On Sat, 20 Dec 2003, spacecrusher wrote: > lets also point out that for all the misogynism in hip hop,
It comes in many flavors -- straight up women-hating, parody of straight up women-hating, ironic, comic, critique of misogyny -- and it comes down to who's saying it, why they're saying it, and whether it reinforces negative attitudes in listeners. Whether Andres and Big Boy are women-haters or not? Dunno. Can you separate their personal attitudes from the characters they seek to portray in their songs? Are they holding up the character for critique, or are they actually expressing misogyny? Are they thoughtlessly incorporating the language of hip hop misogyny into their work without considering it's implications? And there's a thing in hip hop where the goal is to say the most outrageous thing you can and see if you get away with it. Like a phrase from Rampage I heard him drop Thursday night: "I'm gonna beat you down worse than Oprah in 'The Color Purple'" -- is that misogynistic, or just a battle rhyme? I think that it's easy to condemn stuff in hip-hop for being politically incorrect, and difficult to actually decode the message. If you like an artist's work in general it's easy to temporize to justify their less savory pronouncements. And those of us who are among the white audience of a primarily black art form, without the full context of the gender issues in African-American Culture, it's arrogant and possibly racist to make any sweeping statement.
