Facebook
( I loved watching this and hearing T.I. and Nelly's opinions on hip hop and misogyny).
After reading Music_and_Musing's amazing and insightful post on the Jaime Foxx/T-Pain song, "Blame It" I found myself really thinking about misogyny in hip-hop. As a young woman of color, I feel so conflicted about this. On one hand, I love hip-hop: I've have listening to it for as long as I can remember. But then on the other hand, I also remember feeling so repulsed by it after I was old enough to understand what it meant and what those rappers were really saying about black girls like me... apparently we are all "hos and b*tches".
Eventually I just found myself disconnecting the lyrics from the music and ignoring what they had to say about women, violence, drugs, crime and even homophobia. However, after reading Music_and_Musing's post, I started to recognize that no, it was not OK to simply ignore these messages just because I like this music. It is simply not right. I should not just blindly accept and dance to a song that is basically promoting date rape.
But then I thought- what can I really do about misogyny in hip-hop anyway? I mean this is a multibillion dollar business that has invaded every nook and cranny of our culture from the way we talk, to the way we dress and of course the music we party to, exercise to, chill and hang out to. And after all isn't it true that the misogyny in hip-hop is reflecting a larger misogyny in African-American culture and American culture as a whole? I mean lets face it misogyny is still a mainstay of American culture for example as recent as 2008 women make 79 cents for each dolllar a man makes and lets not forget how women are portrayed in pop culture as a whole.
Who really controls what plays on the radio and shows up on video anyway? Should we blame the consumers who willingly pay for images of exploitation of women? Or should we blame the artists who constantly feed us these images? Or wait ...is it actually the producers, the tv networks and the managers/agents who know sex sells and force artists to make that kind of music?
I do not think its clear where the blame actually lies but I think it is fair to say that all parties can be blamed and that they all depend on each other to keep this cycle going. Obviously we as consumers should be doing so much more to support artists that promote positive images and I think we should not just limit it to women but to positive images in general. I do not think we are doing any favors to the urban poor by glamorizing gangs, drugs, pimping or "thug life"... this actually seems more like an exploitation than anything else. Furthermore, I think that by supporting positive hip-hop, we could actually do alot to set a better climate for hip-hop which would make tv networks, producers and managers more likely to push this kind of image instead of their "sex sells" philosophy.
TAKE ACTION:
1. Interview with Byron Hurt, revolutionary director of a Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes
2. Huffington Post Article on Hip-Hop and the larger culture (and speaks to the control of producers)
3. Find some cool socially conscious hip-hop to support
4. A resource on misogyny in hip hop for young women of color by MySistahs (and Advocates for Youth)
5. Feminist hip-hop commentary
6. Hip-hop vs
7. More on why socially conscious hip hop does not sell
8. Rappers are also real people and not all bad check out TIs blog post
