Despite its innovations, rap/hip-hop music is a scourge on popular music and popular culture, not least because of pervasive lyrics and music-video imagery that demean and degrade women, and encourage or sanction violence.
So it's encouraging to see that young women are trying to take back their dignity, like what's happened recently at Spelman College in a controversary around misogynistic rapper Nelly.
The women leading the fight are barely 20. Many had not been born when hip-hop emerged but came of age listening to its music."Everyone calls it the 'Nelly controversy,' but this is bigger than Nelly," [Asha] Jennings said. "It's about empowering our sisters who think this is the only way to make it.
"We have to stop arguing that's the way it is and ask ourselves ... how do we change it?"
Pundit Roland Martin agrees with the Spelman students:
I'm not like the Bill O'Reillys of the world who denounce all of rap music. There are many songs that I enjoy because of the rapturous beats. Yet there comes a time when you have to say enough is enough.Posted by Alan at April 25, 2004 12:25 PMRap impresario Russell Simmons, in response to the criticism that rap music is obscene, often says, "poverty is obscene." He's right. But why can't we say both are obscene?
The Spelman women and men who joined them in protest deserve our praise. Maybe if more folks in black America stand up for righteousness, Nelly and his cohorts will stop the visual destruction of the sisterhood.