Hip Hop Lyrics: No Homo, Misogyny, and Anti-Semitism

by matt at 7:00 am on December 7th, 2004 in Best Of: Matt, Entertainment

Nick Catchdubs says

…listening to the Nas, Snoop, and Lil Jon records back to back this Saturday was kinda gross. Like, don’t y’all have moms? It’s troubling – compounded by the fact that along with all their fucked-upedness, these records have a few of the better mainstream hiphop tracks out at the moment…

Now I’ve been listening to hip hop since before I knew what to call it. Cohen Sr. had Blondie’s “Rapture” on 8-track which led to Run D.M.C. before the west coast invasion of Ice-T, N.W.A. and others took over. Back then the vocals were just another instrument complimenting the 90 beats-per-minute breaks that were the draw for me.

N.W.A. kicked “Fuck Tha Police,” but they could have been singing “God Bless America” with that attitude and those breaks backing them up and I still would have nodded along. It wasn’t until much later that I grew up and realized how influential hip hop culture was and by extension the power carried by the lyrics.

That moment was hearing Jeru the Damaja’s “How I’m Livin’” where Jeru blazes over a raw DJ Premier special:

“When I do my thing I aim for the gut
And despise those nasty guys that hit shit in the butt.”

A few rewinds later (to make sure I heard it right), I was torn. Having grown up at raves and in clubs, I had way too many gay friends to let this pass, but at the same time, there was no doubt that Jeru was one of the top MCs out there. On the very track that he engages in gratuitous gay-bashing, he displays the kind of originality, flow and focused boasting that any one of the stars of the bling generation would (literally) kill for. Was it simple homophobia of the sort displayed on just about every dancehall record and far too many other hip hop tracks, or something else? Since albums don’t come with psychological liner notes, the only choice was listen or don’t listen.

And with the (mostly) sorry state of “conscious” hip hop, what choice do I have? After all, I refuse to listen to rhymes crooned by a dude who wears a sleeveless turtleneck.

So I listen. Vybz Kartel, Bounty Killa, Jeru, Clipse, Kool Keith, and many others spit about ideas that I find repugnant. Does it make a difference that they don’t malign me personally or groups that I am a part of? Probably, but then again I did listen to Public Enemy when they flirted with anti-semitism on “Welcome to the Terrordome” despite my nominal Jewishness. Jeru’s homophobia, Mos Def’s anti-semitism and Clipse’s misogyny are offensive to me, but it isn’t like their sole purpose is to push a hateful agenda. Whether it is a collective “no homo,” pot shots at their label executives, or insecurity that drives it, none are as bad as skinhead bands that exist only to promote a white power agenda.

Where I draw that line may be just a rationalization, or my friend Dr. Kate may be right when she tells me that I am experiencing “cognitive dissonance,” but it’s not going to change my taste in music. If that makes me a hypocrite, then so be it. At least I’m not like outgoing congressman Dick Gephardt (D, MO) who seems to be invoking the musical equivalent of the “I didn’t inhale” defense:

[Gephardt] also reveals that he really likes Eminem and has his latest album, but “I don’t listen to the lyrics. I just like the music. I like the beat.”

So does un-PC lyrical content stop you from listening to certain music? Does it change your opinion of the artists and/or their fans?

Trackbacks & Pings

ByronCrawford.com on 07 Dec 2004 at 8:07 am

Hip Hop = The Devil!
The Rap Music = Misogyny, Homophobia, Racism, Anti-Semitism, Meanness, Cheating, etc. debate continues today at 1115.org. No homos allowed.
Hip Hop Blogs on 07 Dec 2004 at 8:33 am

Snoop Dogg and Sexism in Hip-hop
The misogyny and sexism in hip-hop meme is not dead. Julianne Shephard of the Cowboyz and Poodles blog takes Snoop Dogg to task for shamelessly promoting domestic violence wife beating on his new album (UP

Comments

tom wrote:

i listen to music made by people who don’t like white people. i wouldn’t listen to music made by people who don’t like black people. i think its all about the perspective of the artist. when you’re in a place of priveledge to begin with, talking that kind of shit on other people is repugnant. when you’re not in a place of priveledge, it’s shakier ground. except for misogyny, i find that moderately entertaining all the time. i love american society.

