Light And Fire

Abstract This essay examines spaces within hip-hop culture where hip-hop feminist thought and activism might make significant interventions. It offers an exploratory examination of hip-hop feminism in an effort to map out an agenda for the twenty-first century. The essay is not concerned with hard-and-fast answers to the combination of feminism and hip-hop but rather with what hip-hop feminism might add to current conversations surrounding race, class, gender, and sexuality. By examining the conscious/commercial rap dichotomy, the discussions surrounding video models, lyrics by rapper Jean Grae, and the work of contemporary women authors, this essay opens the door for further dialogue about women, rap, and hip-hop feminismI know I’m on the right path To who I’m gonna be at last So don’t rush me I know I’m wrong and right At the same time both, I’m the dark and light And they say life means everything to live At the same time I got everything to give So don’t rush me Don’t rush me     -Jean Grae, “Don’t Rush Me” Trying to capture the voice of all that is young black female was impossible. My goal, instead, was to tell my truth as best I could from my vantage point on the spectrum. And then get you to talk about it. This book by its lonesome won’t give you the truth. Truth is what happens when your cumulative voices fill in the breaks, provide the remixes, and rework the chorus     -Joan Morgan, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks it Down[79] The epigraphs from rapper Jean Grae and hip-hop feminist Joan Morgan hint at the varieties and contradictions embedded in hip-hop feminism.1 The third-wave feminist leanings, along with black feminist and womanist agendas, make for a study in shifts and unevenness. The third wave represents the generation of feminists that hip-hop feminism is a part of. This generation of feminists is best represented theoretically in anthologies such as Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation (Findlen 1995), To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism (Walker 1995), The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism (Labaton and Martin 2004), Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism (Hernandez and Rehman 2002), and Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century (Dicker and Piepmeier 2003). The black feminist and womanist agendas are agendas that hip-hop feminists, the majority of whom are black women, share with their foremothers who saw their struggles with gender oppression as intimately connected to their struggles with race and class oppressions. They were women whose agendas kept firmly in sight the survival of the entire people. A hip-hop state of mind—one that freely samples, mixes, and remixes—influences the theoretical underpinnings of hip-hop feminism as well as the activism of hip-hop feminists. This essay highlights some of the ways hip-hop feminist agendas have taken shape while always keeping in mind, as the epigraphs from Jean Grae and Joan Morgan show, there won’t be just one truth but multiple ones. In fact, sometimes the contradictions that make for the “wrong and right . . . dark and light” of it will help feminists to better do what Joan Morgan suggests feminism needs to do—be “brave enough to fuck with the grays” (1999, 59). This essay is an exploratory essay that seeks to examine the various articulations of hip-hop feminist expressions as a way to provide a starting point and possible template for a hip-hop feminist agenda Women have been representing in hip-hop culture ever since the mid 1970s, when the culture got its start in the South Bronx, and they represent still. They have been and still are B-girls, women breakers, graffiti artists, deejays, and emcees. Today, we can add to the mix women writing and thinking about the culture who call themselves hip-hop feminists. I take the stance that hip-hop is a cultural phenomenon that expands beyond rap music. Hip-hop has been defined by many as a way of life that encompasses everything from way of dress to manner of speech. Hip-hop as a culture originally included graffiti writing, deejaying, break dancing, rap music, and the oft-forgotten fifth element, knowledge. [80] It has recently expanded to include genres such as film, spoken word, autobiographies, literature, journalism, and activism. It has also expanded enough to include its own brand of feminism. The writing of third-wave black feminist writers such as Ayana Byrd, Denise Cooper, Eisa Davis, Eisa Nefertari Ulen, Shani Jamilla, dream hampton, Joan Morgan, Tara Roberts, Kristal Brent-Zook, and Angela Ards is expanding black feminist theory and black women’s intellectual traditions in fascinating ways. What started out as a few young black feminist women who loved hip-hop and who tried to mesh that love with their feminist and womanist consciousness is now a rich body of articles, essays, poetry, and creative nonfiction. But what exactly is a hip-hop feminist? And what does hip-hop feminism do? I maintain that although we now have a relatively clear idea of what constitutes a hip-hop feminist, we are less certain about what a hip-hop feminist agenda should be Hip-hop feminists are women and men who step up and speak out against gender exploitation in hip-hop. From the Feminism and Hip-Hop Conference at the University of Chicago in 2005 to the B-Girl Be conferences in Minneapolis and countless symposiums and smaller conferences on the status of women in hip-hop to the list serves and Yahoo groups devoted to women, feminism, and hip-hop, there appears to be a surge in women and men thinking and talking about gender issues in hip-hop and combining that talk with action. From the publication of several key essays and Joan Morgan’s pivotal book When Chickenheads Come Home To Roost in the 1990s to the Spelman women who wanted to initiate a dialogue with Nelly to Essence Magazine’s “Take Back the Music” campaign, we can begin to see the ways this movement’s knowledge-building and consciousness-raising have taken shape. It might be too soon to talk about the impact that the movement has had, but it is not too soon to think about some of the key concerns and agendas that the movement seems to be taking up. I aim to flesh some of this out by building on some of the work that I did in my book Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture and the Public Sphere (2004) and by examining a few areas where women have used hip-hop to claim a public voice. I want to look at the spaces where hip-hop feminism can make interventions as starting points for a possible feminist agenda in hip-hop. However, they will not all be feminist spaces or even have outright feminists messages. Instead, they are spaces where hip-hop feminists, activists, and thinkers can possibly evoke change Krista Ratcliffe (2006) writes about giving her students a feminist literacy through which to read society. Elaine Richardson carefully details the ways in which the young women who listen to and love hip-hop process the images and have thoughtful and critical conversations about the culture and the music when she examines female hip-hop literacies in