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We're Never Gonna Win The War on Hip-Hop Misogyny


In light of the controversy over Kendrick Lamar's latest song “Humble” which praises black women for their natural beauty, I think it’s high time somebody broke down why this ongoing debate is going nowhere. First, let me start by saying that Hip-hop by its very origins is incredibly problematic. By today’s “woke” standards, rap from its origins would be seen as an orgy of toxic masculinity and sexism. Hell, the point of battle rap is to essentially emasculate other men through rhyme! Seriously, between the hyper-macho posturing and often treating women like trophies and props, hip-hop has always been just a den of misogyny.

When it comes to the issue that rappers across the spectrum of rap tends to be incredibly problematic in how they talk about women, namely black women, truth is even at their best, the average male rapper can and will step on a mine here and there in how they talk about women. Madonna/whore complex, colorism, body shaming, objectification, take your pick. I wouldn’t consider myself a fan of J. Cole, but I get what he was trying to say with “No Role Modelz” but at the same time, I can see how and why it’s problematic.

The fact is, we can talk about Migos, Kendrick, Drake, J Cole, and Wale are still problematic in their music. But let's assume they take heed to these demands. They show women in a non-objectifying manner. They make all these pro-black women anthems and somehow become the designated champion of feminism in Rap. watch a majority of said rap listeners call them a simp and ignore them to where now the only people listening ARE the people who set him on this path. It’s an issue far, far bigger than even a label in rap. No amount of think pieces, stage rushes, protests, boycotts will change the fact that sadly, yes, we live in a society that has monetized misogyny. I don’t like it, you don’t like it, but I know like a lot of people that there's really not much you can do about an issue than most people learned to just live with. this is not to say that said black male artists shouldn’t make more pro-black women music, but please understand that 4 things will happen: they’ll fuck up in their attempts somehow, they’ll lose fans the more they make these kinds of songs and someone new will slip into their spot, making essentially a non-woke version of their music and slowly edge them out.

The fight can get very esoteric in terms of demand. Esoteric because the demand is so specific and so drastic that essentially to accomplish such goals would require an almost supernatural level of change. In this case, eliminating the deep misogyny of Rap and having artists who make more pro-black woman music. At best, you can get artists to be LESS misogynistic, and maybe get some black women to help them write some pro-black women songs. But I think at the level that I think some feminists want on social media can’t be accomplished for a simple reason: this isn’t just an issue that affected by black people.

To seriously expect millionaire, endorsement laden men who are living the dream of every man in the western world to kneel down and give a (read: by scale) small percentage of their fanbase what they want is a long wait. Sure black women may have sizable spending power, but the fact remains that there's WAY more people who not only don’t have your demands, but completely ignore them. And they have 3X as much spending power as black women. Just facts. People can bring up how artists back in their grandparents days made non problematic music and cared about black people, but the facts remain that back then literally the only way to get your MUSIC to crossover was to let a white guy perform it, society then was a far cry from what it is now, and if movies like The Temptations and why do fools fall in love showed us anything, even if their music wasn’t problematic, the artists themselves were.

Is it fucked up to reduce people to just their physical attributes? Yes. but frankly I've never heard of an asexual love song. Plenty of women's love songs about men are about their bodies. But now men are expected to make rap songs about anything BUT looks? I won’t go as far as to say the usual trope that this is just physically unattractive women wanting songs made for them, but I will say that this is a challenge that I don’t think RAP can accomplish. One has to remember there's an ingrained sense of masculine pride built into the mentality of it. And part of masculinity is men’s about men libidos.
If I could offer any real solution to this issue, support independent artists. I say this because an Indie artist makes music for his fans as that's who decides if his music and shows sell. I don’t know how many times I have to say it, but once ANY artist goes full on mainstream, at some point you have to expect that they’re gonna start making more broad-appeal music (Read: music that people who don’t season their chicken like) it's just life.

My point is simply this: you wouldn’t expect nuance and proper portrayal of women from Michael Bay as he’s made his careers from doing the exact opposite. But no amount of saying he and men like him need to fight against a cause that even if THEY stood up against it, on a grand scale it wouldn’t do much more than give more GIFs for Tumblr to make off his movies but honestly change NOTHING. This is what faces rappers. That being said, I think that this generation in all its wokeness keeps dancing around the fact ultimately you can’t intellectualize things like lust and attraction without rendering it sort of just...mundane. It’s like when you talk to people who say that love is just our brain chemicals trying to keep the human race reproducing: you KNOW there's truth to that, but just like when Neo took the red pill, the reality behind everything you know is just sad.

This submission comes courtesy of @awkblerd who you can keep up with on Twitter or hear him on The Lansing Anti-Hero Podcast.  

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