I'm So Hood, That's So Hood

DJ Khaled’s “I’m So Hood” and Gorilla Zoe’s “Hood Nigga” enumerate the criteria for maintaining hood status. Lives of crime are advanced as essential by the artists, and gold teeth along with sagging pants are indicators of the lifestyle. These songs, among many others like them, emphasize the hood as an identity, rather than a place. Such emphasis supports the unfair criminalization of black bodies in the mainstream media and interrupts the fulfillment of my personal dream of being able to wear gold teeth without being judged.

Like A Pimp..........

Pimp culture is rather popular in today’s hip hop. Being a pimp is seen as the ultimate expression of black masculinity. Rappers like Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent deliver the age-old lesson that a good pimp never gives his bitches a dime. A pimp’s ability to make money from sale of their bodies, while giving them as little as possible determines the extent of his power. Not providing for women is thereby promoted as a marker of authentic manhood. While many argue that such rules are meant to be applied only to women labeled bitches and hoes, I do not frequently hear women referred to as much else in mainstream hip hop. Which ever way you look at it, the theme is a dangerous one to advance in a world in which many African-American households are headed by single-mothers.

Hip Hop Misogyny Blues

In 2002, Liza Rios, the widow of late rapper Big Pun, released a documentary chronicling the abuse she endured at the hands of the nearly 700 pound MC. The film is entitled “Big Pun: Still Not a Player,” and it features actual footage of Rios being pistol-whipped by Big Pun.

It is not news that in hip hop’s gender framework, women are expected to be silent about the abuse they experience at the hands of their men. In her battle to break the silence, Liza Rios has worked tirelessly as an activist for the cause of ending domestic violence. As part of her efforts, she asked hip hop artists to lend their talents to a benefit concert, the proceeds of which would go to battered women’s charities. The response she received was in accordance with the treatment women often receive in the hip hop industry when they choose to speak out. It was slanderous and hostile. Many of Big Pun’s rap star friends claimed that Rios must have done something to deserve the abuse, alluding to the idea that she may have been unfaithful. Some even suggested that Rios is an opportunistic gold-digger who is not satisfied by the royalty checks she receives from Big Pun’s label.

Liza Rios’s story is indicative of the hip hop industry’s misogyny problem. The most fascinating part of the reflection is that it illustrates the significant role the hip hop industry plays in normalizing violence against women. I read tons of responses to the video footage on the popular hip hop site nobodysmiling.com, and what people had to say was appalling. Here are a few comments:

Her greedy ass deserved to be beat just because she's a bitch, and I'm a female saying this.

Someone's gotta finish what he started.

Who you think taught me how to set bitches straight?

R.I.P Big Pun ...b*tch must of had it comin.

Exactly, gotta hit 'em to show 'em ur right.

Hip hop is neither the originator nor the sole culprit in normalizing violence against women, but there are too many in the industry who do their part to ensure that the normalization continues.