Does hip hop hate women?

Reflections from a feminist hip hop head

I am listening to ‘Hip hop is dead’, by Nas: ‘If hip hop should die before I wake/I’ll put an extended clip and body ‘em all day/Roll to every station, wreck the DJ.’

I don’t want hip hop to die, but I do want to see an end to gangsta rap and lyrics filled with hate for women.

I am a feminist who has campaigned to end sexual violence and the misogyny that provokes it for 40+ years. I am also a big fan of hip hop. I love the very early stuff from the 1970s such as Grandmaster Flash, the Sugar Hill Gang, and Salt-N-Pepa. I have the vinyl that proves my life-long dedication to the genre. On my shelves are dusty old video tapes featuring grainy film of fierce competitions between street rappers in New York underground clubs where DJs wearing baggy sports gear and no bling would scratch and spin three or four turntables at once. Young men - it was always men at that time - belted out rhymes and street slang with timing that would put the conductor of a symphony orchestra to shame.

What is it that keeps me loyal to this music, despite its reputation as a women-hating playground? Listening to ‘Empire State of Mind’ by JAY Z, I ponder how hip hop has changed since those early days. Artists like Azealia Banks do challenge the status quo in some ways – but her anti-gay lyrics sound like nails on a chalkboard.

Curiously, more and more young women are identifying themselves as ‘hip hop feminists’, though it is not altogether surprising. In the beginning, hip hop was also a political movement that allowed disenfranchised people - initially black men from the Bronx - to speak out against oppression. There is nothing inherently negative about hip hop; it simply reflects the misogynistic culture the artists and fans grow up in.

I am revisiting the genre after a bit of a break from it (I’ve only just managed to work out how to link my new phone to Sonos), massively inspired by Romesh Ranganathan’s For The Love of Hip Hop series on BBC Sounds. I’m now listening to Drake, Lauryn Hill (especially the track with Nas), Jay Z, Lil’ Kim and more.

But what about the misogyny?

Neither hip-hop nor rap is inherently misogynistic.  By the time American hip-hop trio Salt-N-Pepa from New York, came on the scene in 1985, I was hooked – and many a feminist music lover lauded All Hail the Queen, by the wonderful Queen Latifah. Here were women singing about real life and giving the men a run for their money. Latifah's track Ladies First (with Monie Love) became a feminist anthem.

But female rappers could never compete in the macho world dominated by their male counterparts. As with Hollywood, those who received most attention in the world of hip hop were those who portrayed violence, hate and bloodshed. And so rap has become a musical genre by and for men; a boy's club in which it’s okay to degrade women.

In its early days, hip hop was an underground movement in which rappers told their stories (truthful or not) to a select audience. It was passion, pain and resistance translated into musical poetry. For me, modern-day hip hop does not quite hold that ideal for me at all, it seems more of a money-making machine using auto tune and derogatory terms for the sake of derogatory terms, spat by people who love their mothers and girlfriends. Is this why I don’t like 90% of modern rap music? Has it ceased to be a creative response to a dark subconscious and become blatant misogyny for the sake of sales?

The dominant message in much contemporary hip hop is about men being in control, men being hateful to women, and men throwing their guns and money around while posing with their flash cars.

Hip hop is primarily a world in which men talk about what they’ve done with (or to) other men. The women who feature as backing singers, dancers or arm candy for male artists are portrayed in a racist and sexist way. Stereotypes of black females are played out in the videos, with women framed as overly sexualized and animalistic. And what of Cardi B's single WAP, with Megan Thee Stallion? Is this women ‘owning’ the right to celebrate their sexuality as they define it – or is it yet another example of patriarchy colonising female culture?

The massive success of Eminem shows that even white males are more accepted within hip hop than black women. The majority of hip hop consumers are white, and we tend to take in the images and lyrics of this music without thinking about what it all means. Today the ‘bitch’ and ‘hoe’ style of gangsta rap, with its celebration of pimping and guns, bears little relation to the ‘old-skool’ hip hop I have loved since my teens.

I first tuned into hip hop in 1980. Because I could not bear punk rock or disco, I turned to the rhythm of the Bronx. Very early rap used classic funk in the mix, and funk was my kind of music. 

