One thing I really want to say and I want to make this very clear to all my viewers out there. I love hip-hop. I grew up with Big Daddy Kane, you know, the Jungle Brothers, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Kwame, whoever you want to talk about in hip-hop.
I listened to their music, I partied to their music, I listen to hip-hop to this day. I sometimes feel bad for criticizing hip-hop, but I guess what I'm trying to do is to get us men to just take a hard look at ourselves. You're like in this box. In order to be in that box, you have to be strong, you have to be tough, you have to have a lot of girls, you gotta have money, you gotta be a player or a pimp, you know, you gotta be in control, you have to dominate other men, other people. You know, if you're not any of those things, then, you know, people call you soft or weak or a pussy or a chump or a faggot, and nobody wants to be any of those things.
So everybody stays inside the box. I heard Suge Knight say one time that hip-hop is a man's game and it is. They was like very docile, you know what I mean? But when hip-hop came around, it brought masculinity back into the game.
Now, some of it is a little misguided. One second, we're killing each other. The next minute, we're pimping hoes. He's doing everything wrong but us bananas.
Through rap music, I think there's an identification with some of the most stereotypical masculine standards. Every black man that goes in the studio, he's always got two people in his head. Him in terms of who he really is and the thug that he feels he has to project. It's a prison for us. It's a prison that we're in.
Yo, I'm this, I'm that, I'm totin'it. You know you ain't doin'jack shit, but at the end of the day, you know you can make somebody believe that you are. It can be profitable.
I jokingly say that I'm in recovery from hip-hop. It's like being in a domestic violence situation. Your home is hip-hop, and your man beats you. G12 ain't all about smacking bitches and smacking hoes, but we will smack a bitch and smack a hoe.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah! We the kings. We the kings.
We be kings, man. We be kings of this. One of the best things I've ever been able to do in my life was to throw a football.
I was nice with mine. Before games, I would listen to hip-hop to get psyched up. LL Cool J's Mama Said Knock You Out usually got me ready to play.
I grew up like a typical boy in America. I was a star high school and college quarterback, a ladies'man. and a Q-dog who listened and partied to a whole lot of hip-hop without really questioning the lyrics I was listening to.
Rap music's lyrics and images felt right in line with my masculine identity. I was that guy. That's who I was.
And then, my whole life changed. When I graduated from college, I was hired by Northeastern University's Sport and Society to educate young men about men's violence against women. They figured boys and men would listen to an ex-jock like me.
When I was your age, nobody came into my high school and talked to me about men's violence against women, especially men. When I first started doing it, I didn't really know much about gender issues or anything like that. I was totally intimidated and totally unaware about what I could do as a man to change any of that stuff. But I started learning a whole lot about masculinity.
And I became very introspective about my own self as a man. Every time I do a discussion or a group, rap music always comes up. People say, what about hip-hop?
Hip-hop is so violent. Hip-hop is so misogynistic. Hip-hop is always bashing gays or whatever.
And I would always defend myself. But the more I grew and the more I learned about sexism and violence and homophobia, the more those lyrics became unacceptable to me. And I began to become very conflicted about the music that I loved.
One day I was just sitting home at the crib watching music videos. And I was seeing video after video after video of rappers posing, and posturing, throwing money at the camera, mad women around them dancing. And I was like, yo, I want to do, I need to do a film that breaks all of this stuff down. So I raised money, bought a video camera, hired a film crew, and began my journey to examine the representations of manhood in hip-hop culture. My first stop was Daytona Beach, Florida at BET's annual Spring Bling weekend.
Young hip-hop fans from all over the country were here to hang out and watch their favorite rap artists perform. I had a different agenda. I was here looking for young men and women to talk to about the way manhood is displayed in hip-hop culture.
Yo, I felt like I was in the middle of a real live music video. On my first day here, I ran into these aspiring rap artists. Let me get next, Artie. Vic Damone, representing all stars out of St. Louis, yo. When it's time to go to war, I come equipped with the gauge and the tech, infect flesh like a syphilis plague in case of...
Nicolas Cage wanna take it for granted Try to face off, get tooken off the face of the planet Look, prick, you ain't never bust a nine before You dicks turn into pussies when it's time for war When the shells hit they body, I show them who that bastard be Ask my down-ass niggas, will you blast for me? Keep talkin'bout your guns, how you kill dudes for practice Lyin', only thing you ever pop was aspirins All they seemed to rhyme about was gunplay, killing other men, being tough and invulnerable, feminizing other men, and putting fear into another man's heart. Why are so many rappers preoccupied with violence and gunplay?
When you think about American society, the notion of violent masculinity is at the heart of American identity. So that the preoccupation with Jesse James and the outlaw, the rebel. much of that is associated in the american mindset the collective imagination of the nation with the expansion of the frontier and in the history of american social imagination the violent man using the gun to defend his family his kin becomes the suitable metaphor for the notion of manhood make it fast slippery this is your last draw Some of the young people in hip-hop are focusing in on the very deployment of the gun as the paraphernalia of masculinity, as the very symbol of what it means to be a real man.
There are components to masculinity for the people who live and breathe hip-hop culture. One of them is verbal ability. And two, the second piece here is the ability to negotiate violence. It's not shoot them up, bang, bang, but the ability to survive it, right? Like Pac.
and 50, you know, they have that kind of cult status because they survive, you know, these violent instances that we all hear about, some of us experience, and so we can relate to that. We both came up on the gritty streets of Jamaica, Queens, two street kids, now men. I thought about 50 Cent's music video, Many Men. In this video, he reenacts the day he survived a drive-by shooting where he was shot nine times. Let's go, let's go!
