The Shaping of Black Womanhood through Hip Hop Music
Classic Hip Hop ( Hip Hop created in the mid-1970s) has manifiested as more than just music. It became more of a dialect, a sense of style, a language, and for many people, a way of life.Many classic Hip-Hop songs explicitly state the issues that arise in the neighborhood in an effort to uplift the community. Songs by artists such as Nas, Lauryn Hill, Tupac, Common and the Notorious B.I.G were great examples of songs that offered inspirational and relatable messages. Classic Hip Hop has emerged from one that promoted “good times, unification and positivity” to Contemporary Hip Hop that contains misogyny and violence. This misogyny among many other factors of Hip Hop music, “censors” the Black woman by altering their perception of beauty, showing illegal lifestyles as being the one that’s “in” and having a misrepresentation of Black women being praised.
52.1 percent of Hip Hop listeners are women, being one of the main reasons that Hip Hop music holds so much importance to the Black female community. The songs that are played most often in mass media are the ones that play a significant role in the policing or “censoring” of its largest audience, Black women. Many of the top songs of today contain a lot of dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women known as misogyny. These songs are usually songs by men who are constantly perpetuating misogynistic lyrics. In artist T-Wayne’s “Nasty Freestyle ”(2014) there are many examples of misogyny. In the second line of the song he is discriminating against woman who do not have the type of body shape he deems as being more sexual and would please him, as if the woman’s body or body type is the sole reason he would be talking to her or as if her sole reason for existing is to satisfy him.
In his 2015 single “Trap Queen” Fetty Wap appropriates illegal behavior of making crack for some sort of a profit. He also promotes the fact that she “works the damn pole” alluding to the fact that she is an exotic dancer. The money that is made from her stripping and assisting Wap in selling illegal substances will be used to buy material things (as if those things somewhat represent having a more successful life). Contemporary Hip Hop music “censors” academia by producing music that speaks about underground economy (making and selling drugs) framed as something that is fun, can cause one to fall in love, keep a man, gain the respect of being called a queen and makes money.
When Black women appropriate or exhibit the things that are in these songs in order to satisfy, obtain, and keep a man, their actions are further “censored” because of the negative outcomes of being called derogative names such as “sluts” “thots” and “hoes”. Hip Hop artist, Nicki Minaj is the perfect example of this idea. Minaj released a picture to promote her single “Anaconda.” In the picture she was embracing her sexuality by posing in only a thong, sports bra, and sneakers (see image below).Male artists so freely create the hyper-sexuality of Black woman through lyrics. However when Nicki Minaj claims hypersexuality she is “slut shamed” by the media.
Audre Lorde states “The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.” Songs such as “Nasty Girl” only add to men misnaming sexuality and ways of the erotic as the pornographic, forcing women to feel some sort of shame. Thusly, Hip Hop music videos “censor” the erotic, Black female’s perception of beauty as well as sense of sexuality by reinforcing the stereotype of being hyper-sexual.
Hip Hop music can be a source of musical outlet to help many people to cope with different things or it can be fun to listen to at social gatherings. Hip Hop music however, “censors” the Black female body. According to certain songs that are very popular, there are obvious ways that the music says a woman should “act,” certain things a woman can “do,” and certain things that are “accepted” in the “Black community.” Through sexual exploitation and objectification, even Black women’s everyday actions are “censored” by Hip Hop music. It is important not to ignore the fact that woman have the right to stripping, the erotic everything that was mentioned in this paper, however Hip Hop works as a means to help shape their ideas through the images shown in videos and the lyrics of what an “acceptable” woman does and does not do.
-Keturah Walker