What made punk-rock hugely different from hip hop was the fact that many of its performers were women – such as Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, and Lydia Lunch, all of whom were female punk-rock performers – either as solo artists or as members of a band.

Ironically it was Debbie Harry who helped kick-start early hip hop. One day in 1979 she suggested that Nile Rodgers (guitarist in the US funk band Chic) join her and fellow Blondie founder Chris Stein at a hip hop event in a communal space taken over by young kids and teenagers with boom box stereos. They played music to which performers would breakdance, mainly using the break section of ‘Good Times’.  A few weeks later, Blondie, The Clash, and Chic were playing a gig in New York at Bonds nightclub. When Chic started playing ‘Good Times’, rapper Fab Five Freddy and members of The Sugarhill Gang jumped up on stage and started freestyling with the band.

'Rapper's Delight', became the fastest selling 12" single in history, with up to 60,000 copies a day sold in the US alone. The music moguls began to smell big money and things began to change - but not for the better.

With the introduction of MTV, hip hop became a major money spinner. Between 1981 and 1985, rap music developed, and hip hop culture expanded rapidly as a direct result of the interest shown by the record companies – and only subsequently by the record-buying audience.

In the 1990s the pimp-genre – depicting hedonism, money, and pornified women –was born. The major companies started buying up independent hip hop labels, resulting in a shift to gangsta rap and, with it, a monolithic negative stereotype of black men and women.

But the pimp-image, as portrayed by many of the great rap artists, such as Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent, is the result of the music industry’s focus on moneymaking. 

The gangsta-genre was an articulation of the violent actions and organised crime that traditionally occurred in drug-related cultures. Gangsta rap glorifies the culture of drug use in America’s inner cities. Its message is largely ‘dog-eat-dog’ and ‘violence is inevitable’.

Many hip hop fans with social consciences turned away from the music as it became increasingly about depicting black women as over-sexualised and hooker-ish, and black men as parodies straight out of a Blaxploitation movie. But I always played the old stuff and looked out for female rappers subverting the status quo.

Pioneer female rap artists like Roxanne Shanté and Salt-N-Pepa were women who –at least early in their careers – presented themselves in baggy clothing, big earrings and short haircuts. Aesthetics were different then, but there was an unmistakable similarity between women and men at this point, one that is unthinkable today.

Even after I officially disowned hip hop I would still, on occasion play Snoop, hoping the sound didn’t leak out of my headphones. I returned to hip hop in a big way in 2006 in the strangest of circumstances. That summer I was at a conference exploring the harms of pornography and sexual exploitation in Boston, US, and had just come out of a workshop on hardcore porn director Max Harcore and the growth of Gonzo. I heard Big Daddy K and Del La Soul pounding out of the lecture theatre and wondered who would be so brave as to put on a hip hop concert in the same venue as a meeting of radical feminists.

It was, in fact, a soundcheck for Byron Hurt’s documentary ‘Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes’– a film that exposes the sexism, violence and homophobia of much of the genre’s lyrics and videos as well as many of its stars. Hurt is a former basketball player who loves hip hop, but became increasingly uncomfortable with the way women are depicted in its lyrics and videos.

I stayed to watch the film, as drawn by its soundtrack as I was by the idea that I would get to see a pro-feminist critique of hip hop made by a black man. Hurt had interviewed the likes of Mos Def, Fat Joe, Chuck D, Jadakiss and Busta Rhymes, and the film featured images of the nasty pimp and hoe variety. I invited Bryon to show his film in the UK and a few months later, in front of a packed audience at the BFI, those of us with a love for the music and a hatred of the misogyny discussed how hip hop might be redeemed.

Take this all-too typical line from west coast hip-hop pioneer Too Short: "Now take my bitch/ She won't complain about shit/ It ain't hard to tell she belongs to me/ I pimped her 15 years in this industry." And few who saw it will forget Snoop Dogg showing up at the 2003 MTV awards with two women in dog collars and leashes.

But gangsta rap is only a tiny part of the story. Hip hop used to be a very creative and positive platform, and gangsta rap is a very thin slice of the hip hop cake.

When I decided to go to Glastonbury in 2010 to see Snoop Dogg perform, The Guardian considered the fact that I love Snoop’s music so newsworthy that my write-up  was on the front page.