her book Hiphop Literacies (2006). [81] And it has me thinking seriously about what a hip-hop feminist literacy would allow us to do and why we need one. Thinking of recent controversies such as Don Imus calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hoes” and Michael Richards’s meltdown in which he boldly and blatantly brandished the n-word at black men he thought were hecklers and the quick way just about everyone quickly made a move to blame hip-hop has me seriously considering what a worldwide hip-hop feminist literacy could give us in these situations. Would we continue to have conversations that blame rappers for white racist men doing what white racist men do all day every day? Or would we instead be able to really look at the nuances of the situation and see, for example, that while there was some racism underlying Imus’s statement, the sexism and underlying homophobia were palpable. And like racism, the sexism and homophobia predates hiphop in Imus’s politics and certainly in this country that deals with both on a regular. But even as we had these conversations and teased out these issues with our hip-hop feminist lens, we would still be able to critique hip-hop for its sexism and homophobia as well. We just wouldn’t blame hip-hop when people old enough to know better show their true colors, colors they have been showing all along. The fact is that young women who listen to rap music and participate in hip-hop culture already have critiques of sexism and misogyny. They have things to say about the culture and the world around them if we are prepared to listen. This essay is therefore an attempt at understanding what they might offer the larger society the next time we have such public pedagogical moments as those offered by Imus and Richards So, Shorty’s a Feminist? Several black and third-wave feminists have started to approach the tenuous relationship between rap music/hip-hop culture and feminism in their writing. They offer a variety of different feminist perspectives on rap, rappers, and women. Some condemn the sexism in rap and encourage others to do the same. Others offer complicated analyses that critique the larger societal issues that contribute to rap’s sexism, production, and consumption. Some offer third-wave feminist critiques that question how one can be a child of the hip-hop generation, love the music, and still critique and actively speak out against the sexism. They all offer examples of how feminists have begun to deal with, think about, and write about rap music and hip-hop culture Most hip-hop feminists believe that some of the needs of the hip-hop generation require new strategies and different voices. They have a strong [82] relationship to the “self,” and they connect their personal narratives with theoretical underpinnings and critique. They hold themselves and their peers responsible for effecting change in the present and future by encouraging people to recognize and combat their own complicity. In terms of rap music and hip-hop culture, they want to find ways to move beyond counting the amount of times a particular rapper says the word “bitch” or “ho” to a focus on what they consider to be larger issues and concerns. For example, they also want to begin to complicate understandings of women’s complicity in the objectification of women especially as it pertains to video-hoes. And as Joan Morgan reminds us, “the focus of Black feminists has got to change. We can’t afford to keep expending energy on banal discussion of sexism in rap when sexism is only part of a huge set of problems” (1999, 76). They are concerned with and spend a lot of time writing about black women’s relationships with black men. They want to encourage a dialogue between black men and women, men rappers and women A hip-hop feminist is more than just someone who likes to listen to rap music and feels conflicted about it. A hip-hop feminist is someone who is immersed in hip-hop culture and experiences hip-hop as a way of life. Hip-hop as a culture, in turn, influences his or her worldview or approach to life. In fact, one of the reasons why Elaine Richardson, Aisha Durham, Rachel Raimist, and I decided to edit Home Girls Make Some Noise: A Hip-Hop Feminism Anthology (2007) was because we wanted to think about hip-hop feminism beyond the conflicted, “I’m a feminist and I love hip-hop, woe-is-me” standpoint. We wanted to create a space to talk across disciplines through activism, the arts, and academia to better understand the very important and vital work going on in this area. Hip-hop feminists are working as community activists. They are working for reproductive justice. And they are trying to think about ways to combat the growing prison-industrial complex in relation to women of color and the equally astounding HIV/AIDS rates. And they are also still very much concerned with representations of women of color in rap music videos and the harm that these images can do. So, I want to move now to one area that hip-hop feminism continues to grapple with: the video vixen Shorty Wants to be a Star: Video Vixens Representing Women of Color? In her groundbreaking book, Prophets of the Hood, Imani Perry notes the following about the recent trends in hip-hop music videos: “It seemed to happen suddenly. Every time one turned on BET (Black Entertainment [83] Television) or MTV, one encountered a disturbing music video: Black men rapped surrounded by dozens of black and Latina women dressed in bathing suits, or scantily clad in some other fashion. Video after video proved the same, each one more objectifying than the former. Some took place in strip clubs, some at the pool, at the beach, or in hotel rooms, but the recurrent theme was dozens of half-naked women” (2004, 175). With the release of Karrine Steffans’s tell-all memoir, Confessions of a Video Vixen (2005), the topic of women, music videos, and objectification is once again on everyone’s minds. But even more so, the questions surrounding objectification have become complicated in important ways. No longer can we make claims about what is happening to the women in the videos without complicating the discussion by adding their voices. Although Steffans says that she wrote the book as a cautionary tale for little girls who want to grow up and be video girls, the book reads more like a how-to with just enough name-dropping and gossip to fill inquiring minds. In fact, with the release of It’s No Secret by Carmen Bryan, rapper Nas’s ex-girlfriend and the mother of his child, it seems as if some marketing person in the publishing industry figured out a way to capitalize on mixing the current Zane-inspired erotica fervor with hip-hop glitterati in order to cater to a gossip-obsessed culture and recent trends in reality programming. These kinds of books appeal to a variety of people because of the way they play into the genres listed above. However, what does come across clearly as one reads the Steffans’s memoir and Bryan’s tell-all are the ways in which some women have chosen to buy into the sexism and misogyny that limits the roles that women can play in hip-hop culture The issues of representation and objectification