Is Hip-Hop Dead: why is degradation of women-(particularly AfricanAmerican women) a theme in the rap music Industry?

It seems that our American culture has always had a problem with misogyny in the rap music industry. But is our culture, introducing a new level of misogyny? Where rappers objectify and reduce women in a more unsettling and brutal way. Are rappers taking the once positive music pass the limit? Recently, in the past few months, rappers have released new singles about raping women and mishandling them. It seems that Rick Ross has created a fairly amount of date rape songs- towards women, (i.e. u.o.e.n.o. gun play, and Sanctified). Although, rap is a way for rappers to express their daily struggles and say whatever they want; (due to the first amendment, which is having the freedom of speech,) it still does not give rappers the authority to take advantage of this amendment and humiliate women in their songs (and/or) lyrics.
“Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice, I say the darker the flesh than the deeper the roots,” this was a lyric from the rap song, “keep ya head up” written by the world’s most respected rapper, Tupac Shakur. This rap song was created to uplift people’s spirit. It was to encourage people to keep their head up during the struggles in the 1990’s. In the song, Tupac assures listeners that everything will become easier and brighter, if you keep your head up. Shakur emphasis that even if you’re fed up, you got to keep ya head up.
Rap music was originated in 1970’s in the Bronx, New York. Rap music was inspired by funk music. It was created in the ghetto and viewed as a positive influence to the black community it was used to uplift the black community from the struggles they were facing. It was denoted as poetry for adolescences who were ignored due to their race and social status. It was primly u...

... middle of paper ...

...ctive form of art. Both authors go in depth with the Don Imus incident which had caused a lot of controversial arguments throughout the rap music industry. On April 4, 2007 during a debate about the NCAA women’s basketball championship, Imus classified the women’s university basketball team,-Rutgers as “rough players”. While Bernard Mcguirk, his executive producer retorted that they were “uncensored h-‘s”. The conversation carried on with Imus labelling the women as “nappy-headed h-‘s”. Imus dismissed the insult as being a humorous, foolish comment. Imus stated that “nappy-headed h-‘s” is a term that rap artist use to describe African American women. Russell Simmons banned three racial and sexist epithets, which was the use of b---- and h- as well as the n-word. Wiltz and Johnson came to the conclusion that people are blaming the rap genre for society’s downfalls.