Okay, so I have a small confession: When I was young, I sometimes listened to music that was totally inappropriate for children my age. Most youngsters my age was somewhere getting it in to the latest Disney Channel favorite of the moment. Me, on the other hand, had the latest CD's by Dr. Dre, Luke (yes, that Luke), Ice Cube, and one of my personal favorites, Snoop Doggy Dogg. All of these CD's had something in common: They were extremely, and unnecessarily misogynistic, among other things.
You couldn't tell me anything about those guys. I swore by everything they, and anybody remotely connected with them, put out. Some of the lyrics read,
"If ya bitches talk shit/I'll have to put the smackdown, yeah..."
"Bitches Ain't Shit but hoes and tricks"
"She started talkin' shit, what'd ya know?/Reached back like a pimp, slapped the ho."
"Now fuck around and get a five-finger handprint/straight across your face/to make sure all you bitches understand this/"
Now, I, for one, would never hit a woman, nor do I think any man should ever hit a woman. It's just wrong on so many levels, and it's just something that should never take place. Period. End of discussion.
Now, given the recent events surrounding Chris Brown and Rihanna, much can be said about domestic violence, as this has surely been an issue among American families for quite some time. What's surprising to me is that the same culture that used to embrace the behavior, to a degree, has started to change its view. People from every side of the music industry, including Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and countless others, have spoken up to denounce this behavior. But even they, in recent years, has played it up as though it was normal behavior (Jay's last verse on "Guilty Until Proven Innocent," and G-Unit's "Poppin' Them Thangs" are both perfect examples of how they "felt at the time."). The question is, is hip-hop partially to blame?
Of course the natural answer would be "no" from most people, but let's think about this for a sec. For most folks, music is an escape, from everyday life, into someone else's life, that you respect, or admire, at least for their body of work. When I was a kid, I looked up to those cats that you see above. I would know their songs verbatim. Yet, there was something that resonated louder than those "slap a ho" lyrics.
It was the image of my mother's face.
See, when someone you love is or has been, the victim of domestic violence, the shit isn't funny anymore. It's not funny watching you pops lay hands on mom dukes, only to see him hauled off to jail for the night, and your moms putting ice on her face so she can try to expedite the healing, so she can go back to work as soon as possible. When I saw that, those lyrics didn't seem so cool. Those guys didn't seem so cool anymore.
Now, I'm not blaming the music for what happened between Chris and Rihanna, or anybody for that matter. What I am saying is that I hope this is a wake-up call for the people who directly influence our youth, to the hip-hoppers everywhere. These children look to us as examples. They emulate everything we do. They dress like us, they mouth our lyrics, they walk like we walk and talk like we talk. Let's give them something better to look up to than we had.
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