in hip-hop offer many variables that all must be considered if we are going to have a meaningful conversation about the topic. The ways in which the men artists and male and female video directors objectify the women in their lyrics and videos is one aspect. The ways in which the women video models and hip-hop artists choose to objectify themselves in a quest to make money and earn a living is another. And the way these images straddle the very thin line between validation of black women bodies and objectification is yet another aspect. The truth of the matter is that we are now in a(n) historical moment where the bodies of women of color flood popular culture in ways that they never have before. As hip-hop culture expands and dominates mainstream popular culture, the hip-hop video becomes more than just a music video. The impact of these videos on women of color is vast. Hip-hop music videos are spreading representations of U.S. women of color around the globe. [84] I have written elsewhere that hip-hop culture did not spring up full grown on its own and that it builds on other legacies that exist in the culture and the community that we are not always willing to own (see Pough 2001). Others have noted that hip-hop does not exist in a social-cultural vacuum, that as a part of the larger culture it takes on elements of the larger culture as well (see Potter 1995; Rose 1994). So when we look at the hip-hop centerfolds that exist in Source Magazine and XXL, with their monthly “Dime Piece” and “Eye Candy” sections, we cannot discuss them in isolation and certainly not without at least mentioning the long-running Jet Magazine “Beauty of the Week.” And when we talk about the ways in which hip-hop videos are similar to pornography, we cannot have the conversation without looking at the ways in which pornography has infiltrated the larger culture as well. Can you say “girls gone wild”? None of this is meant to take away from the damage that these pornographic images of women of color in hip-hop do. What I do want to look at, however, are the ways in which these tropes impact our thoughts about women of color and how they in turn impact the lives of young women. The words of women like Zulaika Jumaralli (2005) who claim “Music Videos Broke My Spirit” come to mind as I think about the power of these videos and the impact that they have. I think of women like the black women students at Duke, who, outraged by the recent alleged gang rape of a black woman by white members of the university lacrosse team, loudly proclaim, that they are “not your video ho.” In an article written by Fiona Morgan (2006), these students share stories of being expected to be sexually available and inappropriately propositioned by white men on campus just because of their race. One student says, “As a black female, you go to a party. You’re expected to dance. You’re expected to be sexually provocative. You are expected to want to be touched, to be grabbed, to be fondled.” Another student adds, “As if they’re reenacting a rap video or something. As if we’re their video ho, basically. We can’t just be regular students here. We can’t just go to a party and enjoy ourselves” (F. Morgan 2006). As much as we try to move away from allowing negative images to impact our lives, there are real implications that we need to contend with. Add to this the multiple stories of black women who have traveled to other parts of the world only to be approached as if they are a video vixen by the men in the countries they are visiting, and we can see how far these attitudes about women of color extend I also think about the hip-hop feminist warriors who are bringing wreck in the public sphere by talking back—women like the Spelman women, who wanted to initiate a dialogue with Nelly after viewing his derogatory video [85] “Tip Drill,” only to have that attempt at dialogue stilted and to receive criticism themselves for being elitist college women looking down their noses at the women who are making an honest living in the video and the poor artist who only wants to share his art with the world. While I offer the statements above in a tongue-in-cheek manner, several interviews in which Nelly spoke about his “ordeal” painted the Spelman women in this way. I am also informed by hip-hop feminist writers like Karen R. Good, who, fed-up with the whole images, representation, and objectification debates, offers her own treatise:But as of late, many of hip-hop’s children have been playing the cheapest trick: depending on undulating female, colored bodies to entice weak minds and compensate for weak rhymes. Or our bodies are used for verbal target practice. I am way past anger. Shock went the way of “Bitches Ain’t Shit.” Don’t feel like being sad. I just wonder about the worth of a black girl. You know, like the difference between what happens when little white girls go missing and little black girls go missing. Or get raped. Pissed on. That type of shit. . . . That said, not one more lecture. I put my hands up. Man, if you want to swipe a credit card down the crack of a woman’s behind, or Miss, if you want to let yo ass be the machine, fine. To each his own. The culprit is not hip-hop, which is undergoing a beautiful evolution, by the way (hear Mos Def’s “The Rape Over”), it’s our reliance on the baser nature as opposed to the higher mind. Hip-hop is the thinker’s form. (2005, 29–30)As I think about the video vixen and her relationship to a hip-hop feminist agenda, I do so keeping the fervor and the sentiment of these very different responses to the images in mind. As the black women students at Duke remind us, the images have the power to hurt. As the negative backlash to the Spelman women shows us, when we speak out or try to initiate a dialogue, we open ourselves up for criticism. And as Karen Good reminds us, the images are not the sum and total of hip-hop and certainly not what is representative of the culture, which is in constant evolution. But they do exist and we do need to interrogate them. And when we do, we need to add to the mix the voices, stories, and reasons these women give for participating in the objectification. Only then will we get a more nuanced and complicated discussion of the video vixen By adding their voices, we indeed get a discussion that highlights the gray areas that Joan Morgan writes about. These women see the videos as their entry into the world of stardom. They are aspiring actresses, models, singers, and even rappers themselves. They gladly pose in the magazines and preen in the videos, and the best and brightest of them are paid very well [86] to do so. Some even make up to $3,000 a day.2 These are not necessarily the poor, victimized women of old. Some of them have a critique of the business, and they recognize their role in a society in which sex sells. Video girl Tawny, interviewed by Jeanne Amber for Essence Magazine, notes: “If video girls are being exploited, then every female artist who is out there being sexy should be blamed too. To me, it’s all bull——” (Amber 2005, 165). Former video model, BET host, and entrepreneur Melyssa Ford notes of her own career and decisions:I’m the