Kanye West – Throw Some D’s Remix
A lot of questions are being asked about hip hop these days. Recently, Felicia Pride introduced Rap Sessions, a traveling panel and discussion event with the questioning title, Does Hip Hop Hate Women?
I don’t know about hip hop as a whole but I do know that there’s a lot of woman hating going on in rap music.
In the above video by Kanye West, a remix/parody of Rich Boy’s song about getting new rims for his new Cadillac, Kanye humorously plays with the idea of upgrading various women with breast implants. It’s funny and it’s catchy, yet it takes the commodification of women for granted to the degree that it’s quite sick and hateful.
And hip hop’s full of such things that both attract and repel, leading some of us to feel conflicted about our love of hip hop, especially when we find outselves drawn to music that has such objectionable elements.
In the coming week or so I’ll be focusing on signs of life rather than signs of death in hip hop. But I wanted to start off by saying that many of the problems in hip hop are quite obvious but what to do is not, that feeling conflicted is normal in such a situation, especially when one’s concerns are dismissed out of hand by so many hip hop fans, and that those that can’t understand or empathize with such feelings are not to be trusted when addressing serious concerns.
I don’t claim to have the answers regarding social change within hip hop but I do think that coming together in dialogue with the intent of following through with action is inherently necessary and that includes projects like Rap Sessions.
Coming Soon: Hip Hop Signs of Life!
Clyde, I respectfully disagree.
While I think Rap Sessions is a wonderful idea and its participants highly credentialed people, I think they have the ivory tower stuck up their you know what so far that they can’t tell if the sky is blue. Case in point is the very title of Rap Sessions. How can Hip-Hop hate women when there are plenty of women who are record execs, publicists, artists, willing video vixens and fans, and are going about their days listening to Rich Boy and Kanye and loving every minute of it. Trust me when I say I know each of these types personally.
My point is that a smill minority of what the great philosopher Nas describes as “intellectuals that only half listen” constitute the folks behind Rap Sessions and other academic forays into Hip-Hop. While I respect their due diligence, I disagree with them in the most fundamental of ways, and that is that rap and Hip-Hop has and always will reflect the positive and negative aspects of human society in America and globally.
(Standing in my b-boy stance.)
I think that all kinds of people need to come together and dialogue in order to find some common ground and I think that process often needs to occur among like-minded people.
So I’m not big upping academic gatherings so much as gatherings of people committed to change.
Your examples of women in the industry are problematic in that they don’t contradict my point that rap music is full of woman hating content.
However, you can look at all the gay Republicans in powerful positions who pushed for anti-gay marriage legislation, a move intended to attack gay people for being gay, and see lots of examples of people willing to push for action that works against groups of which they are a part.
Interesting point. I guess individualism trumps group identity, for what it’s worth.
I don’t think that demeaning women is anything exclusive to the hip-hop culture; the problem is that the hip-hop culture is more than willing to be outwardly and consistently vulgar with its misogyny.
From profanity to the music videos, objectifying women is just one of the ways some rappers exude clout and status.
By the way, there is no end in sight to Kanye’s creativity or ignorance.