It’s a question that’s been asked time and time again by many a person:
Why and how does any self-respecting woman listen to hip-hop music when the lyrics are so often degrading and disrespectful to women?
The “why” part of the question is simple: female rap fans listen to rap music because we like rap music. Point blank. Period. End of discussion. No further explanation required. Unfortunately, the “how” part of the question is a little more complicated. But a little insight from a female hip-hop fan might make it easier for the average non-fan to understand. So sit tight and listen up as I attempt to break it down for you and tell you what, in my opinion, allows women to listen to hip-hop's baser lyrics - and how (take note, male artists) even though we can and will listen to them, we'd really rather not.
MOST FEMALE HIP-HOPFANS will answer the question "how do women listen to hip-hop" with some variation of that age-old explanation – “They’re not talking about women like me. They’re talking about…” Well, we all know what type of women they’re talking about. And for us women, knowing this – and knowing that we aren’t “like that” (assuming you aren’t) – is what makes it okay for us to listen to rap music. The knowledge that rappers are not talking about us when they use derogotary terms is what eases our minds. It’s what allows us to sleep at night, keeps us from raising hell every time we hear a rap song and keeps us from swearing off the music all together.
But this only explains half the “how”. You see, there’s another type of “how” in this question – one that addresses the actual act of listening to the music. How do women – literally and technically – listen to rap music even when it’s offensive to us? I know you’re probably thinking, “What do you mean, ‘How?’ You just listen, right?” No. We do not just listen. There is a way in which we listen to rap songs with offensive lyrics. I’ll explain it to you in just a moment, but first, let me explain why I’m even on this subject right now.
ALABAMA RAPPER, ATTITUDE, CURRENTLY has a song out on the radio called “Blow Ya Back Out.” Now don’t get me wrong, I love this song. I really do. But sometimes, I wonder if I should. Sometimes I even feel guilty for liking the song so much. Why? Because frankly, I think certain parts of it are a little disrespectful. Okay. I think it’s a lot disrespectful, and mostly it’s just one particular part that bothers me – “Shut up”.
Yes. I do know that when guys want sex, they want sex, not conversation. But as a woman, I would feel completely disrespected if a man were to tell me to shut up, and go on and take my damn clothes off. Of course, there might be times when something like this could be said playfully (like during sex-play or role-play) where I might actually find it funny or even sexy, but that’s not really the vibe I’m getting from this song. And yes, I know the song is not directed at the loving, respectful and respectable wife or girlfriend. You can listen to the rest of the lyrics to figure out that “Blow Ya Back Out” is directed at the less-than-respectable, not so choosy women more commonly known as ho’s, sluts, floozies, tramps, skanks, scallywags and various other less-than-flattering terms that I’m quite sure don’t apply to me.
So why does a nice, respectable, non-whore like myself still feel offended by the phrase “shut up” as its used in “Blow Ya Back Out” or the word “bitch” in another song or the word “ho” in the next one? To be honest, I’m not sure, but I do have a theory.
ALL YOU MALE RAPPERS, listen up…
When you guys say in interviews that you’re not talking about all women, your female fans believe you. We know you’re telling the truth. Unfortunately, you don’t go out of your way to distinguish in your songs who you’re talking about. So even though we read that article where you said … or we saw you on tv and heard you say …, when we hear you on the song - where words like “bitch” and “ho” are commonly used as substitutes for any word that means woman, girl, or female - it’s very difficult to distinguish who you’re talking about. In the backs of our minds, we feel like you could be talking about any female – including us. This nagging thought is what makes it hard for us to listen to certain lyrics without getting at least a little offended and feeling at least a little disrespected.
But guess what? Almost regardless of what you say in the song, if it’s a really good song, your fans will really want to listen to it. And that makes us ladies feel guilty. But we listen anyway…and we dance…and we sing along. But how do we combat the guilt?
THIS QUESTION IS JUST another variation of our original question: How does any self-respecting woman listen to rap music when the lyrics are so often degrading and disrespectful to women? The answer? We just ignore the bad parts. We do a mental skim over those parts of the song that we don’t agree with. Sometimes we stop singing when the offensive part comes on. Other times we might just hum along. Or maybe we change the lyrics altogether. We might even do a physical skim over the lyrics - we call that hitting the fast-forward button. Whatever the coping technique, it all comes down to the same thing. We find ways to tune out those things we don’t want to hear.
BUT OCCASIONALLY, THERE COMES a song that, for whatever reason, is very difficult to ignore. For me, “Blow Ya Back Out” is one of those songs. Every time I hear it, the “shut up” part really, truly bothers me - which is highly unusual. It’s very rare for me to be this offended by a song lyric or to feel so guilty for still liking the song. Normally, I have no problem ignoring offensive lyrics and am able to listen with minimal guilt. What makes this song so difficult to ignore is that the offending lyric is a very noticeable part of the song. It’s part of the bridge, and as such, is repeated before every hook. In addition, the phrase is repeated several times each time it comes around. And to make things even worse, “shut up; shut up, now; shut up” just happens to be the catchiest part of the whole damn song. So it’s hard to get past. It’s hard to skim over. It’s hard to ignore.
Of course, we women know that if a song gets too bad, we always have the option of turning it off, but we really don’t want to do that. Male artists need to understand that even though their female fans can and usually do ignore the degrading lyrics, we’d rather not have to. I mean, why should we have to deprive ourselves of an otherwise perfectly good song? And for that matter, why would you want us to?
Sure, I can listen to and ignore the word “bitch”, but couldn’t you just as easily have used the word “chick”. If you think about it, your male fans aren’t going to care one way or the other. They’re going to enjoy the song regardless. But your female fans will care. And the use of certain terms will affect our level of enjoyment.
So how about trading in those degrading terms for nicer ones every now and then? And I don’t mean release edited versions (no one likes them anyway). I mean censor yourself in the first place. We ladies don’t want to have to fast forward through, hum over or sing alternative lyrics to your song. We don’t want to have to stop singing or dancing when we get to “that part.” We don’t want to have to do a mental skim over a degrading lyric. We just want to listen to and fully enjoy a great song.
BACK AT THE BEGINNING of this article, I said that women listen to rap music because we like it. Well, that was a bit of an understatement. In fact, we love hip-hop. And when you love something, you love it both for the good and despite the bad. One thing’s for sure, I’ll love hip-hop until the day I die - and so will millions of other female hip-hop fans around the world. But to all the male artists out there, please, help your girls out. Tone it down a bit. Make it so that women can listen to your music without feeling so guilty. Because it really makes for a much better listening experience when we don’t have to feel bad about liking a song because the guy on the mic is telling us to shut up and take our damn clothes off.
