Term Paper on "Gangsta Rap Music and Violence Toward Women"

Term Paper 5 pages (1562 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Gangsta Rap/Violence toward Women

Gangsta Rap Music and Violence Toward Women

The term gangsta rap began its rise to popularity when the controversial single "Gangsta, Gangsta" by N.W.A. (*****z with Attitude) hit the Billboard's Hot Rap Singles chart (Quinn 2000). This new term denoted a fresh and provocative rap sound - a cocktail of bass - driven and usually minor-key tracks, heightened first-person street gang rhymes, irreverent and humorous stories, and antiestablishment social commentary on de-industrialized black life - created by a cluster of rap artists in the Los Angeles region, thus by the early 1990's, this most controversial strain of hip-hop was on its way to becoming the market leader (Quinn 2000).

Rap music is an expression of minorities' frustration with poverty, drugs, and sexual harassment, yet some includes explicit lyrics about violence and sexual abuse that many critics believe can easily mislead impressionable teens who are the main patrons of this type of music (Suazo 1995). While some claim rap music is black America's most dynamic contemporary popular cultural intellectual and spiritual vessel, the fact is that rap also demeans women and promotes drug use and violence as a way to achieve empowerment through symbolic verbal action (Suazo 1995).

Often rap artists refer to their partners as "*****es" and "whores" and they appear to be prideful when describing their abuse of power in sexual situations (Suaza 1995). For example Dr. Dre's song "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" is a misogynistic anthem, as the first few lines read, "before you hit on a ***** you have to find a contraceptive/you never know she could be learning her man / and at the same time burning her man" (Suaza 1995). In the intro to one of Snoop Doggy's songs from his 1993 album "Doggystyle," one of his friend's refers to him "doing his gift doggystyle," and in K7's 1993 song "Come Baby Come," the chorus line says, "...come baby come, baby, com come...if I gotta' give you loving then you gotta' give me some" (Suaza 1995). Lyrics in Dr. Dre's former group N.W.A., reads, "This is the ***** that did the whole crew/She did it so much we made bets on who the ho would love to go through.../and se let you videotape her/and if you got a gang of niggers the *****'ll let you rape her" (Suaza 1995). Such lyrics are derogatory sexual innuendoes and are viewed by many critics as promoting gang rape. In another N.W.A. song, "One Less *****," the lyrics are as follows:

In reality a fool is one who believes all women are ladies;

***** is one who believes all ladies are *****es/./and all

*****es are created equal/./to me all *****es are the same, money hungry scandalous, groupie hos, that's always riding on *****'s dick/, always in a *****'s pocket/..." (Suaza 1995).

Critics believe the contemporary rap surpasses acceptable limits to conservative listeners (Suaza 1995). 2 Live Crew's obscenity court case is famous because it focused the group in a "vortex of powerful social and cultural issues such as the First Amendment rights to free expression, the forces and extent of misogynist and cultural impulses, and the function of race in judging controversial artistic expressions" (Suaza 1995). Many in the African-American community believe that gangsta rap should be censored because of its degrading portrayal of women and of each other, for example, calling another Black a '*****' or a Black woman a '*****' or a 'ho' (Gangsta 1994). Moreover, gangsta rap delivers violent images, depicts women as sexual objects, and suggests to the younger generation that in order to get respect or to be a 'man,' one should be tough, carry a gun, and make money by any means necessary (Gangsta 1994).

Anthony B. Pinn writes in the March 1999 issue of the Western Journal of Black Studies that gangsta rappers' barbarism and hostility toward women actually masks fear which is centered upon the idea that women threaten the survival of men, and because of this fear, gangstas attempt to control and subdue women in order to maintain manhood and status (Pinn 1999). For example the lyrics in the Geto Boys' "Let a Ho be a Ho," are words which graphically account the de-masculating affect of intimacy with women: "It seems to be a lot of (expletive) blind to the fact that a ho is gong to be just that...And this type of ignorance is the reason so many *****s is in the (expletive) cemetery" (Pinn 1999). Pinn notes that "gangsta rappers exist somewhere between the persona of the scapegaoted 'untouchable' predator and the victim of a cruel society" (Pinn 1999)

African-American men have historically enabled themselves with the power and authority to determine the black political agenda, and have consistently abused that power and defined the boundaries of the imagined black nation in terms of a sexual politics that institutionalized male domination and the subordination of the feminine (Cheney 2005). For example, Alexander Crummell suggested that one of African-American women's main political duties was to protect their virtue and maintain sexual purity, and Stokely Carmichael asserted that the only position for women in his movement was prone (Cheney 2005).

Ice Cube held women and gay men in contempt in "Amerikkka's Most Wanted," and in particular the fictional violence against women, with lyics such as "*****-killah" in "The ***** Ya Love to Hate," and the misogynistic "You Can't Fade Me," which is a venomous mother's -baby-father's-maybe tale that concludes with a murderous fantasy (Cheney 2005). Author Joan Morgan notes, "The problem with unmitigated black rage is that it grabs white people by the jugular with one hand, and strangles black folks with the other" (Cheney 2005).

According to Charise Cheney in the June 2005 issue of the Journal of African-American History, during the post-Civil Rights-Black Power era, the majority of male children were raised in female-headed households, in which masses were imprisoned, unemployed and many died prematurely, the reclamation of black manhood reemerged as the main issue on the political agenda, yet despite the fact that many African-American families were in the care of "abandoned and abused young black women" who tended to be "over arrested, over-indicted, under-defended and over-sentenced" and for whom AIDS was increasingly becoming a leading cause of death, a perceived crisis of masculinity seized the spotlight again within the black public arena (Cheney 2005). In black nationalist thought, masculinity is defined as not-femininity, and sanctions the subordination of the feminine, which is symbolized by women and gay men (Cheney 2005). Rap artists propagate the Madonna/whore dichotomization of women, depicting black women as hyper-sexual creatures in control of a dangerous, yet delicious "***** power" (Cheney 2005). Cheney writes, "the sexually explicit lyrics of rap nationalists were a direct descendent of the raunchy poetry of artists/activists of Black Power movement" (Cheney 2005). For example, H. Rap Brown's x-rated verse in "Die Nigger Die, "I f-ed your mama till she went blind. Her breath smells bad, but she sure can grind. I f-ed your mama for a solid hour. Baby came out screaming, Black Power" (Cheney 2005). According to Cheney, many in African America subscribed to the notion that black women were a pawn in a conspiratorial plot to maintain white supremacy over black people, particularly black men (Cheney 2005). Bill Stephney, co-founded of Public Enemy and president of StepSun Music, believes that social programs sponsored by the government after the Civil Rights Movement created favorable socioeconomic conditions for black women at the expense of black men, in particular aid to women and children, which not only ignored the fact that black men also experience poverty, but also strengthened what Stephney views to be a matriarchal family and community structure in African America (Cheney 2005).

Scott Crossley notes in the December 2005 issue of the African-American Review that perhaps no other controversial theme has… READ MORE

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