Rap Music
Rap Music
Rap music, an element of hip-hop culture, is an oppositional form of expression that emerged in the United States in the late 1970s from postindustrial poverty, gangs, and violence. It has been criticized as a hyper-masculine space filled with braggadocio, sexism, and strict gender roles, and some of its content illustrates limiting roles for women. In rap lyrics and video imagery women often are framed as either sexually loose or virginal (the Madonna-whore dichotomy) and are accused of being lesbians (often considered bad and taboo in mainstream rap) or characterized as "Dear Mommas" (good mothers), baby mamas (money-hungry bad mothers), gold diggers, welfare queens, or "queens" (worthy of respect). However, negative views of womanhood do not prohibit women's participation; instead, many U.S. and international female artists work within hip-hop culture to counter those stereotypes.
MISOGYNY IN EARLY RAP
Once accessed only on homemade mix tapes in the inner city, rap spread quickly through media outlets such as Yo MTV Raps! (aired from 1988 to 1995), presenting audiences with repetitive images of bikini-clad women. Early videos such as Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" (1992), which shows him standing atop mountainous brown derrieres, prompted many to question the intentions of rap toward women. Mix-A-Lot claimed his song as a celebration of full-figured brown women, but some drew connections to historical stereotypes of black women as hypersexual. A multitude of songs, such as NWA's "A Bitch Iz a Bitch" (1989), Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit" (1992), and Lil' Wayne's "Alphabet Bitches" (2006), call out "bad" women (as "bitches," "tricks," "hoes," and "freaks").
In response, politicians, including C. Delores Tucker and Tipper Gore, rallied unsuccessfully to get record companies to censor sexually explicit content that they claimed threatened the moral fabric of the nation. When the rap group 2 Live Crew faced obscenity charges in the 1990s, debates raged among scholars. Some argued that the music was a misogynistic assault on black women, and some, such as Henry Louis Gates Jr., defended rap as "a form of 'sexual carnivalesque' with the potential to resist the pathologies of racism" (Crenshaw 1991).
SEXUALLY EXPLICIT RAP BY WOMEN ARTISTS AND IN COMMERCIAL MEDIA
Women rappers also release sexually explicit controversial rap. In November 1996 Lil' Kim's "Hardcore," with a cover showing her with legs cocked open, and Foxy Brown's "Ill Nana," whose title track details her sexual prowess, both went multiplatinum. Kim's single "How Many Licks" (2000), promoted by a provocative video of her likeness in the form of an anatomically correct sex doll, vividly details her sexual encounters with many men.
Commercial radio outlets continue to play songs commanding women's complicity in heavy rotation. Tracks with imperative hooks such as "Back That Ass Up" (1998), "Shake Ya Ass/Shake It Fast" (2000), and "Move Bitch" (2001) have fostered booming record sales with little more than parental advisory stickers on the album covers. Black Entertainment Television (BET) launched the late-night program Uncut to show "dirty" versions of videos for those types of songs. It also aired Tip Drill (2003), which became famous for an ending in which Nelly swipes a credit card through a black woman's buttocks, and that program sparked an intense reaction. After the airing, Nelly attempted to do a bone marrow drive for his ill sister at Spellman College, but students there demanded a forum to discuss his treatment of women. He refused and quietly canceled the event. Subsequently, Essence magazine launched a yearlong "Take Back the Music Campaign" featuring articles and nationwide town hall meetings to tackle stereotypes of black womanhood perpetuated by rap. UnCut was canceled in 2006.
RESISTANCE FROM FEMALE ARTISTS AND ORGANIZATIONS
Mainstream women rappers such as Queen Latifah (her 1993 song "Unity" asks, "Who you calling a bitch?"), Lauryn Hill (her 1998 "Doo Wop (That Thing)" warns girls that some men want only sex), and Eve (her 1999 "Love Is Blind" is about domestic violence) produce music from women's perspectives, countering some misogynist rap. Independent artists such as Bahamadia (her 2005 "Commonwealth [Cheap Chicks]" for "stricken by poverty chicks, dollar store shoppers") speaks to women who do not have or want all the material things portrayed on MTV and BET. The feminist performer Sarah Jones responded directly to sexist lyrics in "Your Revolution" (2001) by inverting popular lyrics into a feminist anthem. The song was played on community radio stations until a caller to Portland's KBOO claimed to be offended. Subsequently, Jones faced Federal Communications Commission indecency charges that the Supreme Court later overturned.
Resistance extends beyond rap with hip-hop activist organizations such as R.E.A.C.Hip-Hop, whose mission is said to be to "represent[s] education, activism, and community" (R.E.A.C.Hip-Hop 2006). In the 2000s that organization successfully led campaigns (one demanded that radio stations "cease and desist use of the N word and all racial and gender-based slurs") that caused millions of dollars in lost revenue for corporate holders.
Nevertheless, commercial markets saturated with sexually explicit and racially charged content, such as pimp, stripper and pornographic culture, continued to air with little recourse. Snoop Dogg's 2003 strut down the red carpet at the MTV Awards showed him escorting two leashed black women wearing leather collars and later was animated for an MTV2 show. Three Six Mafia's "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" (2005), which chronicles the struggles of a black pimp trying to "make change off these women," was awarded the 2006 Oscar for best song; that was the first time rap was performed at the Academy Awards. In the same year Kim Osorio, former editor of the self-proclaimed "Hip-hop Bible," The Source Magazine, won a sexual harassment lawsuit and a $14.5 million settlement, a landmark for women in the rap industry.
In the early years debates over sexism in rap centered on discussions of how many times a song used the word bitch, but they soon grew in complexity to examine the misogynistic images of rap videos, the lyrics of female rappers, the effects of rap on young women, video programming and access to content, parental responsibility, and artistic freedom of expression. Much rap continues to perpetuate stereotypes of womanhood in corporate and independent outlets. Videos, magazines, films, fashion, liquor, advertisements, and corporate branding distribute sexually charged and racialized images, feeding popular discourse and imaginations about the lives of people in the black and brown community. With increasing activism, education, hip-hop feminism, and alternative methods of distribution, many people have organized politically, socially, and economically in the academy, online, and on the streets.
see also Censorship.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1991. "Beyond Racism and Misogyny: Black Feminism and the 2 Live Crew." Available from http://bostonreview.net/BR16.6/crenshaw.html.
"Female Hip-hop." 2006. Available from http://www.femalehiphop.net.
"The Hip Hop Archive: The Hip Hop Portal." 2006. Available from http://www.hiphoparchive.org.
Morgan, Joan. 1999. When Chickenheads Come Home To Roost: My Life as a Hip-Hop Feminist. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Pough, Gwendolyn. 2004. Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Pough, Gwendolyn; Elaine Richardson; Aisha Durham; and Rachel Raimist, eds. 2007. HomeGirls Make Some Noise!: Hip-hop Feminism Anthology. Los Angeles: Parker Publishing.
"R.E.A.C.Hip-Hop Mission Statement." 2006. Available from http://www.hiphopliveshere.org.
"Women in Hip-Hop Links." 2006. Available from http://rachelraimist.com/women_hh_resources.html.
Rachel Raimist