Essay 3048

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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Playa hatin’

Why do women take it when Hip-Hop insists on ‘keeping it real’?

BY AMY ALEXANDER

Here is a cultural paradox for you: Young, smart, seemingly self-confident women of color who put up with even the most raunchily misogynistic rap and hip-hop music. We're all familiar with the commercial and cultural trajectory of the music and how, since its emergence in gritty New York neighborhoods 25 years ago, it has become a global phenomenon, generating billions of dollars in sales and spawning fashion, linguistic and sociopolitical trends that have entered the mainstream.

Along with all the bling and snap, the rise of the Hip-Hop Nation also has earned negative attention for its more unsavory behavioral byproducts, including violence in the name of “keeping it real” and a normalization of a “get rich or die trying” ethos.

But more troubling than the mainstreaming of violence and acquisitive values has been the rise in misogynistic attitudes among performers and their acceptance by fans of both sexes, according to Pimps Up, Ho’s Down, by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting.

Director of African-American and diaspora studies at Vanderbilt University, Sharpley-Whiting argues, with mixed results, that a general coarsening of hip-hop culture -- in its lyrics and the videos and marketing built around the music -- claims women as its biggest victims. She observes that some of the women who subscribe to the culture do so willingly, even as they are denigrated and abused onstage and off. It is not a new observation, but in this slim volume, she gets at the heart of the paradox.

“As much as the sexploitation of young black women is necessary to the ‘keep it real’ mantra of hip hop artists, corporate bottom lines, and marketing strategies, we must acknowledge our own role in this troubling relationship.”

Sharpley-Whiting tosses off an incendiary notion that requires more exploration than she provides: Young black women you see shaking their nearly naked rumps in all those videos or who serve as groupies to male rappers or who appear in increasingly popular underground hip-hop porn films are willing, if misguided, participants in their own debasement.

They are not alone, Sharpley-Whiting argues, in falling into the cesspool of rot that is laying waste to many aspects of American pop culture. It’s just that few of them believe they have other options for artistic or commercial success, and fewer still see themselves as taking part in third-wave feminism, the “sex-positive” movement that has made public displays of sexuality more acceptable for white women. In stating her case, Sharpley-Whiting cites a wide range of sources, from the black intellectual Frantz Fanon to journalists Greg Tate and Stanley Crouch to Pamela Des Barres, author of I’m With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie. But, like many academics who write about pop culture, Sharpley-Whiting fails to connect with readers in clear, layman’s language:

“And even more mind-bending than the length, girth, and bland performances of the churlish cabal of male hip-hop stars are the motivations articulated by the women in ‘Groupie Confessions,’” she writes, all but defying readers to make sense of that sentence. The result is a frustratingly enigmatic discussion that encapsulates a grand theme without coaxing forth the emotional punch that might allow readers to grasp it.

Surprisingly, it is left to a rap performer to point out the paradox that underlies Sharpley-Whiting’s premise -- how successful, “respected” black women like Oprah Winfrey, Condoleezza Rice and Halle Berry exist on the same continuum with Karrine Steffans, author of the best-selling roman a clef, Confessions of a Video Vixen, and her numerous nubile counterparts who are seen shaking their moneymakers in videos.

In a 1989 interview, former 2 Live Crew frontman Luther Campbell said, “Traditionally black people are really conservative. They’re more conservative than whites are, in my opinion. … With this whole tradition of sexuality (in hip-hop) most black people are nervous about that.”

So how do black female hip-hop consumers reconcile their love of the genre? And what can be done to bring them to a healthier place, in terms of their own self-image and to erase their vulnerability to hip-hop’s less savory side? Sharpley-Whiting doesn’t have the answers, and maybe no one does, but at least she’s put the discussion on the turntable.

[Amy Alexander is a free-lance writer. This review first appeared in the Washington Post.]