Fighting Misogyny in Rap Music

The Twin Cities, proudly my home, is currently going through a renaissance, especially on two fronts. The first is beer — we’ve got the finest collection of microbrews of any city in the the nation.

The second is music. Driven largely by The Current — arguably the best radio station in the world 🙂 — we are back to the territory of Prince and The Replacements. The hip hop scene here is ruled by The Doomtree Collective, which is fronted by Dessa. She’s smart. Real smart. Here’s one of her songs:

She’s got an Op-Ed in today’s paper about the use of “bitches,” “hoes,” “faggot” and other hateful language in rap and hip hop music. Here’s a money quote:

Mainstream hip-hop artists, with important exceptions, treat women with an institutionalized attitude of disrespect. In lyrics and videos, a rapper’s cachet as a baller is determined by how fine his girls are and how badly he dares treat them.

The implication is that the rapper is confident that the girls he debases will continue calling — or can be easily replaced by the next set in his Rolodex. Women aren’t just hypersexualized, they’re expendable.

Big artists and major labels retort, “The slurs and the violence are fictitious — don’t get so sensitive. It’s not personal, it’s entertainment.” This kind of response makes any rap fan who does feel degraded seem thin-skinned. In hip-hop — a movement that celebrates resilience with a flourish — nobody wants to be a shrinking violet.

“Besides,” the mainstream continues, “hip-hop is made out of rough talk. Most of the best rappers use words like ‘ho’ and ‘faggot.’ And you can’t say you love hip-hop without loving the classic artists who use the terms.”

In this way, the industry presents a subtle accusation: If you’re offended by misogynistic content, you’re not hip-hop. At best, you’re crashing the party. At worst, you’re soft — with no business being here at all.

This kind of messaging amounts to a deliberate suppression of dissent that seems, by my read, antithetical to hip-hop’s ethos. The implication that you’re a traitor for questioning the status quo isn’t consistent with a culture of self-expression through art, music and dance.

READ THE REST: Free speech and hip-hop: When talk is cheap | StarTribune.com.