Wish death upon me Blood in my eye, I can't see I'm trying to be what I'm destined to be And trying to take my life away The political economy of the ghetto is so rife with arguments through the barrel of a gun. Their homeboy's getting shot. Their homeboy's getting shot.
at, the homeboys trying to shoot somebody, the homeboys wanting to shoot somebody. So the gun becomes the outlet for the aggression and the rage that young black and brown men feel. Just draw up the image of Public Enemy's logo, where you have a black male figure in a scope, in the sights of a gun. And there's a way in which that is what we are navigating as black men in the inner city.
People got to understand that hip-hop was really created in the ghettos. You know, poor black Americans, poor West Indians, and poor Puerto Ricans. Places like the South Bronx, you know, the West Bronx, where, you know, Bambada and Herk and these folks were throwing parties, they were considered like war zones.
Beginning in 1946 and ending in 1963, the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway ripped the Bronx in half. Urban planners and developers, led by Robert Moses, Show little concern for the people who lived in the borough and displaced thousands of residents and small business owners leaving in its wake a poor devastated community with little outside help from politicians. We talk about Iraq but if you have never been to a hardcore black ghetto or Latino ghetto you know and seen the conditions that people have had to live in the mainstream media would call it Fort Apache you know I'm saying people were terrified to go into Bronx or you might go in but you're not gonna come out they called it the Bronx Zoo the Bronx Zoo literally became the metaphor for the whole borough. I mean, and you know, that's horrible because they were talking about black and Latino people. All of that fed into what was becoming hip-hop.
Somebody, anybody scream! The culture and the energy that came from that was very improvisational energy, a very sort of reclaiming energy that young folks through dance, through rapping and DJing and so on and so forth, that is how the culture took hold. It was a willed response to systematic violence in the community.
And when I say violence, I mean like destroying homes. Imagine someone putting a highway through your neighborhood. Then you can understand hip-hop. I decided to go to the Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop.
I talked to the reigning king of the boogie down, Fat Joe. I wanted to ask Fat Joe, why is it so important to be hard in hip-hop? It is to be hard.
Everybody wants to be hard. And this is one of the things I told you, one of the flaws in being from the hood. Everybody wants to be hard. You know what I'm saying? And it's like that.
You see people, forget Fat Joe, because you see other people just grab the mic and they transform into a whole different person. And when they're walking around the club, I'm wondering why we can't just walk around and smile at each other. Why are we all there to do the same thing, have a nice time, party and get drunk and enjoy the music, but we all looking at everybody like...
And this be writers, journalists like you, you know, it'd be good people working who'd be up in the club like... I'm saying it's something, I don't even know, I can't answer that. The reason why braggadocio and boast is so central to the history of hip-hop is because you're dealing with the history of black men in America.
And there's... There's a whole lineage of black men wanting to deny their own frailty. And so in some ways you have to do that, you know, like a psychic armor in order to walk out into the world every day. But the other side of it is like it's kind of a running inside joke that everyone knows.
you know, that it's not the case. I'm doing my fucking hardcore pose, homie. You know what I'm saying? We tough, dude.
Most leaning this way a little more to the right. I'm gonna do gun position and everything. There you go. Because we are gangsters, son.
You know what I'm saying? We hustlers and all that shit. We duct tape families, dude. And a recording.
During a recording session in New York City, I met up with Busta Rhymes, Mos Def, Taleb Kweli, and De La Soul. I told them about the young rappers I had met back in Daytona, and we discussed why so many rappers project an image of toughness and invulnerability in hip-hop. I think that's just a part of every man's life, you know. Every man want respect, you know. You don't want nobody taking you for short.
And that's what it be. Hip-hop is a very ego-driven thing. And, um, you know... It just, you know, it encourages you to assert yourself. You know what I'm saying?
And as a man, especially a black man in this society, you have to learn how to do that. I was a nerd. I was the fucking bookworm around the way.
But when this shit got critical, you know, you can't... be no punk that's just for you know a lot of i know how a lot of young black men is growing up how i grew up it's like you can't let nobody just you got to be a limit you got to let know like yo i'm no push and you will get tested house from east flappers brooklyn I thought Long Island was soft. My moms told me we had to go.
I was vexed. I ain't even gonna front. I got to Long Island.
I saw flower beds and shit. The newspaper boy in the morning. You know, I saw dew on the grass when I came outside. The shit I ain't never seen in BK, nigga.
You know what I'm saying? So that type of shit to me was just a lot more. ...intimate than Brooklyn. So at the end of the day, I just felt like this would dilute my... rough and tough edge and shit.
We playing a role from the time we're seven years old. We walk down the street in the neighborhood and somebody calls us a sister, a sucker, church boy. Then we start playing that role. When I see young fathers with their children, I'm always happy. But when I see them, you know, punch their child in the chest and say,"'Nigga, you got to be ready for this.'"The cops, the system, harassment, the options.
Get shot, go to jail, or get shot? The lawyers, the part they are of the puzzle. The release, the warning, try not to get in trouble.
I just think in general our society limits the range in which men can express their emotions. I told you, told you, I ain't never scared. I ain't never scared.
I ain't never scared. You just have to have your game face on all the time. Like, you can't cry in front of your boy.
You just can't do it. If you're a young man... Growing up in this culture and the culture is telling you that being a man means being powerful, being dominant, being in control, having the respect of your peers.
