When I saw the title Pimp's Up, Ho's Down: Hip-Hop's Hold on Young Black Women by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting I thought finally someone is going to enlighten me on why women continue to bounce and shake in videos while the artist is usually referring to her in a degrading manner. I want to know why I still listen to it. I read the book and I'm still left wondering. I can honestly say that when I finished reading this book, I thought "huh?" The book jacket describes Whiting as an insider having grown up in midst of hip-hop's evolution. If that is supposed to add to her "expertise" then I could've written a book on the same subject, because Whiting is only a few years younger than me. Oh yeah, they also credit her work as a runway model and print model as experience. She is also a professor of African American and Diaspora studies at Vanderbilt University. I guess that explains all of the language, I had to have my dictionary on hand to read this book! That bugs me to no end, in an effort to make things "scholarly" or "intellectual" some writers feel they have to use big words.
Moving on, Whiting does argue that these women are just making a living like the rest of us and what they do is not who they are. Whiting was a model and that income helped put her through graduate school. I know there are women who use their "skills" (stripping, modeling, videos) because it is a lucrative income. But what about the young women who do it because of how it is portrayed in mass media? Whiting uses the movie The Player's Club as an example for both cases. One is stripping to help pay her college tuition, the other to just make money and get attention. Whiting's review of the movie is that "the movie is neither poorly written, nor directed, nor acted." Okay, I've seen this movie, the premise is great, but the acting is HORRIBLE. But considering that Whiting is a student of Michael Eric Dyson's, it's understandable that she would think that way. Despite that, I kept reading and found the chapters on groupies and strippers fascinating. But the book is filled with a lot of rhetoric and I left with the feeling that she doesn't want to "offend" anyone.
If you want to understand why hip-hop has a hold on Black women, I suggest the following titles: When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost by Joan Morgan and Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America by Charisse Jones and Kumea Shorter-Gooden. Or you can just ask me. My credentials dont' include experience in "adult entertainement" but I am a Black women who listens to hip-hop and I came of age during the evolution of hip-hop.
In my quest to answer this question, I've been reading about more hip-hop. Hip-hop is not just music, it's a movement and though many are focused on the negative aspects, there are many positives. There are many subgenres of hip-hop. I know of such artists, but we have to remember everything tends to be commercialized and sex sells.
I have come to terms that I am of the hip-hop generation and instead of fighting it, I've learned to embrace it and all it stands for. Hip-hop is a way of life, it's thinking outside the box and realizing their is "more than one way to skin a cat." Change is good, everything continues to evolve. Embrace it, learn from it and grow.
3 comments:
Forgive me for my ignorance. And it is truly ignore ance. But is hip hop the same as rap? As far as I can tell it is. I'm guessing we are around the same age probably with in a year or two of each other. But I will share with you my experience with what I know as rap.
One summer on a Girl Scout Wider Opportunity I listened to a girl rap her heart out. I was amazed and thrilled with her ability to rhyme on the fly. Nothing that she was saying was crass or vulgar. She was expressing her experience of this trip we were on together. I thought she was wonderful. But then suddenly out of the blue came an adult to stifled this expression. This person I felt was way out of line. I told her so too. I explained that the rapping wasn't bad. The girl was not profane or vulgar. I told her that the girl had a talent and by telling her to stop and scolding her for rapping was killing a talented individual. Shortly after that the gangsta rappers came into vogue. They spent all their air time degrading women and railing against society in general. That was the end of my listening to rap.
I still feel that individuals who are able to come up with rhymes on the fly are truly talented people. I love rap, when it expresses feelings and events that are not degrading, humiliating or violent. I went to a storytelling workshop where a man showed us how an African-American poet from the early 20th century was an early rapper. He recited that poem in rap style and I loved it. I loved the poem when I read it myself years ago but I truly got more of a buzz when the man rapped that poem. Pure art. Pure beauty.
Eventhough a lot of people use rap and hip hip interchangeably hip hop is what you experienced at the Girl Scout camp. Rap is the more in your face hard core lyrics. Hip hop is creativity, it's a consciousness. I guess you say rap is more commericalized and after reading Third Coast, it seems a lot of the gangster rap is fictionalized. Third Coast was a great book which highlighted the emergence of southern rappers. Sarig gives an extensive history of the development of hip hop and rap. I plan on writing about it soon.
I hope you are reading and thinking on a possible paper for MS Libraries! I can see the title already, "Rapped in Books." :)
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