Saturday, April 14, 2007

Hippity Hop

PG has a nice post regarding the whole flap about how rappers use the word "ho" too. The sight of a load of middle age White men waxing lyrical (so to speak) over the dangers of hip hop is pretty hilarious, if a bit obnoxious. The irony is that I don't actually like most rap music (with a few exceptions), but I'm constantly pressed into defending it from increasingly ridiculous charges by people who really don't know the genre (I'll bite off my left thumb if more than two of the concern-trolls focusing on this issue have ever listened to more than 5 complete rap songs).
Surely if you can take the time to put Ludacris lyrics into a cartoon, you actually listened to the song (the same one infamously cited in an appellate opinion) and might have noticed that Ludacris clearly distinguishes "hos" from other women. While I find it hypocritical to deprecate a woman's promiscuity or actual prostitution while availing yourself of it, and am uncertain of whether I'd rather be a 'ho or a housewife in his binary, Ludacris explicitly is not singing about all women: "Not all, just some / You ho who you are." (From whence comes, I suppose, Chris Rock's claim that women will dance to the most misogynistic music and when Rock points out how awful the lyrics are, women will retort, "He ain't talking about me.")

Within my limited knowledge of rap, black women who are seen as strong don't get dissed even by rappers; Sir Mix-a-Lot actually paid tribute to their attractiveness: "You can have them bimbos, I'll keep my women like Flo-Jo." There's probably someone who has picked on Secretary Rice, but that's an unfortunate side-effect of political disagreement. Ludacris had a much-publicized beef with Oprah when she criticized his lyrics on her show, and neither he nor the other rappers she called out seem to have taken the fight to the studio -- indeed, Ludacris even urged his fans not to boycott her.

I'm not saying that all rap is exactly a model of female empowerment. There's a fair bit of misogyny involved. But on the other hand, rap scores points for being the most politically conscious music currently out there. And of course, cherry-picking a few songs is kind of ridiculous when you're claiming to condemn an entire musical genre.

Unfortunately, despite being White, I feel my Whiteness credentials aren't sufficiently strong enough anymore to rehabilitate hip-hop before my predominantly White audience (this is what happens when you focus on racial issues too much--the "enhanced racial standing" you enjoy begins to slowly fade away). So instead of offering up the concluding line myself, I'll defer to a man whose White-cred is unassailable: Roger Ebert:
Rap has a bad reputation in white circles, where many people believe it consists of obscene and violent anti-white and anti-female guttural. Some of it does. Most does not. Most white listeners don't care; they hear black voices in a litany of discontent, and tune out. Yet rap plays the same role today as Bob Dylan did in 1960, giving voice to the hopes and angers of a generation, and a lot of rap is powerful writing.

I grew where you hold your blacks up/ Trap us, expect us not to pick gats up/ Where you drop your cracks off by the Mack Trucks/ Destroy our dreams of lawyers and actors/ Keep us spiralin', goin' backwards. --Jay Z, "Dope Man."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Clearly all hip-hop objectifies women.

Pardon me love but you seem like my type/What you doin tonight? you should stop by the site/We could, roll some weed play some records and talk/I got a fly spot downtown Brooklyn, New York/Now I know you think I wanna fuck, no doubt/
but tonight we'll try a different route/ how bout we start
With a salad, a fresh bed of lettuce with croutons/
Later we can play a game of chess on the futon/ See i ain't got to get in your blouse/It's your eye contact, that be getting me aroused/When you show me your mind, it make me wanna show you mine/
Reflecting my light, when it shines/ just takin our time
Before the night's through/ we could get physical too/I ain't tryin to say I don't wanna fuck, cause I do/But for me boo, makin love is just as much mental/I like to know what I'm gettin into"


Dead Prez, "Mind Sex". Disgusting, isn't it?

Anonymous said...

First of all, I know I'm sort of late in this whole debate but and I suppose I'm pretty one-sided but I'd just like to say that I agree with you guys about the whole rap thing. I mean, actually, it's about perception and initiative. Many people are quick to complain about the rap and hip hop that they hear. They assume that the meagor portions of the art that are blazoning from the radio and the TV are all that's out there, as if MIMS, 50 Cent, and Ludacris make up the entire genre. But, if people would take the initiative and begin to investigate and delve below the surface of the art, they'd find that's where the real gems are--underneath. That's when they'd find artists such as Dead Prez [I fell in love with them after watching Dave Chappelle's Block Party--go figure], LUPE FIASCO, and Black Ice. People who are using their art for the enhancement of the mental and not the dinero. I believe that if artists like them were given more publicity and artists that seem to promote the negative were shunned away from the spotlight, then rap and hip hop wouldn't be the scapegoat that it is when it comes to anything negative that happens, especially in the black community.