But you don't have a lot of real power. Well, one thing that you do have access to is your body and your ability to present yourself, you know, physically as somebody who's worthy of respect. And I think that's one of the things that accounts for a lot of the hypermasculine posturing by a lot of young men of color and a lot of working class white guys as well. Men who have more power, men who have financial power and workplace authority.
and forms of abstract power like that don't have to be as physically powerful because they can exert their power in other ways. The hardness that you're talking about was accelerated as the stuff that was happening during the Reagan-Bush era really was taking place. The whole crack thing, proliferation of guns, a lot of us going up to prison, you know what I mean? You've got to be hard within the context of prison. And a lot of the mentalities that you see come out of these forced environments, the gang environment, the prison environment.
And sooner or later, all of a sudden, All the stuff that you saw happening on the streets was going to begin to be reflected in the music and the culture. Length and Length Entertainment, you know what I mean? Straight from New York.
Call them. Yo. Ready. Yo, yo, yo.
Yo, yo, I'm living the life and I'm loving every bit of it. Y'all niggas started, but we gone finish it. Mack with extended clips. Clap back to Innocent.
Clap back to bystanders. Clap back to witnesses. You can always find me flipping bricks in the kitchen.
And my connect so real, I get it in prison. Told money to fall back, but the kid and where the nigga at now? Swimming with fishes. Where you from, Harlem streets?
Dog, I'm from the FL. I'll punch you in your fucking brain and make your own shit swell. I'll spit you in your fucking white teeth.
Nigga, I'll run the street. Nigga, come on. The dominant image of black masculinity in hip-hop is the fact that somebody can be confrontational, but confrontational with the wrong cat.
It's like they're not ever confrontational with the cats they're just like, that will claim like, you know, I'll wipe your whole neighborhood out because they're almost like they're trained not to even see them. It's like my beef is with this cat right here that looks just like me. The rise of the culture of black animosity is something that adds to the street credibility factor.
It's like almost to the point where Tupac and Biggie would use as martyrs for this new endorsement of. of black animosity. I asked rapper Jadakiss about his and other rappers'nonchalance about violent hip-hop lyrics. Sometimes, man, when I'm listening to you, it seems like that doesn't matter.
You know what I'm saying? It sounds like y'all are desensitized to violence. You know what I'm saying?
Like, you know, you talk about killing brothers like it ain't nothing. You know what I'm saying? And not just you, but a lot of brothers.
You know what I'm saying? Do you watch movies? What kind of movies do you watch?
Good question. I mean, if you watch Hollywood movies, you see the same kind of violence, the same kind of hyper-masculine violence, perpetuated in movie after movie after movie. In sports culture, video games, military culture, I mean America is a very hyper masculine, hyper aggressive nation.
We're gonna smoke them out. So it stands to reason that a rapper like 50 Cent can be commercially viable in a nation that supports a culture of violence. We live in a society man where we, you know, manhood is all about conquering and violence man, all the time. Now take him like this! We as a community have to challenge this notion that it's okay for black males to die early, that this is a natural part of life.
killing, shooting, dying, wearing bulletproof vests, talking crazy as though your life doesn't really mean anything. This is sickness. Killing is always there since the beginning of time. Some of it is, a lot of it is exaggerated, but you know, it's just based on a true story, I guess. Really.
The national story is black death. Black death, whether it's through film, whether it's through recordings, whether it's just through news, is the bottom line. In the black, no pun intended. moneymaker. Black death has been pimped by corporations.
And young people think that street credibility is, you know, is a thing that will ride them to some kind of profitability in life. This is Nelly. He's a multi-platinum rap artist and a successful businessman. He's a huge rap star who's also known for giving back to the community. His two non-profit organizations promote literacy and locate bone marrow donors.
for leukemia patients. Oh, and by the way, did I forget to mention that he also owns a beverage called pimp juice? Well, anyway, in the spring of 2004, Nelly wanted to go to Spelman College to help save some lives. Instead, he was met with a result. by the women of Spelman.
I went down to Atlanta to find out what happened. You attend a controversy surrounding rap artist Nelly led to an emotional meeting at Spelman College tonight. The discussion focused on hip-hop videos and how they portray women.
The St. Louis-based rapper decided not to appear at a bone marrow drive his foundation organized at Spelman after some students threatened to protest because of an explicit video called Tip Drill. In the video, Nelly is seen swiping his credit card down a woman's face. I was very, very bothered to say the least about the video. And I was in moral conflict on whether or not to cancel the drive since I was the coordinator, or if just to disinvite Nelly.
We decided that what we'll do is that... we can have the bone marrow and he can come for that but then after the bone marrow that we need to have a forum that addresses these issues we gave Nellie and his foundation the option to address both issues saving lives physically and saving lives mentally and they pulled out so I was very disappointed for them to say you know we want to come to your campus and have a bone marrow drive but we don't want to hear your opinions about the music that we produce an image that we're proliferating is is that the equivalent of saying, just shut up and give me your bone marrow. I said it must be ass, cause it ain't your face. I need a tip drill.
I need a tip drill. One of the disappointing things about tip drill and that whole genre of music videos is that they have taken a view of women of color that's not radically different from the views of 19th century white slaveholders. Tip drill. We need a tip drill.
The image of scantily clad women is supposed to affirm. some image of masculinity, the man as the Mac, as this, you know, sexually powerful, virile example of manhood. But in actuality, what they show themselves to be is incredibly insecure.
And the idea is this man is so important and so powerful. And these women, conversely, are so dime a dozen, or I guess a dime for two dozen, you know, if there's 24 women standing around, that they don't matter. They're just eye candy.
