I like rap music. No, scratch that, I love rap music. I love the culture that rap has created. I love the healthy debate that sometimes fuels the culture and the rappers themselves. I love debating who the best rapper of the moment is and who the greatest rapper of all time is. I love the fact that I can connect with people on a different level when we talk about rap. I feel like a tiny piece of a welcoming community. With that being said, there is one aspect of the rap world that I have a strong distain for: the misogyny and sexism. And it's been going on forever.

The main reason it is such an issue for me is the fact that, as I've gotten older, I've become to identify as a feminist. I know that word carries a lot of meaning and weight, and people look at a person funny as soon as they claim to be one; I get those looks all time. One of the biggest problems I have is when I try to talk to people about feminism and they question me and belittle what I have to say. The most common comment I have gotten is, “How are you a feminist when you listen to rap?”

When that question flies out of a person’s mouth, I am honestly stumped. After hearing it many times, I start to question whether or not I can truly be a feminist while listening to and liking rap music. I know a lot of women who considered themselves to be feminists and do not listen to rap at all. I cannot blame those women; there are a lot of reasons why most feminists do not listen to rap and I completely understand their decision. For the next couple of weeks, I will be detailing both sides of the debate.

From the start, hip hop has always been pretty demeaning toward women.

“Bitches ain’t sh*t but hoes and tricks / Lick on these nuts and suck the dick” says Snoop Dogg.

“You ain’t no better because you don’t be fucking rappers / You only fuck with actors / You’re still getting fucked backwards” Jay Z raps.

“Slut, you think I won’t choke no whore / Til the vocal cords don’t work in her throat no more?!” Eminem says.

The most notorious rap group that I consider to be the poster children for misogyny in rap lyrics is still, to this day, N.W.A. Not much in their view and treatment of women has changed since the beginning of their career. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Ice Cube was quoted saying, “If you're a bitch, you're probably not going to like us. If you're a ho, you probably don't like us. If you're not a hoe or a bitch, don't be jumping to the defense of these despicable females. Just like I shouldn't be jumping to the defense of no punks or no cowards or no slimy son of a bitches that's men. I never understood why an upstanding lady would even think we're talking about her.”

I believe that all women, and people in general, deserve respect. I wonder the kind of women Ice Cub encountered in his life that made him this way. He considers these women to be “despicable” because of their sexual activity. Why does that hurt men so much? Why did we, as a society, praise the NWA movie, when the stars the film is based off of are horrible to women in their lyrics? Does the society we live in today care if one of its stars beat scores of women early on in his career? Is the society we live in so desensitized to sexism that is just doesn’t matter anymore?

The article that strives to answer this question is Media/Visual Literacy Art Education: Sexism in Hip-Hop Music Videos. The article was written by Sheng Kuan Chung. The article begins with talking about the history of hip hop. It breaks down the four elements of rap: break dance, graffiti, djing, and rapping. Then Chung begins to talk about the amount of power the rap video and rap culture as a whole holds on the youth:

"Hip-hop culture offers youngsters everyday aesthetic sites that propel them to seek excitement, aesthetic fulfillment, and a sense of identity and belonging. It has grown to be an American mainstream art form that influences almost every segment of the globe. Not surprisingly, increasing numbers of teenagers, regardless of racial/national backgrounds, immerse themselves in hip-hop culture and copy the ways in which hip-hop characters on television act, move, dress, and talk."

Chung then discusses other ways in which rap video can be harmful. He says that young females will see an image repeatedly and think that it is normal. For example,

when young girls are constantly bombarded with images and messages in hip-hop music videos celebrating women willing to commit crimes for their men and be the focus of the "male gaze," they are more likely to mistake the violence and abuse committed by their men as legitimate expressions of ‘gangsta love’.

Chung then goes into detail about what exactly is being seen by today's youth. They often see images of scantily clad women dancing for a male’s attention. They will then start to believe that that's all these women are made for: the enjoyment of men. Their bodies are used for sex and sex only. In the videos, women are shown to serve the men in their lives and to do nothing more. Chung then hypothesized that the reason belittling women in these videos is important is because it is connected to authenticity in rap. Chung states,

“Hip-hop culture has continued to construct and maintain its identity/authenticity through the glorification of such ghetto living conditions as violence, drug abuse, poverty, and prostitution.”

This was something that stuck out to me because I had never been able to see it that way. It never occurred to me that “keepin it real” could mean that women get talked about horribly in music. I do not fully agree that to “keep it real,” one has to be degrading to women, but this argument did open up my mind to seeing the other side. In a society where women have always been seen as sex objects, the youth of this generation may not consider the sexism in rap culture disturbing. This is something I find deeply disturbing.

Luckily, Chung ends his article by talking about two different concepts that may be the key to helping rap get over its hatred of women. The first is gender as performance. Using gender as performance could potentially open up the audience and get them to question why certain misogynistic things may be happening in the video. Hopefully, the audience will learn to spot certain sexist behavior and begin to question it.

The second method Chung presented was feminist rap. He says by showing the audience more images and videos that are the likes of Queen Latifah and MC Lyte it can “rebut the exploitative characterizations of female bodies in hip-hop”. Chung explains that showing more positive images will produce a more positive outcome in female listeners. Feminist rap videos show resistance to sexist hip hop images and present women as strong individuals who live with purpose and meaning. By showing strong feminists rap videos, it will also show that hip hop does not have to be one-sided. Hip hop can be empowering for women instead of degrading towards them.

Even with Chung’s two ways to combat sexism and misogyny in rap, there are still women who do not like rap. The first reason they do not like rap music and rap culture is because nothing has changed. In an interview, Kanye West was quoted as saying “generally rap is misogynistic." What this means to most feminists is that rappers know they are being offensive to women. They know that their words could potentially hurt someone, but they do not care. It is a trend, and, as long as it is popular, rappers will follow suit.