Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Chris Rock about Rap Music

history of hip hop



WARNING: the content of this text may contain pictures, video clips or other sort of links that may be explicit to some sensitive readers/viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.





Hip hop is a music genre and a cultural movement that began in the 1970s among African Americans in New York City and has since then spread around the world. It began in the early 70s as the creative and activist expression of graffiti, writing, DeeJaying, break dancing and rap music of black and Latino youths in south Bronx. It is a cultural movement that is expressed through fashion, attitude, language, politics and so many more Hip hop is a way of expressing ones self, it is a way of life. Hip hop as grown to encompass an entire lifestyle that consistently incorporates diverse elements of ethnicity, technology, art and urban life. During the era of old school hip hop, people influence the music, but now with emergence of mainstream hip hop as made music influence people.
Hip hop as transformed from a musical forum into a misogynist rant. In the 1990s there was a rise in the popularity of the “bling- bling” lifestyle in rap music, focusing on symbols of wealth and status like money, Jewellery, cars and cloths. Now there are lots of hip hop and rap artists such as Pdiddy, 50cents, Nelly, Ludacris, Nas and many more and there are also female rap artists like Queen Latifah, Lil Kim, Da Brat and some others. The general ideology behind hip hop is commonly associated with murder, sex, drug, money, violence, crime, superiority (being the Boss at all times).

The was a time that hip hop was used to create harmony and sense of the community of black Americans when it is needed most, but now it is all different instead of building up the community, the hip hop of today is actually breaking bonds between the older and younger generation, it extends the gap of social morality and promotes the denigration of people. The rise of hip hop nation also has earned negative attention for its unsavory behavioral by products, including violence in the name of keeping it real. Some of the images that would be used in this essay might be offensive but that is what women are portrayed has by the hip hop artists.

Explicit content

To brief you with an idea of how women are displayed and distorted in the hip hop culture, this clip rather presents a fraction of several other methods of sexism, and women being sex-toys.

WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT: the content of the clip contains sexual scenes that require viewers' advised discretion!

click here to see clip

As stated earlier, there were several many ways to...

As stated earlier, there were several many ways to how women were exploited in the hip hop industry for many different reasons. Trend could be one of them, but it can be assumed that recently music lost its original theme of “exploring talents” to more of a commercial based business in the international market. The trend does not have anything to do with the ideology of “sex sells”, it’s more based on the attitude of showing off more skin than it is needed to feel free and build a little self esteem. I asked some girls, ages range from 18 to 21 and club almost every week end, to why some women put on clothing that still shows off a lot skin? Their answers were that there are three kinds of women that belong to this community: the ones that show off their attitude (attitude could vary from having the feeling that they’re exactly like those girls that are displayed in hip hop video clips to the ideology of being, and I quote from one of the girls being questioned, “nasty”), the ones that are controlled by a parent or any other factor but when they have the opportunity to be free (in a club) they can expose themselves freely, and the last type would be girls who just love to either belong or who happened to come from the background which allows them to expose themselves in that way.


In all three case scenarios, the results for these cases have resulted with the same conclusion; it successfully produced a huge negativity into its concepts, and more or less raised a lot of questions towards its present era. Some of the girls that were questioned happen to believe that the concept of women being exploited this way is “too slutty”, however their conclusions were that each woman is to her own decision-making.

This is not an attack against the culture, but more or less an analysis of what exactly those women do to enhance the offenses of their display of body parts. “All women, but mostly black women in particular are seen in popular hip-hop culture as sex objects” (Ayanna, 2008), in her article “The Exploitation of Women in Hip-hop Culture” she briefly reaches out to her “sistahs” and explains how the culture might’ve done bad to those women.

Sex offenses and misogynistic attitude is generally produced from that industry, she specifically addresses that not all hip hop/rap artists are exactly doing the same, which is what this topic also agrees with. Her main concern is hoping that this trend shall not be an “America culture”( Liyanarchi, 2005).

The confusion here is whether that the fashion is becoming a trend or is it the acceptance of offensive sexism into our modern society is the trend? Population that differs from men, women, boys, girls and children that varies in ages watch, dance, sing and consider the culture as a normal everyday aspect of music entertainment
Some ideas shared from the public that relate to the topic and the idea behind the awareness that the offenses that are being undertaken against the female gender is slowly becoming a concern to many other women. InAyanna's article, she speaks about the origin of hip hop music and how it suddenly evolved to more of an explicit genre in the music industry. The point behind it is that hip hop music and the genre was in fact a genre that no one would complain from, but now it has promoted itself to a state where the offensiveness has been accepted. Sex sells there is no argument to that, but there are several extremes that could be accepted, and extremes that couldn't. In this following clip, the idea is expressed through a 3mins interview, might help in clearing out some ideas and aspects about the topic.

click here to see

why negative images of women are used in videos


Music videos are an artist way of advertising themselves and their product, which is the music. Music videos can inundate our minds with the images that can essentially shape our attitude. Some women are paying with their bodies as a survival strategy. Out of this emerged the stereotype of black women as promiscuous and oversexed, and this shape some black women sexual morality. Some started to look at themselves as society viewed them, and some had no control over their bodies. Some black men wanted black women to have a subordinate role in the home, while some women wanted men to be sole economic providers. They have been, unable to meet each others expectation, these same obsession are demonstrated in hip hop culture. Some women want men to be the economic provider, so they use their sexual power to receive economic gain from men. While some men within hip hop want to be passive and manipulate women by offering money and power to them.



Most of the Rap artist feel that the only way to sell their songs and videos is by using negative images of women, also through nasty videos because it would attract people to buy. They degrade women in order to become successful. Hip hop is a genre of music that most people consume, according to Chuck D of the legendary Rap group Public Enemy, he said “major record label pressure hip hop artist to produce music that embraces sex and violence to make it sell more. Negative images of women are used by hip hop in videos so as to become more famous and attract people to but their music videos. The female body is valuable, they are also sexual attractive to men. Images of women are used to convey meaning to gender and other value. The black women that appear in most of these videos feel that their worth is based on soliciting attention from men and using that attention for their financial gain. They are used in most videos as material success link.

Negative representation of women in video is an activity that hip hop has glamorized by an association with materialism and success in the form of flashy dress, money and fine cars. In one of 50cents popular song, “P.I.MP”, earned $18 billion the year it was released. The song talks explicitly about sending women out to solicit sex for money.

In conclusion, the theme and meaning of this genre has shifted to what exactly took place to rock and roll back in the 70's, 80's and early 90's where several organizations fought some artists and requested their government to band their music in their societies. It doesn't mean it hasn't started with some sexist hip hop artists, but soon to become and world wide known sex market that might concern lots of audiences. Incidents like Akon's rumour about raping an under-aged girl on stage, and R. Kelly's incident of having sexual intercourse with a young girl are all predictable events judging by what is being displayed onto our everyday music channels. The form of expression in music has changed and somewhat listeners, or sometimes artists tend to tranform that expression to something more abstract and materialistic. As unfortunate as it may sound, this is the truth about hip hop in recent years, we don't judge, we'll let the judging be up to you.

References

Students at Spellman College protest Nelly's video "Tip Drill"

My Sistahs

"Does hip hop hate women?

Women's hip hop panel Seattle

Degrading women

Take back the dignity

Snoop on hip hop's portrayal of women

Video vixen