They're worthless. I'm torn, you know, to be honest, because I have to be real with the way that I've been socialized as a man and what my reaction, initial reaction is to Tip Drill or to any other video. To look at these images, be excited by these images, be turned on by these images, etc. Hip-hop culture is not.
separate from the rest of American culture. I mean objectified female bodies, those images are everywhere as well. Those images are in advertising, those images are in movies, those images are in TV programs.
The really negative thing about music videos and about advertising is that that is the only way in which women are presented. And so the only way in which men are allowed to make a connection in the popular culture with women is through sexuality and it's only through their own desires. I think black men have internalized the messages that this culture perpetuates, which is that women are primarily sex objects and people to be fucked.
And I think that it is that kind of message and those kind of images that we want to try to disrupt. I caught up with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons at this hip-hop summit in Detroit and asked him about the Spelman controversy. I went down to Spelman College with the women at Spelman who were protesting against Nelly and his tip-drip video because he swiped her.
I tried the pimp juice and I thought it tasted very good. How do you respond to the women at Spelman? No, how do you respond to the women at Spelman who are speaking up and who are challenging the images in rap music videos where women are being sexually objectified and, you know, all those different things?
I think we have to challenge sexism as a whole, the way it stands in the community, not the poetry, that's the reflection of it. What are you doing personally as a political force? I can only do as many things as I can. God has given me a great opportunity to do.
I can't address every issue because I'm not, I don't have the equipment. I'm trying to figure out what special contributions I can make and make those. Generally speaking, black people do not believe that misogyny and sexism and violence against women are urgent issues. We still think that racism, police brutality, black male incarceration are the issues that we should be concerned about.
If we have a glorified sense of our own victimization as black and brown men, What we must not miss and what we often do is to understand that black when brown women themselves are so victimized not only by white patriarchy but by black male supremacy and by the violence of masculinity that's directed toward them It is true that these women appear not to be resisting. What I would hope, however, is that these women understand the extent of which they are participating in a culture which commodifies women sexually. Back at BET Springbling in Daytona Beach, Florida, I ran into this young cat, 18-year-old Jay Hood. My goal down here is to have fun and get up on some of these girls, man.
Do you have any problem with rappers calling women bitches and hoes and stuff like that? Nah, because to tell you the truth, some of them is bitches, see? You got to realize that.
You got the sisters. and then the bitches, huh? You know?
You got your sisters. You see the face of the bitches? Uh-huh.
What makes those the bitches? Them the bitches because you see how they dress. Just look how they dress. Sisters don't dress like that, huh?
Look at that ass, look. I might go over there and smack it. I called the women over to see what they had to say about being called bitches and hoes because of what they were wearing.
We are some classy people. Just because we want to enjoy the weather and have on some nice shorts and some nice shoes. That's just like a panty and bra set.
You know what I'm saying? Do you feel like men sexually objectify you? That's a man for you though. So you don't have a problem with men who objectify you at all?
That's a personal problem with them. That focus on your body parts? That's their problem.
The dude that we just interviewed said that those women that were walking around here with the bandage suits and whatever, he was saying those women are bitches. Those women are hoes. They deserve to be talked to like that. Do you feel that way about these women right here?
Do you feel like they walking around presenting themselves like they hoes? I don't know. Nah, because I'm just, you know... I don't know. I look at it as they're showing off their women features.
You got on a uniform. What would be considered as loose? Can we bring her over here? You want to bring her over here?
Bring her over here. How you like it? How do y'all feel about images of women in rap music?
Well, if it's not really directed towards you personally... It's just what they saying, sex sells. If you don't take offense to it, then hey. Like a problem with dudes referring to us like bitches and hoes. But I know he's not talking to me.
I know what I am. Let's describe a certain female. However, in the view of NWA... A bitch is a bitch. So I'm a poor wretch.
Man, it was open-sealed. on these women. BET's Spring Bling looked more like one of their music videos, Gone Wild. The women bought into their roles as scantily clad sex kittens and the men acted out their wildest fantasies, shooting and directing their own hip hop videos. videos, the guy saw Spring Break weekend as an opportunity to cross the line between flotation and sexual assault.
It's funny when I hear women say, when these rappers are calling, you know, women bitches and hoes, they're not talking about me. It's like, yo, they are talking about you. If George Bush was a girl, get on national TV and make a speech and he started calling black people niggas, would you be like, I don't know who George Bush is talking about, but he ain't talking about me. So they're coming out here with their ass showing, you know what I'm saying?
We're going to slap them on the ass. That's just the way it is, you know what I'm saying? We represent all these niggas from J-Real, Florida, trying to get on these hoes, slap niggas on the ass, because they're representing their fine, salty ass. That's what I'm talking about. I heard you saying something, you're going to hit somebody with your pocketbook.
No, I was going to hit somebody with my fist. You're going to hit somebody with your fist? Yes. Why?
What's happening? Well, I'm being touched, and it's unwarranted and unwelcome. Some people say it's just boys being boys, but I think it has a lot to do with boys figuring out early that girls are there for us to sexually objectify or to be our playthings. Don't touch.
I ain't gonna touch nothing else. Okay, don't touch their nails. I'm gonna ask myself. Oh, Jesus!
Oh, Lord! It's a motherfucker off-beat! I've been doing a lot of walking around and videotaping and things like that, and I'm not gonna touch anything. A lot of the women are having a real hard time moving through the crowd.
Yeah, that's one of our biggest problems. As you can see, we're spread kind of thin. We can't be everywhere, so our concern is that somebody's going to be accosted out here and we just don't want anybody to get hurt or raped or anything like that. Have you made any arrests? Not so far this weekend, it's been good.
