Off Wayne's Dick, For A Second
If there’s two things I want regular readers of this blog to know about me, it’s that I’m female and I’m white. Those aren’t terribly important or interesting facts, but they certainly affect how I read and view hop-hop and they should be known. I’m a white girl from a Midwestern city—the lens through which I see all this stuff is not really unique, given how this music is marketed these days, but it’s crucial.
I think it’s easy for many fans to say that gender and race shouldn’t matter in the context of what music they listen to. That people will listen to what they like and that’s what’s important. And I don’t disagree. But hip-hop comes from such a racialized and gendered history and context that, I think, to not examine these issues and try and place yourself within them as you listen is, well, uncritical.
Now, obviously I don’t tend to use this blog as a mouthpiece for feminist and anti-racist action—though I might, someday, get the balls to do just that—but after spending several weeks praising Lil’ Wayne, I want to take some time and say: yo, this dude has issues as well.
I’m not talking about musicianship. I’m not talking about the fact that everyone likes calling him gay. I want to talk about the fact that sometimes, as a woman, listening to Lil’ Wayne makes me uncomfortable.
As a fan of gangster, hustler, crack, etc, etc rap I have to deal with a certain amount of misogyny every time I listen to music. And most of the time this doesn’t bother me, because, honestly, as a lady? We learn to deal with these things. And I can remove myself from that and enjoy the song for what it is.
But that removal is never possible all of the time. And so while I can enjoy a song 99% of the time, I can also say that sometimes I don’t really need to hear Wayne say “Shut up bitch, gargle.” Sometimes my built-in sexism blocker just doesn’t work.
So, after all this time talking about songs that I really do like, I want to say this—I wish Wayne wasn’t such a damned misogynist. I wish a guy who I can recognize as incredibly talented choose not to demean women so much.
And this bothers me on two levels—one, as a feminist who wishes, in general, that music wasn’t such a hot-bed of sexism and misogyny and, two, as a white person who cares about racism. Because, well, I am allowed the privilege of that blocker I talked about above. I have the benefit of living in a nice, safe, mostly white neighborhood where chances are people hearing Wayne or Snoop or whoever will not associate it with me. I have the benefit of not being a black woman; the color of women associated with those lyrics. The color of women who will have to fight those conceptions—from white guys, from black guys, from white women—for the rest of their life.
I am posting because I want to say this: as much as I hope you enjoy what we do here, and as good as I think it is, none of us at Whatever's Good are black women and only one of us is a black man. Mostly we don’t have to deal with a lot of the fallout that comes from hip-hop, both what it puts forward and what people choose to read into it. And so, I urge every reader here to not just read us, but take some time and peruse Racialicious (which just had a great podcast discussion on this issue) and What About Our Daughters—particularly the latter. I may not always see eye-to-eye with What About Our Daughters in regards to hip-hop, but I think it’s damned important that I take the time to examine it from the perspective of black women. And I hope you do the same.
This post upsets me for several reasons. First the fact that you feel that "none of us at Whatever's Good are black women" is in any way a discredit to our ability to comment on race and/or gender; I feel like this kind of singling out is a detrimental commodification of opinions based on the identity of those presenting them. To me it's the same kind of exoticism that prevents plenty of people from feeling they have the right to care about race and gender in the first place.
But most importantly, I would have appreciated if, at any point, you had provided some kind of analysis substantiating your claims about Lil Wayne's misogyny. How is he sexist? Why? What about his presentation or delivery singles out women and degrades them in a specific way that transcends a sort of satire or the presentation of a persona that objectifies not so much women but the opposite sex.
Frankly, the only times I've ever been offended as a woman listening to Lil Wayne are on tracks with verses from Juelz Santana or on the track Weezy did on Little Brother's last album. Additionally, I think it's incredibly important to recognize that, if the majority of these lyrics were rapped by a female and all gender specific terms were shifted to the masculine, you would wind up more often than not with the same underlying and, in my opinion, not at all sexist principle: it's not a matter of women serving men as it is a matter of the speaker's sexual prowess/lack of concern for what the object can help them attain beyond sexual satisfaction. As a woman and a feminist, I've never had a problem with identifying with a male speaker talking about the opposite sex so long as their flippancy can translate to my own opposite sex.
"Money over bitches" doesn't necessarily imply the devaluation of women, but rather an approach to life and work that prioritizes personal success over romantic entanglements. A rallying cry I personally find reassuring and anthemic.
And here we see some of the differences in radical feminism. Fascinating stuff. I hope to contribute to this discussion with my own post later.