A HIP HOP GIRL GROWN UP AND CONFUSED (PART 2-LESS CONFUSED)

When Ms. Dee Barnes got slapped I did not care. There I said it.   I felt well that bitch got slapped and shit happens to bitches and hoes. I think we may have been like dayummmm (smokey voice-you got slapped son!), we may have even giggled.  We were sick. I was 13, around the same age as my daughter is now.  I had internalized these dismissive ideas to women, which DID NOT solely come from Hip Hop (family, the bible, school choose 1 or all), yet was encouraged by Gangsta Rap and are now being supported by Trap music.

What do I do with the “ratchet” girl in me? What do I do with these misogynist views I hold?  I know people who don’t listen to or like that kind of hip hop that degrades women yet somehow I do. I was raised on it, laughed to it, and had good times with female friends while we sat in a MVP, yelling “biatch!” to those who we perceived as bitches. How do I get away from it without getting away from that bass, that interesting word play, my people? I don’t want to be on that so called conscious head wrapped side wagging my fingers at the alleged ratchets. I don’t want to become the old guard who hates on the new and yet I don’t want to support foolishness that is detrimental to my people either. I swear to God some days I turn off all rap and new rnb and just listen to jazz. Don’t get me started though most of those dudes were addicts who probably beat their women too, at least they didn’t talk about it.

I went through a phase when I couldn’t even listen to “conscious” rap because I thought it sounded corny. Here I am an African American Studies major building with legends yet I only wanted to hear that Wu Tang, that Mobb Deep. Id rock deadprez yet they still had a touch of the ratchet I liked with that, “bigger than Hip Hop song”. Yet somehow I was outside of that sound, their words, and their message. I wanted to just be free, unbothered, not always thinking.  A lot of times non-conscious (whatever the heck that is) or “ratchet” “trap” rap is just that…a way to not think…a numbing. Well I don’t want to be numb all the time and as a human I am not, so some things hurt. Perhaps it’s the lack of balance. If I could play Future (lol Future is getting all this shine here yet that album is in my car right now) or Meek (yes I still like him) and then go to a sister who was spitting and not with her ass out, I’d feel better. Yet let me be all the way real, I don’t like those conscious rapping sisters either. Boom. They seem judgmental and again sometimes wack. Just cause you’re smart don’t mean you can rhyme or more specifically move the crowd, everyone standing around listening like you reading from a book! Is this rap or a lecture?

Young woman rolling her eyes — Image by © C. Wilhelm/Photex/Corbis

It’s a new day. Sean Price is dead, NWA has a movie and Nicki Minaj is in Madame Tussads wax museum (even tho its…well you decide how it is). I never imagined being older than my favorite rappers, rappers dying (without getting shot or AIDS), movies about rappers or rappers with multimillion dollar brands. Perhaps this new day can also usher in a change in the way we treat each other, the way we see ourselves; not in a preachy way, yet in a dope reachy way, that turns the babies up, makes us bump our heads and has us all hand in hand, man, woman and child jamming at the function.

Peace from Soul Force Worker #1 Lola Fulani