Posted on 04/10/2005 1:59:36 PM PDT by Crackingham
Since hip-hop began climbing the charts in the late 1980s, the music born from the belly of urban America has been swollen with controversy. In the late 1980s, the Miami-rap group 2 Live Crew were the poster boys for nasty as their hits "Me So Horny" and their 1989 album "As Nasty as They Want to Be" put them in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on obscenity charges. Then in the 1990s, Tipper Gore, the wife of former vice president Al Gore, led congressional hearings bashing gangster rap.
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Fast-forward to today and the debate over rap music continues, this time taking on the genre's portrayal of women. Lyrics where women are called "bitches" and "ho's" and videos that show women in next to nothing raised the alarm. But the buzz grew louder last year when students at Spelman College, the historically black women's college in Atlanta, took a stand against St. Louis rapper Nelly. Nelly was scheduled on campus for a bone-marrow drive, but a group of students protested because of his unrated "Tip Drill" video that shows the rapper swiping a credit card through a woman's rear end, and women in thong bikinis running through a mansion. Complaints of the sexual portrayal of women in the video and the misogynistic lyrics derailed Nelly's appearance at the school when he canceled over the uproar.
The outcry at Spelman, and a more recent protest last month by ministers in Arkansas who banded together to quash Nelly's appearance at Arkansas State University, got media attention and put the art form dominated by young black men in the spotlight. Nelly's scheduled appearance in Memphis at the Beale Street Music Festival April 30 even raised complaints locally.
Fed up with all images of women in rap, in January, Essence magazine, the country's leading magazine for black women, launched a yearlong campaign, "Take Back the Music," to tackle how women are represented in hip-hop.
The campaign has included articles in which rap video dancers, called video honeys, tell their stories; polls have been taken, asking for feedback from readers; and big-name rappers, including Ludacris, and activists such as Al Sharpton have sounded off about this issue.
Thabiti Boone, co-founder of the Hip Hop Political Convention in New York, recently moderated one of many town hall meetings Essence is sponsoring about the image of women in rap. He said the history of rap is important, but the future of this multibillion-dollar industry and its impact on teens are more important.
"My position is, you have to have zero tolerance on this entire issue of the image of women in hip-hop," he said. "You can't have a middle-of-the-road attitude about this, and as a black man I want it to be known that I think it is wrong when a woman is called out of her name and misrepresented in our community. Enough is enough."
I'm not surprised that 3+ generations of black girls/women are tired of being called bitches, hoes, and sluts.
Oh, come on - it's just freedom of expression, right? It isn't important if it further damages young men's respect (or lack of) for young girls. We certainly don't want censorship like Tipper called for. Unless, of course, you might be a parent of a teen.
Isn't it amazing the lack of moral values and breakdown of the family will do to people?
Naw man you got it wrong. We simply haven't funded welfare enough thats the whole problem...... /sarcasm off.
I watched the Nickelodeon awards with my daughter last night. There was a catagory "Favorite male singer" and the only people in the catagory were rappers. All of questionable morality (for lack of a better word)including Nelly, with the video clips they showed had the women on the front porch skanky dancing. I don't allow my children to watch MTV (for that very reason) and I was dissapointed in their choice in this one.
I did like Will Smith's acceptance speech for best animated role.
Answer: No.
Comment: It is too stupid to have any message -except perhaps as a symbol of degeneration.
What's a "Nelly"?
>>>What's a "Nelly"?
A "Nelly" is a misogynist rapper.
Hip-hop music may be misogynistic!
Next up: Sources say many members of the Conclave of Cardinals are members of the Roman Catholic Church...
Actually, it was 1985, and she was then wife of a senator and future VP, but who cares about accuracy?
I say the following with some trepidation but the reality is that SOME of these young rappers are telling the TRUTH,and the PAINFUL truth about their OWN feelings about their mothers,sisters and aunties.What if YOU as a small child saw YOUR mom,the woman who loved you and whom you depended on,bring a parade of fools into your house and then watched some of them abuse,steal and terrorize you and your mom?.I KNOW some of these young black men personally and they HURT from the s*** they have seen women do.
So they grow up.And then they call their own "brothers"the N word and their"sisters"the B word.No,its not right at all.They need to get beyond that pain and try to heal and bring about REAL family values.
Yet lets not rush to put the total blame on the young black man.These women out there today are doing some SCANDALOUS things and all the Spelman-Essence phony outrage is a big joke to me since these women are smart enough to know whats REALLY going on in the black community today!
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