highest-paid video girl to date. I’ve endured all the snide comments and ignorant remarks from people who presume to know me because I’m on their television screens and in the pages of their magazines. But I’m not the promiscuous twit I’m often mistaken for. I am a business-woman who has used videos to launch a multimedia career. My product is me. Besides being the lead girl in hip-hop and R&B videos, I am a sex columnist for a men’s magazine. I star in my own DVD. I’ve hosted television shows, and I’ve produced my own calendar, which I sell on the internet. My job is to sell fantasy and perfection. When the cameras go on, I detach myself and play the sexy vixen who will turn a nigga out. (quoted in Byrd and Solomon 2005, 219–20)The fact is, these women are making decisions—decisions informed by a variety of variables—to be in these videos, to pose for these magazines. While I do not pretend that their decision-making takes away from the systems of oppression surrounding them that make not making the decision to objectify themselves difficult, I do not want to ignore the agency, real or imagined, that these women have. How does their agency complicate our discussions of objectification? I don’t pretend to have the answer to this, and I don’t even want to suggest that there is one cut-and-dry answer. But I do know that as feminists, we can no longer have these conversations without including their voices and their stories. And when we add their voices and stories to the mix, they bring with them those dark and light, wrong and right mixtures that Jean Grae raps about and the subtle shades of gray that Joan Morgan writes about The video vixen’s agency is important, and the work of visual artist Ayanah Moor adds layers to this conversation by thinking about the ways these women may be exhibiting agency even as they participate in the demeaning videos. Her collection of video shots, “STILL,” is one example of the way Moor uses her art to complicate the discussion. The text that goes along with the montage of video stills represented in the collection states: [87]STILL Images of women surrounding male rap stars in music videos is as common as the jewel encrusted subject matter of today’s rap lyrics. Females are seen in packs hovering around male rap stars, playing the part of enthusiastic cheerleader or die-hard groupie. Rap music videos sell not only hiphop culture, but also the very image of its women. They serve as eye candy designed to satisfy an assumed male video audience, affirming critiques of the culture as hyper masculine and misogynist. STILL is a series of photographs from contemporary rap music videos. These artworks invite a second look at the hip-hop video vixen, displaying an interest in moments unintended by music video narratives. Some stills reveal agency rather than victimization, while others provide reminders of the narrow representations of women in hip-hop. (Moor 2006)Moor’s “STILL,” the hip-hop feminist discussions surrounding video models, and the video models voices and stories show, I hope, what a rich space the issues of video images and representation can be if we think about issues of agency in more complicated ways. Combining these might allow us to better interrogate the following questions. For example, what does it mean that hip-hop has the capability to make a woman a pseudosuperstar, sought after by magazines and video directors based on solely on how she looks? And how does this further complicate our understandings of how black women respond to things like the ideal beauty image? Does the influx of other kinds of beauty—meaning black and women of color—into the mainstream disrupt the norm? Does it simply add yet another impossible ideal for women to yearn for that now makes women of color, particularly black women, vulnerable in ways that they haven’t been in the past? All of these questions are complicated and warrant far more space than this cursory look at possible hip-hop feminist agendas allows. But they are spaces in which hip-hop feminism can make meaningful interventions. I will now move to another space in which there are possibilities for a hip-hop feminist agenda by examining female emcee Jean Grae Shorty Got Love for the Game: Jean Grae,Hip-Hop, Feminism, and change (Or ... Simply... I wish she were a feminist...) What would happen if we had feminist emcees moving millions toward a critique of gender that motivated them toward change? Why haven’t we had any women emcees with this kind of feminist agenda? What would happen if we could harness the power that rap music has to make people dance and make them work toward change in women’s lives? When studying [88] feminism in relation to hip-hop, one thing becomes abundantly clear: most women emcees are not checking for the F word. They won’t claim it. Won’t label themselves with it. Will not touch it. This is not to say that there are no feminist women rappers. However, the fact remains that as much as we champion and claim certain women rappers for their lyrics, their outreach activities, their “positive” messages, or their “prowoman” messages, very few women rappers will go on record saying that they are feminist Taking a page from black feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins, who in her essay “What’s in a Name? Womanism, Black Feminism, and Beyond” (1999) ultimately comes to the conclusion that quibbling over what we call ourselves is less important than the work we do to evoke change, I posit that while we cannot in good conscience place the label of “feminist”—hip-hop, thirdwave, black feminist, or womanist—on most contemporary women rappers, we can—as feminist scholars and activists—use the music they produce and the issues they raise to begin to enact change. In this regard, rising hip-hop artist Jean Grae becomes an interesting case study for hip-hop feminism even if she denounces feminism for herself: “I’m not a feminist by any means, I just want people to enjoy the music” (Thomas 2004). In much of her music to date—her two CDs, Attack of the Attacking Things: The Dirty Mixes and This Week, as well as her EP, The Bootleg of the Bootleg—we can easily see the concerns of hip-hop feminists put to music Grae’s two albums and EP have garnered critical acclaim, and just about every review I have read noted her stellar lyrics and vocal delivery but bemoaned the production and the lack of killer beats. What comes across in most interviews is the fact that she is going to make music and have a career on her own terms. We won’t see her taking off her clothes to sell records. But she is quick to stop interviewers who want to label her the Anti–Lil’ Kim, Anti–Foxy Brown, or Anti-Trina. She does not have a problem with her fellow women rappers. She has a problem with an industry that won’t allow a fullness of black womanhood to be represented. She notes: “You know what, that’s not me. That’s not how I live. And that’s not how I do. But there are females that do. I think it’s messed up that there is not an opportunity for someone who is not doing that to have an equal chance. And that is the problem. It’s like there has to be some choice . . . have some other