Hip Hop's Gender Problem

The article I chose, by Mark Anthony Neal, is a little dated but it still holds true today. He points out that, in hip-hop especially, there is a gender problem in music. Hip-hop lyrics are filled with messages of “sexism, misogyny and homophobia” and these lyrics communicate a bad influence to our youth. One obvious solution would to try to get rappers to stop writing overly masculine lyrics . But that whole notion, as pointed out by the author, is rather naïve. It would be impossible to get the rappers to stops writing those kind of lyrics and get them to act nice. These kind of lyrics are part of what sells the records. Neal points out that it is not just black hip-hop culture that buys the records and supports the artists but it’s all of American culture. Plus the whole idea of telling someone to stop writing about a certain subject has 1st Amendment implications as well. A solution to this problem shouldn’t be to ban or eliminate a certain viewpoint but to help and support the opposite. A good solution could be to increase support of a feminist view point in hip-hop. It would be difficult to support this among males which is why women rappers and women consumers of hip-hop music need to stand up for themselves. In the 1990s there was a brief time when the female MC was strong and popular but, with the exception of maybe Missy Elliot, the genre lacks a strong female viewpoint today. Female artists in hip hop now more than ever seem to be embracing the sexist direction their music has taken. More female artists need to stand up and battle against the gender problem in music.

http://www.alternet.org/story/18811/