Posted 07 Dec 2004 at 7:28 am ¶
Bol wrote:

I’m pretty much in the same boat. I don’t take it all that seriously even though a lot of these artists really are big time haters. I just find it all so amusing.

Posted 07 Dec 2004 at 7:45 am ¶
marc wrote:

it’s a big joke, watching these artists repeatedly assert their hetero manhood, their racial hatred, and what have you. i guess when you’re strapped for ideas you’ll write about anything to sell records. this fact alone turns me off more than the actual content. is there some underground gay rap movement they’re trying to fight? are their label execs Jewish? do their hoes max out their credit cards and smoke all their jamaican hash?

Posted 07 Dec 2004 at 10:45 am ¶
evan wrote:

marc, apparently we do have a plethora of gay rappers here in the Area. I dunno if this is an underground gay rap movement or anything, but we’d better get Jeru and Mos Def out here, quick, to stop they’re homosexual agenda from taking over our beloved culture. No homo.

Posted 07 Dec 2004 at 2:30 pm ¶
matt wrote:

With that link, we may have to change the name of this site to nohomo.com

Posted 07 Dec 2004 at 2:37 pm ¶
Martha wrote:

I don’t take a lot of hip hop’s lyrics personal or to heart. I mean rappers sometimes rap about serious issues or issues affecting them, but it’s nuthin to write home about. I think people need to recognize that some of the un-PC lyrics of today are just an evolution of the genre and culture. I sort of look at it like hip hop of today is just a spin-off of itself, on steroids. Like an amplified throwback. You could also argue that today’s hip hop is just an exploitation of hip hop’s early days. .

Posted 07 Dec 2004 at 3:16 pm ¶
MrBastard wrote:

Actors, all of ‘em. Sure you get the occasional “Young Buck” that maims some guy that pissed him off, but for the most part they’re just as hollywood as those guys on the Sopranos.

If you’re listening to these guys for personal development or empowerment, you’re in the wrong record store.

And to the guy that posted “…I wouldn’t listen to music by someone who didn’t like black people”, how do you know that you haven’t already? What if you learned that the guy from metallica or the country singer or that american idol guy didn’t like black people? Then you don’t like their music anymore? come on.

MrB

Posted 07 Dec 2004 at 4:08 pm ¶
tom wrote:

thats right, their records would go right out the window. i dont even care who it was, though since most of the white artists i listen to are heavily indebted to black artists i doubt theyd be like that. ive fought racist white people at complete random in my life. i take that shit very seriously, since no one else seems to want to police those people i do it myself.

Posted 07 Dec 2004 at 4:59 pm ¶
dr. kate wrote:

this is not about an ad hominem attack on the artists. this is about the actual content of the message that is either misogynistic, violent, racist, or homophobic. there is a great deal of psychological literature, for example: http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/press_releases/may_2003/psp845960.pdf that demonstrates that exposure to media activates or “primes” mental constructs that mirror the content of the media itself. most of this research has been conducted on violent and aggressive media, but i would hypothesize that it could be generalized to racist, homophobic, and misogynistic media as well. (indeed there is research suggesting that even the mere presence of images such as a gun or words such as “blues” automatically activate implicit racial stereotypes; e.g., see https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/).

so if you think that listening to this kind of music is not harmful to you and to society, then you are fooling yourself. the effects are most likely going to materialize in ways that you are not consciously aware of in your knowledge structures and cognitive schema that guide the way that you selectively encode, retrieve, and act on information in your environment. it is my opinion (and that of many psychological researchers) that this type of media serves to exacerbate and perpetuate stereotypes and discrimination against minority groups.

kate

Posted 07 Dec 2004 at 8:17 pm ¶
michael hip hop wrote:

Why the hell is anyone complaining about rappers spouting anti-homo lyrics? I mean, this is a good thing, no? Since when did it become a sin to speak badly of sinners? Since when did the black culture ever embrace the putrid nature of homosexuality? It’s a disgrace that we even have black people defending Sodomites. That nasty shit should not be tolerated at all. It should be criminalised with mandatory minimums of 25 to life for anyone caught engaging in an homosexual act.

Now, as for misogyny – that’s a blight on black society in general, not just hip hop. Hip Hop just happens to be extreme about it just like Hip Hop is extreme about everything.

Love and Respect to black women, the foundation of civilisation.

Posted 09 Dec 2004 at 12:26 pm ¶

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