shit. Balance it all out. Apparently for some odd reason, that is not allowed” (Bloom 2004). She knows what she is willing to do and she knows what she has to offer: “I want to break the formula, and make history for myself. I want people to know I’m a skilled writer and lyricist that isn’t afraid to be honest. I’m stubborn. I refuse to change myself [89] for a machine” (Dyer 2004). I have to admit, when it comes to hip-hop, I am all about the lyrics. The beat is important, yes—couldn’t be a true hip-hop head and not acknowledge that. But the beat is not going to make me buy the record. In fact, I’m much more excited when the beat takes me back to the essence, the simple boom bap. So, the reviews that bemoaned the lack of cutting-edge production and beats on Jean Grae’s CDs didn’t faze me. Her lyrics blew me away. Her lyrics, style, and delivery are like one part Jigga, two parts Nas, a healthy dose of gender consciousness, race consciousness, and, lo and behold, a pinch of a global awareness for good measure On her first album, Attack of the Attacking Things, Jean Grae critiques the sexism in hip-hop. In the song “Knock” she raps, “Ask me bastard if I’m signed / I rhyme sick / but niggas is quick to turn they back on spitters with clits / Hit em with this, and ridiculous phrase flow that exit my lips / Hey yo, I mean my face, though / they still want chicks with tits and ass out / my respect is worth more than your advance cash-out.” In the song “What Would I Do?” she raps: “I’m Jean Grae, honorable team player for years / Emceeing on the low, in videos devoid of the hoes / For sho’ it’s crunch time / I’m the one they sent to piss your label off / they won’t fuck with me unless I’m parading and taking it off.” She is very conscious of the sexism in the music industry and the exploitation of women in particular. And her lyrics and her interviews show that she is raging against that machine Perhaps what is most worthy of mention is the way that the song “What Would I Do?” aims to inspire change. The chorus asks: “What, what, what would I do? / If like my people said, I left it to you. / Tell me what, what, what would I do. / If I didn’t try a verse, if I didn’t rhyme. / Tell me what, what, what would I do. / If I just hated and did nothing to change it” The chorus makes the listeners question themselves as well. For all of us complaining about the status of hip-hop, what are we doing to change it? Listening to Attack of the Attacking Things is almost like reading Joan Morgan’s When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost. Although the outright feminist agenda is missing from Jean Grae’s album, the themes that come out in Morgan’s book about the need for change and the vulnerability of wanting to be loved are all there Perhaps the most poignant representation of a hip-hop feminist state of mind and potential agenda comes across in the song “P.S.” from Grae’s latest CD, This Week. The song is a series of e-mails, which are basically apologies to people she has wronged in the past, a friend she betrayed, a lover she [90] cheated on, and herself. The song calls to mind the hip-hop feminist need to question our complicity in our oppression. She questions it and owns it. In the last verse she raps:Dear Jean I see you’re doing big things Congratulations, hey I even saw that big ring Who would of thunk it huh? LOL You even seem content I notice that you’re more focused Drinking less as well Anyways it’s been too many months having henny days I think it’s plenty brave, plus you get your pennies saved up And say what?!? Second album? Whatever happened to the thought of ending rapping? Still living in Manhattan? Sidetracking note, just on the low All apologies, I used to hate your fucking guts Please pardon me, tried to kill you more than once I’ve acted horribly, and all my pessimism towards your life Still bothers me But you’re a big girl now You’ve fought and made it through Best of luck homie And everything I say is true XOXO Space Smiley Face dot dot dot Comma Much Love, youThe fact that the speaker in this rap is writing this particular e-mail to her “self” is telling; it brings to mind many questions about how young black women internalize the negative influences bombarding them. Hip-hop feminist writings have dealt with some of these issues. What has been criticized as a self-absorption and an excessive focus on the individual in most hiphop feminist writings is really a genuine concern and a search for meaning, particularly what it means to be a young woman in often dangerous urban environments; what it means to be a woman who participates in and loves a culture that doesn’t always love you; and how you deal with it when some of the hatred aimed at you becomes internalized and affects how you treat others and how you feel about yourself. Jean Grae’s “P.S.” is all of those hip-hop feminist questions and issues put to music. And in a world where young black women grapple with so many images that objectify and sexualize them, such artistry is needed. I move now to a discussion of one of the most [91] problematic images that young women who listen to contemporary hip-hop face: the ride-or-die chick Shorty Wanna Ride? Ride or Die Chicks and Real Black GirlsBut got a women that ain’t afraid To tuck the toast in the escalade Pop on niggas that showin me shade But only for the Rule ’cause that’s my baby Got me a down ass bitch with red hair, that don’t care Blazed by the shots and flares Girl c’mon, follow me, and bust back at police Conceal ya heat -- Ja Rule, “Down Ass Bitch”Shorty, you ridin’ with me? Stic tell ’em bought them RBGs I like ’em real trill Gold in the grill Cold as Pam Grier swoll in the rear Hard, smart, strong in the heart Sexy thong when we alone in the dark Dark skin, red bone, slim in the waist Them legs so long Queen earth, jean skirt, head wrapped up Pimping them converse And she down for the dirt For better or for worse Got my gun in her purse In case a nigga get searched She got a mind like Assata A body like Trina A heart like my momma Nigga tell me have you seen her? -- Dead Prez, “Real Black Girl (Revolutionary Love)”Finding a way to combine feminism and hip-hop in politically meaningful ways is one of the premier goals of hip-hop feminism. This is not easy work. The negative lyrics of most contemporary hip-hop are enough to make even the most die-hard hip-hop feminist contemplate giving up the music and the culture. Articles by dream hampton (2001) and Eisa Nefertari Ulen and Tara Roberts (2000) both speak volumes about the frustration of being a hip-hop head who is also a feminist. [92] The fastest-growing prison population statistically in this country is black women. They are going to jail largely because of their relationships with men who are involved with criminal activities. They are going to jail for things like smuggling drugs; they are women like Kemba Smith, who simply fell in love with the wrong man and was too afraid to leave. As Smith recounts, “At age 24, without so much as a parking ticket on my record, I was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison—without parole. Technically, I was convicted