The hip-hop discourse: coming to a campus near you

Black Issues in Higher Education, May 19, 2005 by Crystal L. Keels

Against the backdrop of magnificent hooks and hypnotic beats, tapper 50 Cent, whose "street cred" is cemented by his survival in spite of a reported nine gunshot blasts, boasts that he "is into havin' sex" but "ain't into makin' love."

On entertainment television, Snoop Dogg declares his desire to produce pornographic films and "become a conglomerate."

It was around the same time as Snoop's declaration that some Spelman College women had obviously had enough. When rap artist Nelly was planning a campus visit to promote his bone marrow education program, some students decided it would also be an opportune time to have a word with Nelly about the female imagery in his music videos. He respectfully declined.

The countless negative portrayals of Black women in hip-hop videos and song lyrics could be compiled on a very long list. And yet to some, it's taken a long time to engage the Black community in a serious discourse about the more divisive, derisive aspects of hip-hop music and culture.

CONVERSATIONS CONE TO CAMPUS

The most recent and most public discourse to address hip-hop's portrayal of Black women took place on the campus of Atlanta's Spelman College in February when Essence magazine and the Black women's college teamed up to hold a week-long forum that culminated with a town hall meeting titled "Take Back the Music" (see Black Issues, March 24).

But Columbia University professor Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley says the discourse has always been public and always intense.

"When a big media voice like Essence magazine jumps into the fray, it seems other media outlets are willing to pay attention," Kelley says.

For many, unbridled misogyny is perhaps the most dangerous of the genre's musical messages.

"It's not fair that these male rappers continue to demonize and brutalize women in songs and videos, and the female voices who try to challenge these characterizations are silenced. Producing lyrics and images that counter this misogyny is a step we can all take," said Moya Bailey, president of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance at Spelman, in a press release.

Women have been fighting against offensive lyrics and images for quite some time, says Kelley, pointing out that this conversation has been ongoing for nearly 25 years, "from the pioneering scholarship of Tricia Rose to the internal battles waged by female artists such as Queen Latifah, Yo-Yo, Dee Barnes, to name a few," he says.

Discourse on the complex debates that include issues of gender in hip-hop and Black popular culture generally now appears firmly entrenched into the "mainstream" of the academy's ivory towers. Since the 1990s, academic consideration of Black music and culture seems to have moved front and center, drawn into the fold from more marginalized outlying areas.

Initially, those college courses that considered popular culture focused on either Madonna, "the "Material Girl," or the Beatles. Last fall a Yale University two-day conference convened scholars to examine the life and work of pop star Michael Jackson. And in 2004, Syracuse University unveiled a course dedicated to hip-hop's Lil' Kim.

In the beginning of the 21st century, the study of hip-hop and Black popular culture occupies a vastly more significant space in the academic arena, demonstrating the degree to which Dr. Cornel West's notion of the "African Americanization" of American popular culture has taken hold. The famed Princeton professor has popularized the belief that the dynamics of "crossover appeal" are diminishing and contemporary Black artists don't necessarily have to sell well to Black audiences before being embraced by the White mainstream.

This phenomenon is remarkable in light of a recent spate of ruminations regarding the continued relevance of Black studies programs put in place at many colleges and universities across the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a direct result of the civil rights movement.

FEMINISM AND HIP HOP

The Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture (CSRPC), founded at the University of Chicago in 1994 by Dr. Michael Dawson, developed out of a collective of race studies scholars affiliated with the university who wanted to make their research both accessible and transformative to the surrounding communities. Now a permanent fixture at the university, the center was the recent setting for an unprecedented conference on feminism and hip-hop.

"The tone of the conference was not to bash (hip-hop artists)," says Rosalind Fielder, associate director of CSRPC. "This was a non-hostile setting to discuss the potential for transformation. People from all backgrounds were in attendance," she adds.

Fielder says the response prior to the conference itself was overwhelming, and an indication of the endeavor's pending success. "There was a lot of enthusiasm," she says about the 1,000 people who pre-registered and attended the conference that included presentations by activists, artists, film directors, students, hip-hop magazine editors and scholars, including Dr. Hazel V. Carby, Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Dr. Cheryl Keyes, Dr. Mark Anthony Neal and Dr. Rose.