I'm going to go. I'm trying to take my whole shirt off. Shut the fuck up. How y'all doing?
Shit is entertainment. Word up. If it was so bad like that, Snoop wouldn't even have no fans or none of that. Snoop been talking that bitches ain't shit shit since the beginning of time. They want...
They the main ones out there listening to the ragged call of the bitch. Dirty, money-hungry, scandalous, stuck-up, hairpiece contact wearing bitch. Yep, you probably are.
Being in Daytona really made me realize how desensitized we have become to the sexism and the misogyny and the sexual objectification of women in the hip-hop culture. Hip-hop is about drugs and hoes, dog. What a hoes ass.
Bitch! You know what I think is deep? Just the fact that you hear so many brothers calling other brothers bitches, bitch-ass niggas, hoes.
You know, all these things that you hear all the time in hip-hop. you hear it all the time and it goes unrecognized and unchecked because it's so normalized it's amazing that we haven't really talked about it more because to me that's just as pervasive as the misogyny a quick service announcement for those who may be confused. Courtesy of the G. At this Summer Jam concert, 50 Cent questioned Ja Rule's manhood in front of thousands.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's been brought to my attention that you guys don't know what bitch ass niggas look like. Take a look at this. I know that's not hip hop.
You know that's not hip hop. So there you have it ladies and gentlemen. The next time you flip me through your radio or through your TV, I'm gonna flip you over to the next one.
I'm gonna flip you over to the next one. You know how to identify a bitch ass nigga. When one looks at the contemporary landscape of hip-hop, one sees the feminizing assault on masculinity by other men.
So that the greatest insult that a man might imagine for another man is to assume that he's less than a man. And to assign him the very derogatory terms that one usually associates with women. In the rest of our culture, when men want to call other men, You know, something that's really gonna degrade them. They call him a sissy.
They call him a punk. They call him all these kinds of names. That's outside of hip-hop.
That's everywhere. And to those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say don't be economic girly men. Assault is double. It's both an assault on women, but it's also a reinforcement of a negative and vicious form, a malicious form if you will, of masculine identity. Man, unfortunately, you know, I was one of those cats who used to do that to brothers.
You know what I mean? I'll just be real with you. And it was a false sense of power, you know, and it was a way of making someone else feel powerless.
I'm probably a drag queen, just got through the time of... I got a tongue ring so I can eat pussy niggas like you. It's calling your manhood into question.
It's calling your sexuality into question. Saying, you know, if you're not this, you know, you must therefore be gay. You must be a faggot, you know. You must be, you know, a bitch nigga. It's all of those things.
What does that mean? What does that say a lot about us? Could it really be saying that we may be insecure about our masculinity?
I ran into these three hip-hop heads back in Daytona Beach. Now, let me just ask you a question. This is out of curiosity and probably naivete and ignorance.
But like, what do you, like... What do you classify yourself as? You know what I'm saying?
I mean, are you women? Are you men? What do you classify yourself as? I mean, on a day to day, on a regular day to day, I'm just a regular guy, but every now and then I do. Dressed up and women clothes.
I like the way women clothes. And besides, I look good in them. How do you feel about homophobia in rap lyrics?
Does that bother you at all? Does that make you feel any particular way? No, not me.
Why does it turn you on? Why does it turn you on? It's all aggressive. But they shouldn't be doing that because we are some of the people who support a lot of their music. Buy their music, go to their concerts and everything.
We do. I'm dealing with homophobia in hip-hop. Right?
Homophobic lyrics and things like that. I can't partake in that conversation. That homo shit that you're talking about. I can't talk to you about that.
Why not? I mean, with all due respect, you know what I mean? I ain't trying to offend nobody. My cultural, what I represent culturally doesn't condone it whatsoever.
So I'm going to slide. I'm being allowed. War is war. Well, let me just ask you this, Buster.
Let me just ask you this. All right. Do you think that a gay rapper would ever be accepted in hip-hop culture?
Oh wow. That's the Henny and it's on. Save the word and we're gone. I've never even seen straight black men in large numbers even try to have conversations with gay brothers.
You know what I mean? I know folks have done it one-on-one. I've done it one-on-one.
You know what I mean? But I don't really see that happening, man. Because I think part of the illness falls on straight men to really, one, begin to process how we define manhood. I started rhyming and I came out like right around the same time and it was in that situation that I became so much more aware of how homophobic hip-hop was because here I am a black man trying to love myself in spite of the fact that I've accepted myself as gay you know along with the fact that I've accepted myself as gay.
And when you do that, there's not a lot of love for gays in hip-hop. I mean, we know that from the beginning through now. Timum talked about the irony between homophobia and a rarely discussed issue in hip-hop. It's this real ironic sort of thing in hip hop that it is such a homophobic culture oftentimes, and yet it's so completely homoerotic.
You know, when LL Cool J's got his shirt off and is licking his lips, it's not just women looking at that. You know, it's guys too. I'm looking for my 50 cent picture. There is some awareness of the homoeroticism, but people aren't really willing to confront it.
I went all the way to Vibe magazine to interview the editor of Vibe. And I'm going to talk to him about homoeroticism in rap music and hip-hop culture. Not too many brothers talk about homoeroticism in rap music, so we'll see how it goes.
Can you just elaborate a little bit about exactly what homoeroticism looks like? homoeroticism in media looks like LL Cool J with no shirt on and his music video with a big 10 belt buckle standing there flexing all greased up staring at you it is showing black men strong, naked, greased up, and as these really like, almost like godlike objects. And they're everywhere, they're on magazine covers.
