I had a struggle session with some comrades the other day who said Hip Hop was bad because it degrades women and teaches guys how to be misogynistic. I felt that the perspective paints the genre as one thing and is an unfair generalization despite some aspects of the music being sexist in nature. I get both sides of the argument and wanted to see what you all thought.
My friends back in Santa Monica would make homophobic jokes one minute, and then someone called a gay homie a removed and the same dude who was saying homophobic shit said “hey don’t disrespect a homie like that.”
This part stands out. I dunno quite how to parse it. They’re still homophobic, but personal loyalty overrides? They recognise that homophobia is part of the general cultural fabric and use it rhetorically, but don’t actually feel it?
Early 4chan was like this. The racism and misogyny and general misanthropy was all ironic extreme gallows humor, and the first pioneers who planted the clover leaf flag on that island of shit were surprisingly open-minded. Many of them were trans/queer or POC themselves.
I remember believing this wholeheartedly, years ago. I’m still not sure whether it was the case, or if I was just too dumb to see it. The community did take a hard turn right, after all.
There’s going to be degrading shit in every genre. I’m concerned about you even engaging in something that’s obviously in bad faith. Hip Hop is wonderful when actualized, shit like Common’s Like Water for Chocolate is incredibly uplifting.
The criticism that you’re bringing up is part of an age old tradition of “brown people bad”, it happened with Jazz, it happened with RnB, it happened with Rock, and it’s happening with Hip Hop since the 90’s. Don’t put up with that.
I agree. I honestly don’t know as much as I should about the genre besides what’s in the mainstream but I think making the case that a whole genre is bad because of a few artists is wrong and plays into a racist narrative. I guess it’s best to educate myself if people try and make that argument with me again.
Would you like to learn? Hip hop is as diverse as people, especially since much of it is lyrically driven. Some of the production that goes into making it is just crazy.
Don’t forget disco! Definitely not homophobic white supremacist guys literally had a stadium event to blow up disco records back in the day
I’m not too familiar with the history of disco, which is why I didn’t bring it up.
read and enjoy!. There’s also a dollop on this, the guy that organised it was a real scumbag.
That literally applies to rock, pop, country, almost any genre I can think of. Almost any rock star from the 60s/70s has a horrendous history of treating women disgustingly, cancel your faves y’all. I’m not into opera but I bet there’s misogynist operas lol. The difference is hip hop is majority black musicians, so people do a nice racism and call it thuggish, homophobic, sexist, whatever. For every hip hop song like that there’s another about serious issues, there’s loads of revolutionary and heartfelt hip hop. Tarring the whole genre with that brush is racist as fuck imo.
Came here for a discussion about the flourishing subgenres of hip hop and instead it’s a struggle session about whether the black people music is sinful :/
If anyone else is into hiphop, my fav artist is definitely jpegmafia, and really enjoying other alternative hip hop like kenny mason and zebra katz. Also listened to a lot of grime this year like headie one, skepta, lowkey
not willing to debate whether these artists “degrades women and teaches guys how to be misogynistic” bc it’s just a bad faith argument
Hip hop has just as many sub genres as rock and not all hip hop songs are sexist. I think you’re friends are just racist