A former gang member from one of LA's most notorious neighbourhoods, Snoop Dogg (so named by gang members because his hairstyle resembled the ears of Snoopy from the Peanuts cartoon strip) has been tried and acquitted of serious crimes such as murder and drug dealing and made a series of pornographic films called Girls Gone Wild Doggy Style.  I try to separate his fantastic voice, rhythm and timing from his verbal tirades against women.

The first album I bought was Doggystyle in 1993, followed by Tha Doggfather three years later. I realised the lyrics were pornographic and grotesque but so, I told myself, were many sung by white boys in tight jeans in the 1970s. After all, I used to sing along to Claire by Gilbert O'Sullivan, assuming it was about a man who had a major crush on a woman, only to discover later that he was singing about an uncle's love for his young niece. Tom Jones's Delilah was one of my favourite karaoke turns, until someone pointed out it was about a man who kills his girlfriend because she has "provoked" him by having an affair.

Snoop's Tha Last Meal ("Shootin' the breeze, with a cute Vietnamese/or was she Lebanese? I think she Chinese/It really don't matter cause they all on they knees").

His lyrics are peppered with derogatory words about women, but oh, how charismatic he is on stage, with that split-second delivery and those easy, natural moves. No other music gets my blood flowing faster than hip-hop. I once wrote that [Snoop Dogg] has a voice like honey dripping on rose petals, he raps like a demon – and he pours out his bile all over women.

In 2013 my friend Simon Hattenstone travelled to LA to interview Snoop about his conversion to Rastafarianism, and his new album. Asking Snoop about his reputation for misogyny, Hattenstone asked why he thought feminists such as myself were reluctant to be open about our love of his music. Snoop replied with his legendary charm and avoidance.

“Sometimes it ain't what I say, it's how I say it. So, she may appreciate the delivery more than the particular words. It may tickle her fancy. I'm going to shoot her a shout-out. Julie Bindel, I just want to let you know that we really love and appreciate everything about you. And what I want to know is how could you hate my lyrics so much and love me as a person? Please let me know. I would love to know so that way we can get a better connection. Appreciate you.”

Okaaay. Do I want a shout-out from a misogynist? Is he one?

Co-founder of Def Jam Records Russell Simmons once said that hip hop is merely a reflection of a sexist society, rather than its cause. “Popular culture exaggerates everything, including this kind of sexism, for profit. That’s the nature of capitalist society and entertainment. There is no question that the sexism that’s in our hip-hop videos is a reflection of how sexist men are in the world today.”

Anti-gay?

Frank Ocean is a massive hip hop star and also an out gay man - one of the first black American artists to come out, proceeding Lil Nas X by a decade. But even back in 2012, Ocean saw his sales rise after coming out via an open letter. Rapper and producer Tyler, the Creator (previously known for his anti-gay lyrics) supported him.

Mister Cee was convicted of loitering after being spotted having oral sex with another man in a parked car. 50 Cent, who once suggested in a tweet that gay men should kill themselves, stood publicly by his side.

But what about NWA and Public Enemy? Both groups have pretty horrendous reputations, but there is little homophobia in the lyrics of either. Indeed, the only recorded anti-gay lyric in Public Enemy's file was: "Man to man/ I don't know if they can/ From what I know/ The parts don't fit". Hardly a patch on Eminem's "You faggots keep eggin' me on/ till I have you at knifepoint, then you beg me to stop?"

Racism, homophobia and misogyny are not inherent to hip hop any more than racism and sexism were inherent to the 1970s rock genre – despite hideous examples of both being easy to find in, for example, Rolling Stones lyrics.

Take the album Some Girls, 1978:

White girls they’re pretty funny

Sometimes they drive me mad

Black girls just wanna get fucked all night

I just don’t have that much jam

…or Bob Dylan with 'Just like a Woman’ in 1966: “…you ache just like a woman/But you break just like a little girl” lyrics.

Maybe hip hop as I once knew and loved it has gone, replaced by a nasty sub-genre that seeks to shock and exploit (for now) and end up as a Nike ad soundtrack (later). But I am not ready to give up on it yet.