You see Nelly on the cover of Vibe with no shirt. You see 50 Cent on the cover of Vibe with no shirt. And a lot of it is taken from the cultures in prison where everyone's tatted up, they don't have belts, so their pants are falling down. These are all the types of things that are very homoerotic, but they're also very masculine and considered very thug in our culture.
Whether exaggerated or not, men speak about their sexual conquests. Me and my boy hit it. Me and my boy did her.
Me and my boy did this. So there's a lot of me and my boy up in there. Not much about the woman, but me and my boy.
I said it ain't no fun unless we all get some. I need a take two. We need a take two. Now they would deny that it is these heterosexual rappers, but there is any intent to use them. union to form a union erotically but one can't help but conclude that in the passionate pursuit of these women only if my boys can have them it ain't no fun if the homies can't have none snoop said all of that is directed toward an erotic intensity that bonds men at the expense of their heterosexual allegiances with females so to me all of those ways prove that there's deep and profound homoeroticism in hip-hop culture now do you get a lot of attention from guys Oh, yes.
You're lying. How much attention? You've been getting a lot of attention at this time. Yeah, already.
Yeah, already. You stepped out the car. It was like, well, I didn't have any steps.
Oh, that's why. You have guys that come and they be like, meet me around the corner and do it on the DL. And I left.
I'm famous, man. It's like a lot of hardcore, thugged out cats here. Those are the type of dudes that I met.
That's all we mess with. Exactly. I'm a big front.
in front of that boy. And that needs to be known worldwide. Get that shit on me, yo.
I mean, with that gay shit. Black manhood by the structures and the powers that be the corporations They found a way to that they think they could put soul in the bottle if they could put soul in the bottle You know then they could put manhood in a bottle and then show the bottle in avatar it. And we can follow the crumbs to the big bad wolf. I decided to follow the crumbs and ended up here at this Hip Hop Power Summit held in New York City.
The summit was hosted by Power 105.1 FM, a radio station owned by Media Powerhouse. clear channel communications. There were hundreds of young black men and women here seeking pointers from hip-hop moguls like Russell Simmons, Irv Gotti, and BET executive Stephen Hill.
Outside were dozens of aspiring rap artists handing out CDs and demos hoping to get attention from anyone who would listen. Listen, these niggas don't know who I am. It's crack the drug dealer, car dealer, what's the deal? I'm the dealer man.
I could deal your hand milligrams to kilograms. I'm from Cypress Hill, how I could just kill a man? Call me nice when I'm smoothed out, even without the dick Got bitches loving the beat, bring beef, got Mac 11s like the WB Got thug rappers that can't get over they rhymes Some niggas quit on they slugs, my guns cock in overtime I make hate songs, spit till your face gone Life's a bitch and I'm trying to get my rape on Man, I ain't leaving the party until the cake gone Get your balloon popped, nigga, I bang strong Niggas screaming out, agony, cause they chickens is after me Stop with the crying, see I murder you like Master P I pack big guns to hit all of y'all faggots.
I ain't Nas, but I'm on the bus office still mad at me. Everywhere I go, and I've been shooting this documentary for like two years now, you know what I'm saying? And every time I have kids spiffing me, you know what I'm saying?
It's all about the same thing. It's all about how you're going to kill somebody. How you're going to, you know, how you're going to rape somebody.
I could walk up to you right now and say, yo, could have been a doctor. Or I could have been a pops. Wonder what would have happened had I would have been a cop. Would I help the block?
Protect the girl from the back? Or just be killing niggas because the power on my badge? You know what I mean? That's... That's nice, but nobody want to hear that right now.
They don't accept that shit. They don't give us deals. The industry usually don't give us deals when we speak righteously and things of that nature. They think we don't want to hear that. How many cats just stood here in front of me right now and started talking about how much drugs they sold?
You know what I'm saying? How they will kill you, why they will shoot you. Okay, now, wait, wait. They said that.
How many emcees do you see in the industry on TV now talking something positive? How many? None. They're doing it because they say, I want to get there.
They're gonna do whatever we can do to get there. That's what it is. I think when you're talking to a lot of these young rappers, the most important things for them is to get a record deal.
And what they hear from the record companies is that there are only certain examples of blackness that we're gonna let flow through this space. And when it comes to hip-hop, there's certain conventions in which we want to see. We want to see kind of the hardcore thug performing hip-hop.
We want to see booty shaking in the background. And when hip-hop videos don't fit into those conventions, they don't get played. what we call the golden era from like 87 to 92, you know, you had LL Cool J, you had NWA, you had Public Enemy, but you had De La Soul, you had Kwame, you know what I'm saying? And so you had a diversity of black male expression.
And so if you wasn't with Chuck D, you can get with De La Soul if you were a bohemian. If you wasn't with them, you can get with Kwame, you can get with Tricor Quest, you can get with, you know, Jungle Brothers, you know what I'm saying? So there's so many different types. The current images out there are black and Latino men in hip hop.
Do y'all feel like y'all want y'all sons to be like that? I mean maybe some aspects of business, you know being They don't see they don't see Working out a deal with some with a person that I had a company 50 cent Oh TV what is Vesta? Yeah, they see him with his cat on his waist.
That's what they see because they don't I mean, the media doesn't want to portray us, I mean, minority people, like, they don't want us, they don't want you to see that we good followers. They don't want you to see that we good businessmen. We don't just sell drugs. I sold water last summer.
Holla! So you see the kind of schizophrenia that emerges among these young men. And you get this kind of notion of keep it real.