of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine, but I contend that I went to jail for dating a drug dealer.” She was finally pardoned as a last minute act of President Clinton, but she still feels that justice was not served. She notes, “You’d think I’d have been doing cartwheels when I was released. Truthfully, my feelings were in conflict. It was tough to leave behind the incredible women I met in prison—especially since many of them were victims of the same laws that put me away” (Booth 2001, 86). The incarceration rate for black women continues to grow because of the messages young women are getting from the videos. Messages from contemporary rap lyrics about being a “down ass chick” are everywhere, and they are not just coming from men. Women rappers also rap about the illegal things they would do for their men In my book (Pough 2004), I critiqued the image of the ride-or-die chick as it is represented in hip-hop, the girl willing to do whatever she can for her man, a girl that the lyrics of Ja Rule’s “Down Ass Chick” call to mind. I urged black feminists in particular to look at these representations as a threat to young black womanhood and to find ways to have conversations with young women and reach out to them before we lose an entire generation. The situation was and still is that dire for me. However, I’d like to complicate things just a little by thinking about what I see as another version, albeit a revolutionary version, of the down ass chick. The recent revolutionary but gangsta messages from rap group Dead Prez have also included some interesting messages for what they call Real Black Girls—girls who are “down for the dirt, / for better or for worse, / got my gun in a purse / in case a nigga get searched.” Given the hip-hop feminist fondness for all things ’70s and revolutionary, it is easy to see how a RBG (Real Black Girl/Revolutionary but Gangsta) image is more appealing than a Down Ass Chick. The reggae beat of the song and the reggae chant of the first stanza calls to mind those Black Panther sisters we see in all the footage of that time but never hear about. Or the revolutionary sisters who are still in prison as political prisoners for their acts against the establishment but whose names we have yet to learn, let alone start a Free (fill in the blank) Movement for. [93] Now, I’m not going to argue that down ass chicks and real black girls are problematic for the same reasons. That’s not the point of the comparison. The point of the comparison is to look at the ways in which a mentality of being down for whatever—even when that whatever is revolution—can add to the growing black women prison rate. The point is also to complicate our thinking about hip-hop in ways that stop us from creating dichotomies that place rappers like Ja Rule in one category labeled commercial, negative, and therefore bad, and rappers like Dead Prez and others in another pile labeled conscious, underground, revolutionary, and therefore good. The point isn’t to single out Dead Prez, because they do build on a legacy of the Black Power Movement that had its own gender issues to work out. Even though one would hope that in the twenty-first century conscious rappers would not be replicating those dated and retrograde ideas in such problematic ways. And even though I have no problem with the concept of doing what we have to do for the revolution, per se, I have to ask, if we are talking about a revolution, then what is my role in it, brother? Is a woman’s role in the revolution still pussy power and prone and now I have to conceal your weapon to boot? All of that aside, my point in using Dead Prez’s “Real Black Girl’s (Revolutionary Love)” as an example is simply to say that if we are pushing hip-hop feminism forward as a movement concerned with creating change in the culture and eventually change in the world, we cannot be one-sided with our critiques. Everyone gets called out if they need to be called out. Thinking about “Real Black Girls” as a derivative of the “Down Ass Chick” is one area that we could exam that would allow us to break apart some of the false dichotomies between conscious and commercial hip-hop In her novel Picture Me Rollin’ (2005), Black Artemis tells the tale of a young woman who has been released from jail on a mandatory gun possession charge. The protagonist, Esperanza, was dating a street entrepreneur who dabbled in armed robbery when she got caught in the getaway vehicle with a gun that he gave her. She was the only one out of the crew to serve time, mainly as a lesson because she refused to testify—to snitch—against the guys. When the novel opens, Esperanza is being released from jail, and throughout the novel she grapples with several things. The first is “Thug Life,” an obsession with rapper 2Pac Shakur that is so delusional she thinks that the rapper is still alive and chilling in Cuba with Assata Shakur. The second is her newfound knowledge of women of color feminism, thanks to her older sister’s community college course books. And the third is her old life as a drug dealer and generic ride-or-die chick for her drug dealer boyfriend Jesus. Esperanza [94] tries throughout the novel to make a better life for herself, and Black Artemis does an excellent job of showing another side—a female side—of growing up in the urban environments and landscapes made famous by hip-hop The character Esperanza offers some insight that we all need to consider as we grapple with and complicate the down ass chick. In the prologue to the novel, Esperanza is getting ready to be released from prison and is having a talk with fellow prisoner and roommate Isoke, a political prisoner jailed for her activity with the Black Liberation movement. Isoke is trying to get Esperanza to move beyond an embrace of Tupac’s “Thug Life” in order to join the larger struggle. Isoke also works in the prison library, so she has given Esperanza a lot of things to read. At this point, however, if it isn’t related to 2Pac, Esperanza is not really interested in reading it. When Isoke flat-out asks her if she is going to be a thug or a revolutionary the older political prisoner lectures to Esperanza: “Because I’m afraid that brother 2Pac was wrong. Thug Life is not the new Black Power. It makes no sense to rage against the machine without purpose or principle. You cannot be both a gangsta and a soldier, Esperanza, so you must choose.” In response to this, Esperanza sighs and thinks “neither ’cause either way I’ll end up back in this muthafucka or dead.” When Esperanza speaks, she responds, “All I know is that I am never coming back here” (Artemis 2005, 2). Esperanza’s words bring the connection between the lyrics of Ja Rule’s “Down Ass Chick” and Dead Prez’s “Real Black Girls” home in powerful ways. We can see that when it comes down to it, there really isn’t that much difference between the oppression and the limitations placed on women; that patriarchy in criminal circles is not better or worse than patriarchy in revolutionary circles; that patriarchy in gangsta rap is no worse or better than patriarchy in conscious rap What the novel and the lyrics highlight to me is a real need for hip-hop