the other thread has me thinking. i love hip, from aesop to epmd to slick rick. but a lot of people will totally dismiss it as an artful genre and it can be hard to defend sometimes. even the most highbrow or backpacker mcs display virtues such as Misogyny and homophobia that would draw more criticism in other genres
do you think its just ingrained in hip hop culture, or is it admirable in it honesty. will it change?
i think to a certain degree the nature of the genre
means the virtues you describe are more easily noticed and prominent and to a certain degree its ingrained within the culture, but then again its ingrained in a lot of places. so in short, i dunno.
i dont think
hip hop is more mysoginistic or homophobic than rock, its just more overt in hip hop. plenty of it isnt homophobic or mysoginistic,you just gotta be selective in what u choose to listen to.
yeah i agree
the sexism of say acdc is as bad, its relative
another point is how much concern as a listener do we hold over these lyrics.
who you listening to hip hop wise at the moment?
del the homosapien
ultramagnetic mcs
slick rick (gotta go back ever few years)
cannibal ox
mysosany and homophobia
are themes that have become iconic and necessary to the genre just like bats and devils to metal and beer and depression to country and western music- it goes on and on
oh fuck
i meant MYSOGANY!
You meant misogyny.
I think it has already been well established that you really don't know what you are talking about when it comes to hip-hop.
Misogyny and homophobia are no more necessary to hip-hop than they are to any other genre of music. There is plenty of hip-hop that actively argues against these ideas, even mainstream hip-hop; take Kanye West who has spoken out against homophobia in hip-hop, and America as a whole, on a number of occasions.
I don't understand why people have this stereotypical view of hip-hop as being all about 'bling and bitches' when it is probably the most highly politicised genres of music in the modern era. In an age when the most political your average guitar band seems to get is scrawling make trade fair on their hands, I thank christ for artists like KRS-One, Dead Prez, Immortal Technique and Mos Def for bringing radical politics back into music. These aren't obscure underground MCs, these are popular rap artists with huge followings and far more courage than their rock contemporaries to really say something important with their music.
^
this.
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Scrawling make trade fair on your hand is actually quite a radical statement considering current trends in global economics and political thinking. But that ain't the point.
I would disagree with the alleged courage with which these MCs bring radical politics into their music. Or rather, the assertion that 'rock' artists lack this courage. There are plenty of punk bands, for example, that espouse fairly radical standpoints, and (in my limited view of knowing more punk than hiphop) have similar sized followings.
I might also question quite how radical the politics of which we speak is.
most rock music is misoginistic
Johnny Cash immediatley springs to mind
Because rap is more wordy it just becomes more explicit really
my favourite johnny cash
song is indeed that one where he makes june carter cash make slurping blow job noises and calls her 'a dirty low down ho'
I have mixed feelings about hip-hop
I absolutely loved Cuban Linx when it came out. I was 17 back then. Now I'm nearly 30 and should be really excited about seeing Raekwon at ATP but I just can't listen to it any more. I mean even back in '95 he was badder than your average MC but some of the violence in the lyrics (there's something about rape on the first track) goes beyond mere street 'reportage' or whatever it has been justified as.
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I think that misogyny and homophobia are ingrained in the genre because of its roots. If you look at early reggae (and ska), it is sexist, racist and homophobic and hiphop draws massively from various aspects of those genre.
However, that doesn't mean that some artists haven't trascended this. There are plenty of hiphop artists who are not any kind of -ist.
Nearly all genres of music have the misogynist and homophobic artist, be it rock, metal, country, indie, whatever.
I agree to a point
but I think it was more the cultural rather than the musical origins of the genre that played a role - i.e. as an alternative to gang warfare between disaffected, isolated and angry young men in the Bronx and more significantly South Central LA.
Although most early hip-hop managed to transcend this in a positive party style I think it was almost inevitable that the MC 'voice' among SOME of these individuals turned towards uglier themes.
The popularity of gangsta rap music and its descendents among more middle class (and as a result whiter) audiences is for me harder to explain. Perhaps like remittanceman says above it has more to do with being young, awkward and ill informed.
Too early for this...
The targeting of a white audience
was specifically done by the record labels as white, corporate America co-opted the musical format and sold it to a mainly white, suburban demographic who saw rap as a vicarious means of enjoyment. Arguably, the "animalistic" (sex) and materialistic (bling) tendencies deployed in much mainstream hip-hop is as a result of white capitalism incorporating a new form of "race logic", therefore maintaining their own sense of power and authority through hegemonic means over the black diasporic experience.
GOOD MORNING!!