And, of course, they have to keep it real to sell records. But at the same time, when someone actually pulls their coat, it's like, okay, this isn't really you. What's this about?
It's an admission that that's a performance. When Self Destruction by Karis One came out, we was all pumping it and loving it. I just heard that the other day.
You know what I'm saying? Loving it, loving it. We got ourselves together so that you can unite and fight for what's right. For now, you can't go to a label with Self Destruction.
Why? Because you're going to self-destruct. The label is not going to put you out there.
They're not going to do it. Self Destruction. We're here for Self Destruction. Nobody wanna hear that shit no more.
Soon as 50 comes in, he's killing up shit, he's selling out the roof. He's not got one kind of soothing educational song, none of that. In the club, hit you with a bomb, all of that violence.
It's good music, but it's got life-hunting content, and it's selling like motherfucking hot flowers. The misery that was beginning to really accelerate itself in the Reagan-Bush era in the 80s has been manipulated and commodified by this white male power structure that controls the record labels, that control urban radio, because every city you go to in America, there's a power this, a jamming that, or a hot something playing the same. 10 to 12 songs over and over again.
So what it does is perpetuate the mindset that the only way that you can be a man, a black man, a Latino man, is to be hard, you know what I'm saying, to denigrate women, to denigrate homosexuals, to denigrate each other, to kill each other. There's something wrong with that. I talked to some young cats, young up and coming cats, you know what I'm saying?
You know, cats that are trying to make it as a rapper. And they say that they're not really thugs, right? But they know that in order for them to be successful in this game, that they gotta, you know, they gotta be thuggish. You know what I'm saying?
And they're confused. What do you think about that? Those are the same cats who are just listening to the radio. And just watching TV. Watching TV, they're confused.
They don't know. We have trusted the media and the corporations to... To define what hip-hop is, you know what I'm saying? It's like, back in the days when it first came out, if ABC did a story on rap, you'd be like, Oh, I know they, I know they bullshit, I know that's not true. But now you see it on the news, you see it, this, this, you see it on BET, you see it on...
Because it, because they call themselves hip-hop now. It's like now, Hot 97 is the station where hip-hop lives, so we hear that, and we don't understand that it's some corporation owned by people who have nothing to do with hip-hop, who are just trying to cash in. It's like, oh, hip-hop lives there. Alright, so, you know, they must know.
That must be what rap is. No, we had never let the media define us, so why are we doing that now? I went to talk to former Def Jam president Carmen Ashurst Watson about the shift in lyrical content in rap music.
The time when we switched to gangster music was the same time that the majors bought up all the labels. And I don't think that's a coincidence. At the time that we were able to get a bigger place in the record stores and a bigger presence because of this major marketing, capacity, the music became less and less conscious.
We went to Columbia and then the next thing I know our producers of Public Enemy were over producing an Ice Cube album and then the next thing I know we're pushing a group called Bitches. problems BWP and once that perpetuated into one thing and corporates get involved yes you'll sell 2 million NWA's as opposed to 1 million PE and you're going to go from fight to power to gin and juice now once the have helped that shift come along, that's when you get 60, 70% of the buying community now is a white community. After 700,000, it's all white people. After your scan passes 700,000, it's all white people.
And he's well past 700,000, so the white people want to hear that killing evidence, and they want to hear about that shit. Y'all know I was on the Daytona Strip when I saw this white guy in his SUV blasting fabulous'keeping it gangster. Hey listen man, where you from? I'm from Columbus High.
Born and raised? Yeah. Really? Yeah.
Is this your car? I wish it was. Are you frightened?
Are you frightened like it's your car? Yeah, I am frightened like it's my car, but nah, it's my dad's. How long have you been listening to hip hop, man? Seven, eight years. I mean, it's since it started to come out in 91, 92. Ever since then.
What is it that that draws you to hip-hop? You know what I mean? What draws me to hip-hop?
Yeah, just The pure emotion in the beats. I mean, I love the beats I mean, I love every lyric that they spit. I mean everything about it is just Just it's my style. I mean, I mean you guys Color people could say that it's their music, but and I can get down to it just as much as they can Who are you man? Did you just say colored people?
Man, I don't know what term you want me to use. I mean, I'm trying to be, I'm not a racist at all. That's why I feel like I can come down here and just roll in and I can have no problems. No one's gonna try to do anything at me.
I mean, I'm just trying to have a good time down here. I hear you man. It is something that's as Put on as baggy jeans for white boys. It is as put on as a fitted baseball cap and a do-rag. That's all they get.
That's all they're going to be able to get and identify with. And I know you. I know you, white boys.
I've seen you. I've seen you. You know, you are the guys who come up to me and ask me why I am the way I am. And if you don't understand, there ain't no way I can tell you.
There's no way I can tell you. It comes with this. I've never been to the hood. I've never been to a ghetto. I grew up in, you know, upper middle class.
basically white suburbia. We had a very small minority in our town and that was it. And to listen to stuff like that is a way of us to see almost a different culture, well, a completely different culture.
It's something that most of us have never had the opportunity to experience. I've never had to worry about drive-by shootings and the stuff in the music. It appeals to our sense of learning about other cultures and wanting to know more about something that will.
never probably experience. Does it reinforce stereotypes about black people? Yeah. Oh yeah.
Oh yeah. It does. Especially if they talk about growing up poor and never having all this money and then they come on MTV or VH1 with their large chains and their nice cars and they sing a song about busting caps in people. If you really want to know where this kind of predatory black man comes from, look back at films like Birth of a Nation.
