Hip Hop And How It Relates To Gender

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Hip Hop and How it Relates to Gender

Introduction

There is no form of art that is as purely African-American as Hip-Hop. It has been a decade since the development of this genre, and it has come a long way from where it was back in the day. It can be regarded as a fundamental part of the African-American culture and contains the comprise of many unique elements of music. Considering that Hip-Hop often contains elements of social issues, they could also work as an alternative to the conscious raising of society ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"RdqnO7SG","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Karvelis)","plainCitation":"(Karvelis)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1058,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5VyEEXyp/items/TUN5QQXG"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5VyEEXyp/items/TUN5QQXG"],"itemData":{"id":1058,"type":"article-journal","title":"Race, Class, Gender, and Rhymes: Hip-Hop as Critical Pedagogy","container-title":"Music Educators Journal","page":"46-50","volume":"105","issue":"1","abstract":"Hip-hop is a truly African-American art form in every sense of the phrase. Multiple decades after its development into the genre that we recognize it as today, hip-hop firmly remains a fundamental and unique element of African-American culture that has experienced international presence and regard. As a direct result of deep involvement with African-American culture, hip-hop is uniquely placed as a tool for developing rich, critical understandings of an array of complex social issues. Through thoughtful inclusion and the music classroom, the lyrics, culture, and history of hip-hop can be taught in a manner that augments education, particularly in areas relating to race, gender, and class in society.","DOI":"10.1177/0027432118788138","ISSN":"0027-4321","journalAbbreviation":"Music Educators Journal","author":[{"family":"Karvelis","given":"Noah"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2018",9,1]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Karvelis).

Discussion

Hip-Hop is an integral part of classroom education of music in this time and age, especially in the past two decades. This includes classroom music and the lyrics that accompany Hip-Hop. It explores racial bias, gender and even class difference in society. As mentioned, social issues are often the center-point of hip-hop ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"HkJTLpxt","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Karvelis)","plainCitation":"(Karvelis)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1058,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5VyEEXyp/items/TUN5QQXG"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5VyEEXyp/items/TUN5QQXG"],"itemData":{"id":1058,"type":"article-journal","title":"Race, Class, Gender, and Rhymes: Hip-Hop as Critical Pedagogy","container-title":"Music Educators Journal","page":"46-50","volume":"105","issue":"1","abstract":"Hip-hop is a truly African-American art form in every sense of the phrase. Multiple decades after its development into the genre that we recognize it as today, hip-hop firmly remains a fundamental and unique element of African-American culture that has experienced international presence and regard. As a direct result of deep involvement with African-American culture, hip-hop is uniquely placed as a tool for developing rich, critical understandings of an array of complex social issues. Through thoughtful inclusion and the music classroom, the lyrics, culture, and history of hip-hop can be taught in a manner that augments education, particularly in areas relating to race, gender, and class in society.","DOI":"10.1177/0027432118788138","ISSN":"0027-4321","journalAbbreviation":"Music Educators Journal","author":[{"family":"Karvelis","given":"Noah"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2018",9,1]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Karvelis). Music has often been used as the means to bring joy and awareness to people, and move people to bring about a social change, one that can change the life of all that around them for the better. However, a fact that remains and despite using the lyrics to highlight social gender discrimination, not much is done to ensure that Hip-Hop music is gender inclusive.

Women are not only positively represented in Hip-Hop music, but they are also objectified and shows as nothing more than an object that can be vilified and degraded time and again. In 2004 alone, Rapper Nelly had to cancel a charity performance following the release of the suggestive and degrading video. Furthermore, the prevalence of the word “ho” in Hip-Hop music makes for some of the worse attributes of the music form, especially in terms of gender-based discrimination ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"EKSRqREg","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Larsen)","plainCitation":"(Larsen)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1063,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5VyEEXyp/items/6ZLY9RC3"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5VyEEXyp/items/6ZLY9RC3"],"itemData":{"id":1063,"type":"thesis","title":"Sexism and misogyny in American hip-hop culture","author":[{"family":"Larsen","given":"Jane Kathrine"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2006"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Larsen).

Women have not only been a part of the practitioner and creator of the various art forms. In the early 2000s, sexism in Hip-Hop with regard to female artists is prevalent, however, at the time this form of sexism was lumped in with every other form of gender-discrimination, given how commonplace it was at the time. As time passed, people grew more and more aware of the negative impacts of gender discrimination, and the frequency of such occurrences went down in a significant manner ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"a9adsvka","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Larsen)","plainCitation":"(Larsen)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1063,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5VyEEXyp/items/6ZLY9RC3"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5VyEEXyp/items/6ZLY9RC3"],"itemData":{"id":1063,"type":"thesis","title":"Sexism and misogyny in American hip-hop culture","author":[{"family":"Larsen","given":"Jane Kathrine"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2006"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Larsen).

Despite the wide diversity of experience and a variation of a different point of view at hand, the only sore point that remained in the music industry and how rap and hip-hop were following a single, narrow and unilateral approach towards working with various aspects of life. Women were not made a part of this industry, but to add insult to injury, they were also portrayed as nothing but objects of desire in the videos ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"d62rNDqZ","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Tyree)","plainCitation":"(Tyree)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1062,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5VyEEXyp/items/QVUB7LWI"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5VyEEXyp/items/QVUB7LWI"],"itemData":{"id":1062,"type":"article-journal","title":"Gender and Sexuality Representations in Hip Hop","container-title":"Teaching Media Quarterly","volume":"1","issue":"3","author":[{"family":"Tyree","given":"Tia CM"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2013"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Tyree).

Furthermore, it was also a common belief that the women in the industry could not rap as well, which is why most producers chose to reduce them to a showpiece than a talent. With the introduction of a number of female rap artists in the industry, efforts have been made to even the odds in the society and tilt the scales towards making hip-hop a diverse and well-rounded art form ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"tVuXz9Hl","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Tyree)","plainCitation":"(Tyree)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1062,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5VyEEXyp/items/QVUB7LWI"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5VyEEXyp/items/QVUB7LWI"],"itemData":{"id":1062,"type":"article-journal","title":"Gender and Sexuality Representations in Hip Hop","container-title":"Teaching Media Quarterly","volume":"1","issue":"3","author":[{"family":"Tyree","given":"Tia CM"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2013"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Tyree).

Conclusion

Pop culture is filled with examples of women being objectified by being treated as nothing but an eye-candy or a subject of desire. This representation has not only hurt the women in this industry, but also kept them from positively contributing to Hip-Hop genre of music, a genre that is unique to the African American culture and represents an entire community of individuals that rose to their present state over time. Thus, the need to reduce sexism against women in the field and let them play a well-rounded role in this sphere of art is vital to ensure that the art form that preaches social equality practices it as well.

Works Cited

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Karvelis, Noah. “Race, Class, Gender, and Rhymes: Hip-Hop as Critical Pedagogy.” Music Educators Journal, vol. 105, no. 1, Sept. 2018, pp. 46–50, doi:10.1177/0027432118788138.

Larsen, Jane Kathrine. Sexism and Misogyny in American Hip-Hop Culture. 2006.

Tyree, Tia CM. “Gender and Sexuality Representations in Hip Hop.” Teaching Media Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 3, 2013.