How does the hip hop culture promote misogyny to youth's and how will it affect them? One cause that contributes to misogyny in the hip hop culture is the violent and misogynist lyrics that male rappers have in their songs. Lyrics about pimping and beating women could eventually lead to more sexual assault and battering. From the lyrics on the radio to the videos on YouTube, Black male rappers participate in an aural and visual assault of the minds and bodies of Black women which makes them look as if they are a piece of property the rappers own. In his article, "Rap Music Encourages Violence Against African American Women," activist and author Ewuare Osayande explains how Black men and boys are reciting these lyrics until they become mental scripts that direct their interactions with Black women even as these tracks advocate the real-life hatred and violence toward women (Osayande 108). Osayande explains in his article that lyrics are harmful to the youths, because rap music can make visible the actual rape of black women and with the teens listening to the music can cause them to act in the same manner. In her article “Angie Martinez; a chameleon artist”, Elizabeth Jane Lavery makes her point about misogyny and sexual stereotypes by analyzing lyrics such as Puff Daddy’s song “Big Ole’ Butt“ (Lavery). She shows the rap lyrics recurrently portray men as sexually active and women as the passive receivers of men’s sex life. This is when the youths see that it is alright for the male rappers to treat the females horrible and rap about them with hatred, they can do the same. They begin treating the women with disrespect and calling them horrible names. Both Ruby Gourdine and Brianna Lemmons authors in the, Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment also show how misogynist lyrics affects the hip hop culture. In their scholarly journal, “Perceptions of Misogyny in Hip Hop and Rap: What do youths think?,” they discuss how the lyrics in songs can have a lot to do with people’s reactions and how negative images of black females and a gangster lifestyle are the ones that promotes and gives the impression that all black community adhere to these lifestyles (Gourdine and Lemmons). When listeners of rap music are bombarded with these messages from so many directions, it becomes easily for them to buy into the belief that misogyny will help them achieve social status with having many different women and knowing they call relate to them as a bitch or hoe. They then believe it is right to hit on women or call them harsh names because they have heard it in lyrics from rappers, so misogyny can contribute to the hip hop culture which causes a negative impact on the societies.
Another factor that contributes to misogyny in the hip hop culture is the videos that male rappers produce because they are mostly explicit and the males refer to the women in these videos as bitches and hoes. Many male rappers in the videos treat the women as a piece of property, having them half naked in the videos and flashing money around the females. For instance, in Gucci Manes’s video “Hella Ones,” there are half naked women dancing around pouring milk on themselves while Gucci throws money around them symbolizing ownership of the females. Videos such as these have a negative effect on the hip hop culture, because it makes it seem like this is the only thing women are good for and that they aren’t anything better. In Tupac Shakur’s video, “Hit Em’ Up”, he goes on to talk about Biggie Smalls in the song and how he “Fucked His Wife”. At the beginning of the songs he say, “That’s why I fucked your wife you fat motherfucker,” Tupac also known as Makaveli was a rapper and film actor who was shot and killed in September 1996. In his article, “The Biggie Envy and the Gangsta Sublime,” Michael S. Collins explains that the video “Another” is very explicit and suggests that even a character with so much misogyny on his tongue is looking for an unbreakable partnership in love (Collins). The lyrics to this song are "What do you do when your bitch is untrue? / You cut that hooker off and find someone new / I need another bitch (another bitch) in my life"(Collins). The videos and lyrics are misogynistic and talk constantly about both the male and females sex life leading to treating the woman as a bitch being untrue, then going to find another girl that will be true. It is the words, videos, and presentation of artists that concern parents and adults (i.e., teachers, service providers), as their fear is that listening to rap music and emulating certain artists’ behavior will lead to youthful indiscretions (Gourdine and Lemmons). This shows that the hip hop culture does promote misogyny and that both genders must understand that negative words and portrayals of women are not acceptable. When people have always listened and viewed the misogynist songs it is usual that they begin to think and act in the same manner this results from the contribution the hip hop culture has again had on misogyny because if you see a famous person treating women with disrespect the viewer’s think it is okay if they do the same. Hip hop does promote misogyny to youths through the videos and results in the viewer’s showing disrespectful ways towards females.
Degrading images of women in hip hop also lead to the same meaning of misogyny and they can also be referred to pornographic images. Through the album “The Massacre” by king of pop Michael Jackson misogyny is revealed. In the newspaper article from the New York Times, “How Hip-Hop Music Lost Its Way and Betrayed its Fans” Brent Staples analyzes the album and shows that this CD makes it seem perfectly normal but, he refers to the cover as being “grotesquely violent and misogynist (Staples). He makes an argument that misogyny and violence are things that rappers or singers should not portray to be good, because the audience is there to follow their tracks. In the 1990s, with the media’s interest in all things Latin, Latina mamis came to be a fixation in hip-hop videos and lyrics (Lavery). Mamis, also popularly known as ‘video ho mamis’, are stereotypically associated with the exotic, aggressive sexuality, boldness, hot-bloodedness and a ‘bling-bling’ gold-digging mentality (Lavery). When you look at the images that hip hop artists make, you see the young hot women in them half naked, some with money around them or food. This all relates to misogyny, because the women are being seen only for one thing. For example, Ludacris has a "Chicken and Beer" rap album cover that was published in 2003 which reveals the women as nothing but a piece of meat on a plate. If the teens continue to see the women be treated this way and being called horrible names, they will begin to treat their women the same way. This explains how the rap artists refer to their women with these negative images and how the hip hop culture does contribute to misogyny affected the teens in the future.