Birth of a Nation is hailed by critics as a cinematic breakthrough in a great American movie. But D.W. Griffith's blockbuster, made in 1915, spread fear and paranoia about black masculinity with its mean-spirited stereotypes of black men as lazy, untrustworthy, oversexed and dangerous, particularly to white women, and gave rise to the Ku Klux Klan. If the KKK was smart enough, they would have created gangster rap, because it's such a caricature of black masculinity. Yet young... people of color are being presented with this idea that somehow these people represent us and they're cool and they're gonna they're gonna stand in for us against the white power structure while they're completely subservient to that white power structure it's really an ironic sad reality I asked BET executive Stephen Hill about reinforcing stereotypes, but he just passed the buck.
Probably what should happen is you should look at people who are actually making the video. We are, in some ways, partly a video... and play the videos that are that are given to them. As an African American man, how do you feel about what you see? He just walked away without answering my question.
BET is the cancer of black manhood in the world because they've one-dimensionalized us and commodified us into being a one-trick image. We throwing money at the camera. We flashing jewelry that can actually give a town in Africa water. We got 160 million dollar contracts. Because we got happy niggas.
What do you think about that as artists, as artists, the ones who participate? Do you feel like you're reinforcing any stereotypes? Y'all talk about that?
They couldn't even look you in the eye. Fuck that. We can really get to the nuts and nails of this.
They couldn't even look you in the eye. Number one, cats can't even look a man in the eye. If they look a man in the eye, they think it's confrontation. Why?
Because they can't answer. They can't answer to it. And it's almost like now you talk about it.
It ain't their fault. This is all systematic. It's all part of genocidally breaking things down to the point where people are going to follow a program that gets played out for them.
This is the play. This is the playbook. Y'all are going to follow through. And, you know, come on. You crank robots up.
They're going to just follow. You know, they're going to do what robots do, what you told them to do. Do you ever feel that way as an artist? Do you feel like I'm doing what they want me to do?
Or are you just. How do you feel about that? I'm doing what I want to do.
They're compensating for it, me, for it. And by me doing that, I'm going to help my people out. I'm going to get, you know what I'm saying, that's how I'm going to get my people out.
The niggas that's eating the most off me and 50 and all of them, you're never going to see them. They're in Kalamazoo somewhere with a bent-up hat on, you know what I'm saying? Chilling, he's getting heat.
Oh! Or everybody who, the real people that's eating out of the industry. You know, everybody get up there, the corporate guy.
The guy who, the big man that end of the day stamped the check. So white or black? White or black?
Off-stretch white. There's nothing black about the head niggas that's running the industry. They're not even niggas.
So the question becomes, who's making the decisions about what people see? Who's making the decisions about what gets the multi-million dollar contracts? And overwhelmingly, this is no great secret, overwhelmingly it's white men in suits who are making those decisions.
And they're deciding, you know, this makes money. I'm gonna sell it. I don't care if it's hurting people. It's a business decision, right? If that's the case, then of course white record executives are not gonna wanna hear social critiques of white patriarchy or white supremacy and the like.
And it may be the job of the white people, of these black record executives to speak up and articulately. It's only at the end of the day, it's only entertainment. Like, if nobody's going out shooting up shit, so be it. Like, Dice Clay, all of them niggas get up there and say incredible shit to jerky boys.
They making millions. I'm just trying to feed my daughter. The only thing that can turn the tide is black men. Before anybody says I'm a rapper, I tell them, first of all, yo, I'm a man. Here it is!
Bam! A man tells his business situation, like, we can't do that. We won't go there. We can't. It's a slap in the face to me and my constituency, my family, where I come from and all.
That's a man. And that's what has been lacking in the music business and the film business, that we haven't had men represent black people. Chuck D and I wrapped up our interview.
But our conversation about the representations of masculinity in hip-hop continued. I headed back home to New York, thinking about an American culture that mythologizes and mass-produces hyper-masculinity, teaching its boys that real men are tough, violent, control women, and cannot, under any circumstances, show weakness. Hip-hop, in that regard, is pure Americana. Hip-hop is trapped in a box.
How many of us are willing to step to the plate and say, you know what, this definition of manhood might not be the way to go anymore. You know, we need something different, something new. As I drove up the highway, I listened to 50 Cent's The Massacre, a testosterone-filled, highly anticipated follow-up to his multi-platinum CD, Get Rich or Die Trying. I thought about the millions of boys and men across race, class, and culture who will undoubtedly connect with the hypermasculine themes on his CD.
Those limited and ultimately self-defeating ideas about manhood that hurt men as well as women. I longed for a broader vision of manhood in the music I grew up with. The music that I love.
Turn off the radio, turn off that bullshit Turn off the radio, turn off that bullshit Turn off the radio, turn off that bullshit Turn off the radio People's radio Yo, hang up, that's police What's on the radio, bro? Propaganda my control and turn it it on it's like putting on the blind fold when you bring in the real you don't get rotation Let you take over the station The makers think it's all about part of your dance and you're my sound girl when you spin your rap But in reality don't nobody live like You wanna know what kind of nigga I am? Let me tell you about the nigga I'm not I don't fuck with the cop Platinum don't mean that it gotta be hot I ain't gotta love it even if they play it a lot You can hear it when you walk the streets How many people they reach How they use music to teach A radio program ain't the biggest beast Don't sleep, cause you could be a radio freak Turn off the radio Turn off that bullshit Turn off the radio Turn off that bullshit Turn off the radio People's radio, you on the air? I got a fat chain I got a fat whip.
I got a fat whip.