Niggas In Paris

If we're going to go down this road, I'll hand over the floor to Judith Butler and bell hooks, whose credentials with regards to feminist theory far outweigh anyone commenting on this thread.

Butler in "On Linguistic Vulnerability":

"In the United States, the turn against the lyrics of gangsta rap may also operate as a deflection from a more fundamental analysis on race, poverty and rage, and how those conditions are graphically registered in urban African-American popular musical genres.

Unfortunately, it seems that some appropriations of the hate speech argument tend to minimize the effects of racial injury while expanding the possible field of sexual injury; and in the conservative attack on rap, feminist arguments against injurious representation appear to be tacitly appropriated...At the same time, sexual injury to women is to be understood through racial tropes; the dignity of women is understood to be under attack not by the weakening of rights to reproductive freedom and the widespread loss of public assistance, but primarily by African-American men who sing."

hooks in "Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression":

(Speaking about women in lower classes, particularly those who are non-white) "Concurrently, they know that many males in their social groups are exploited and oppressed. Knowing that men in their groups do not have social, political and economic power, they would not deem it liberatory to share in their social status. While they are aware that sexism enables men in their respective groups to have privileges that are denied them, they are more likely to see exaggerated expressions of male chauvinism among their peers as stemming from the male's sense of himself as powerless and ineffectual in relation to ruling male groups, rather than an expression of an overall privileged social status."

 

A lot of big words there that most of the women they are referring too would have no understanding of.

If I am understanding the premise correctly, essentially what they are saying is that the women of lower classes accept being called bitches and ho's because they realized that the men of the same class are oppressed and that is the way they express their frustration.

 

I would draw a line between Body Count and what Kanye West is doing. West is a middle class geek whose mom was a English professor.

But even among rappers who grew up poor and surrounded by violence, the tone and material has changed. It's libertines being moderately clever and living the life. The 1% acting like it.

 

That stuff is 15 years old.

 

When the arguments being made against rap are the same ones that were being trotted as usual, they still work. As you're attacking West in particular and not the genre, or so it seems, they weren't directed at you.

As for West, he's a narcissistic asshole who usually makes good music and occasionally makes great music. The narcissism is clearly posturing to cover up any vulnerabilities he may have, but people and artists have been doing that for quite a long while.

 

Looks like Mushnick might be right:

 

Good for Jay-Z. It would be great if degradation of women no longer existed in rap.

 

He's got 99 Problems, and uh...

 

This Phil Mushnick comment made me laugh:

" I never thought to rent out the entire floor in the hospital when my kids were born. Next time."

 

Yeah, the potential set list for his concerts just got a lot smaller.

What is Bodie going to do?

 

First, I should quantify: hooks is, like, 25 years old, I think.

Second, they're not the same. Butler is responding to those 5-7 years of fierce (in some cases vicious) criticism toward "gangsta" rap, the "explicit lyrics" culture wars swirling at that time, the first pushback on abortion laws by evangelical groups and the welfare reform act of 1996. Her comments were in 1997, I think, and thus relevant to things at the moment.

If I were to levy a critique at rap now, it'd be that guys West, Wiz and DeGrassi High guy trade on old stereotypes and use them as a launching pad for tenth-grade wordplay. And music journalists and magazine celebrate them for it because they can't imagine how to begin tearing it apart without getting run out of the business.

 

hooks piece was in the 1970s. The copy I have, though, includes an introduction from her from 2000 that basically states she feels everything she stated originally was still an issue that needed to be dealt with.

As for the rappers you mentioned, I only know who Wiz is because I'm originally from Pittsburgh and I don't know who DeGrassi High guy is. Rappers who have come out with music in the past five years that I still listen to: Kanye, Jay-Z, Talib Kweli, Common, Lupe Fiasco, and Drake.