feminism to be engaged with all aspects of black girls’ lives—we don’t want to be accused of being irrelevant to young black women in the ways that some of us have categorized academic black feminism. It makes no sense to pick and choose images and the artists who create the images and lyrics by deeming some negative and some positive, all the while creating false dichotomies. The issues and the artists are much more complicated than these simplistic readings allow. Rappers like 2Pac Shakur, Dead Prez, Common, Mos Def, and others are nothing if not complicated and sometimes conflicted young men. A cursory look at their work shows us that. Hip-hop feminism needs to be bolder in its critiques, even if it means calling out the so-called good guys every once and a while. [95] Shorty Wrote this Book Yo!: Hip-hop and Feminism, Is it Fiction? In her 2001 novel, The Haunting of Hip-Hop, author, lecturer, and scholar Bertice Berry tells the chilling tale of a Harlem brownstone haunted by souls tortured due to U.S. racism and oppression. One of the souls, a former enslaved African, has a message for the hip-hop generation: “We gave the drum back to your generation in the form of rap, but it’s being used to send the wrong message” (Berry 2001). The novel tells the story of rap producer Harry “Freedom” Hudson and his lawyer Ava Vercher If Freedom represents hip-hop in the novel, then Ava represents the consciousness that echoes in hip-hop’s ear and tries to keep it on a righteous path. Ava Vercher is a new-age Afrocentric womanist with uplift tendencies. Freedom is a producer who makes two kinds of music: one is the kind of commercial music record companies want and the other is “music that no major record label would ever release because it was filled with the messages of love he longed for and the revolution he dreamed of starting” (Berry 2001, 16). You see that the ghost of the enslaved African has been haunting Freedom ever since he was a child, and he hopes to influence Freedom to do the right thing with the drum before it is too late I’ve found the most compelling representations of hip-hop feminist representations in hip-hop literature. This is not to say that we should discount the music or the nonfiction writings of hip-hop feminists but simply to offer other spaces within hip-hop culture in which people are trying to imagine a better way. I closed Check It While I Wreck It with the call for us all to imagine a better way to use the culture of hip-hop to enact change. I believe that some women writers of popular fiction have begun to do just that In the “Reader’s Guide: A Conversation with Black Artemis” at the end of her first novel Explicit Content, Black Artemis defines hip-hop fiction as fiction “about hip-hop as a subculture, as something that gives people voice and their lives meaning.” For her, “hip-hop is a form of cultural power and whether that power is a force for progress or destruction depends on how people use it, whether you use it on the street or in the studio, for fun or for profit, to build or destroy” (2004, 338). Of the recent trend to call urban fiction hip-hop fiction, she notes:I think that street life should be referred to as street life fiction, period, and that the term “hip-hop fiction” should be reserved for novels that are about hip-hop. Eventually, there’ll be some works that can be referred to as both, but something that has nothing to do with hip-hop subculture should not [96] be referred to as hip-hop fiction, especially if it perpetuates the myth that hip-hop is all about violence, drugs, misogyny, etc. These phenomena are not the sum total of hip-hop, and hip-hop is not the only subculture in which those elements exist so it is wrong to treat them as if they are one and the same. (2004, 339)Her distinction has caused me to rethink many of my earlier definitions about what constitutes hip-hop fiction and cinema. The distinction is necessary and important for those of us looking for ways to more fully use the youth culture to enact change. And it does not rely on a dichotomy of positive and negative, conscious and commercial. The work simply has to be about one of the elements of hip-hop culture to be classified as such Black Artemis’s Explicit Content documents the story of two women rappers, one black and one Latina. The novel explores what it is like to be a female with rapping skills trying to gain recognition in the music industry. It follows the women into the world of hip-hop and examines their hopes and dreams. It’s also a novel about female friendship, with just enough drama to keep the average hip-hop head focused and interested. The two women are a rap duo to rival all rap duos until a gangsta rap label comes between them. Of her work Black Artemis notes, “in these times when hip-hop is often used as a cultural weapon of destruction, my mission as a hip-hop artist and activist is to tell stories that relay the power of hip-hop as a tool of transformative expression” (2004, 340). The activist in her comes across in her fiction. It is fiction with a mission; in the tradition of the poets and playwrights of the Black Arts Movement who created art for people’s sake, Black Artemis’s art has an activist goal and agenda in mind Another writer who has political threads in her work is L. A. Banks. Her Vampire Huntress Legends focus on the life of spoken word artist and vampire huntress, Damali Richards. She is the Neturu, which means God’s divine power latent within humans. She is the only Neturu to span two millennia. Damali uses her art—her spoken word music—to bring the light. Her lyrics are about hope in a time of hopelessness. And her band is also her vampire hunting crew. When I asked Banks why she decided to write horror and focus on vampires, she replied: “I wrote this series because I’m a mother living in the urban environment—and horror, because I have been horrified by what I see on the nightly news, and hear on the trolleys and subways, and by what I read in the newspapers. Vampires—because they suck blood, in a metaphor, they suck the life-blood out of the community as predators, and really have no sense of mortality or moral compass. I [97] wanted to create a cautionary tale, but one that also delved into the social, economic, and political infrastructure within our own society that creates predators” (Pough 2005, 168). Each of the novels in the series uses art to highlight the pitfalls of excessive materialism. Each of the novels work as metaphors for the age-old fight between good and evil. However, by making Damali a young spoken word artist, Banks is making a huge statement about the power at hand for young women, the power to change the world. And as for hip-hop, she hasn’t given up hope. Banks notes, “I see plenty of room for Hip-hop as an awesome catalyst, and I’m not so ready to give up on all Hip-hop artists, their messages, or their lyrics. I think what has happened, as metaphorically alluded to in the novels, is that vampires have infiltrated the genre of music, have co-opted the culture, and have twisted it. But there are still some very young, savvy, ready-to-stand-for-their-beliefs young folk out