "Morning of America"