there. . . . that’s the message, that’s my hope. . . . guess it’s really my prayer” (Pough 2005, 171). Like Black Artemis, L. A. Banks has a mission in her art, and that mission is in line with many of the goals that hip-hop feminists have set out. Their novels offer hope and a spark for hiphop culture, at least in terms of having a political mission aimed at change. Race, class, sex, gender, and the intersections of these are present in this new fiction in startling, surprising, and uplifting ways. Writers like L. A. Banks and Black Artemis, rappers like Jean Grae, and the hip-hop feminists that I have mentioned here can in varying degrees be seen as pushing the hip-hop feminist agenda forward. They represent—along with the video vixens and the women hip-hop heads who buy the music and support the culture—a small sampling of women in contemporary hip-hop culture. Together their stories offer versions of the truth that Joan Morgan suggests we could achieve. Together they also give us a glimpse at the possibility for change and a sign that hip-hop feminism just might be on the right path to what it is going to be at last. And then we might be a little less concerned with “what it do” because we would be so awed by all that the movement has done Endnotes 1. I realize that the word “shorty” as a term that is often used to refer to women in hiphop culture and rap music is problematic. Although not as derogatory as some other terms, such as “chickenheads,” “bitch,” “ho,” and so forth, it is still a term that more often than not objectifies women. It is also a term in hip-hop culture that refers to younger people, often children. Because “shorty” is used within the culture to refer to women and children, [98] it can be argued that the term therefore infantilizes women; thus, it is not a term I use lightly. I use “shorty” throughout this essay because of its multiple meanings, because it showcases just how fraught the relationship between hip-hop and feminism is. And I also use it because it calls forth the generational issues between hip-hop feminists and older black feminism. In a sense, hip-hop feminists are the shorties, the next generation of feminists on the “come up” ready to continue the legacy of black women’s intellectual traditions and activism 2. Most of my information about the dreams and aspirations of video models and how much they make comes from a survey of the interviews and photo spreads I’ve read of in the Source Magazine’s monthly “Dime Piece” section and XXL’s monthly “Eye Candy” section. Each month these magazines pick a video girl to highlight. And while most of the “coverage” is the photo shoot of the scantly-clad woman, there is usually a two- to three-page write-up and interview of each girl. And it is in these limited spaces that we get their voices, hopes, and dreams References Amber, Jeannine. “Dirty Dancing,” Essence Magazine, March 2005, 162–66, 203 Artemis, Black. Explicit Content. New York: New American Library, 2004. ———. Picture Me Rollin’. New York: New American Library, 2005 Berry, Bertice. The Haunting of Hip-Hop. New York: Doubleday, 2001 Bloom, Corey. “Jean Grae Don’t Play.” Synthesis, August 2004 Booth, Stephanie. “Pardon Me.” Honey Magazine, September 2001 Bryan, Carmen. It’s No Secret: From Nas to Jay Z, from Seduction to Scandal—A Hip-Hop Helen of Troy Tells All. New York: Pocket, 2006 Byrd, Ayana, and Akiba Solomon. “Calendar Girl.” In Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips, and Other Parts, edited by Ayana Byrd and Akiba Solomon, 217–25. New York: A Perigree Book, 2005 Collins, Patricia Hill. “What’s in a Name?: Womanism, Black Feminism, and Beyond.” In Race, Identity and Citizenship: A Reader, edited by Rodolfo D. Torres, Louis F. Miron, and Jonathan X. Inda, 126–38. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999 Dead Prez. “Real Black Girls (Revolutionary Love).” Turn Off the Radio The Mixtape Volume 2: Get Free or Die Tryin’. Landspeed, 2003 Dicker, Rory, and Alison Piepmeier, eds. Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003 Dyer, Deesha. “Tipping Point.” City Paper Philadelphia, September 2004 Findlen, Barbara, ed. Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation. Seattle: Seal Press, 1995 Good, Karen R. “Tricked Out.” Vibe Vixen Magazine, December 2005, 29–30 Hampton, dream. “Free the Girls: or, Why I Really Don’t Believe There’s Much of a Future for Hip-Hop, Let Alone Women in Hip-Hop.” In Vibe Magazine Hip-Hop Divas, 1–3. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001 Hernandez, Daisy, and Bushra Rehman, eds. Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism. Seattle: Seal Press, 2002 Ja Rule, featuring Charlie Baltimore. “Down Ass Bitch.” Pain is Love. Def Jam, 2001. [99] Jean Grae. “Knock.” Attack of the Attacking Things. Third Earth Music, 2002. ———. “What Would I Do?” Attack of the Attacking Things. Third Earth Music, 2002. ———. “Don’t Rush Me.” This Week. Babygrande Records, 2004. ———. “P.S.” This Week. Babygrande Records, 2004 Jumaralli, Zulaika. “Music Videos Broke My Spirit.” Essence Magazine, April 2005, 114 Labaton, Vivien, and Dawn Lundy Martin, eds. The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism. NY: Anchor Books, 2004 Moor, Ayanah. “STILL,” 2006. Video collection. Morgan, Fiona. “Not Your Video Ho: Black Female Students at Duke Say They Feel Constantly Under Attack.” The Independent Weekly, March 29, 2006 Morgan, Joan. When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip- Hop Feminist. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999 Perry, Imani. Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip-Hop. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004 Potter, Russell. Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Post-Modernity. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995 Pough, Gwendolyn D. “Seeds and Legacies: Tapping the Potential in Hip-Hop.” Doula: The Journal of Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture 1, no. 2 (2001): 26–29. ———. Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004. ———. “Interview with L. A. Banks.” FEMSPEC 6, no. 1 (2005): 165–72 Pough, Gwendolyn D., Elaine Richardson, Aisha Durham, and Rachel Raimist, eds. Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip-Hop Feminism Anthology. Corona, CA: Parker, 2007 Ratcliffe, Krista. “Coming Out: Or, How Adrienne Rich’s Feminist Theory Complicates Intersections of Rhetoric and Composition Studies, Cultural Studies, and Writing Program Administration.” In Teaching Rhetorica: Theory, Pedagogy, Practice, edited by Kate Ronald and Joy Ritchie, 31–47. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 2006 Richardson, Elaine. Hiphop Literacies. New York: Routledge, 2006 Roberts, Tara, and Eisa Nefertari Ulen. “Sistas Spin the Talk on Hip-Hop: Can the Music Be Saved.” Ms. Magazine, February/March 2000, 70–74 Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1994 Steffans, Karrine. Confessions of a Video Vixen. New York: Amistad, 2005 Thomas, Misty. “Jean Grae: Going Against the Grain.” Jive Magazine, August 2004 Walker, Rebecca, ed. To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism. New York: Anchor, 1995.