Masculinity Issue in Hip Hop

Before watching the documentary "Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes" by filmmaker Byron Hurt, I did think that hip hop affects its listeners; we can see this in our everyday life. In our generation you look around see a lot of “gangsters” or what ever they believe they are, but even as little as 6 years ago, OP was dominated with mostly skaters and punks. Although, I have thought about our music before I never realized how bad it actually was until watching this documentary. I definitely do listen to hip hop, but I am not a die hard fan. I find that most hip hop songs are all beginning to sound the same.

Hip hop definitely reinforces stereotypes of masculinity in today’s society, considering the lyrics are always talking about girls, money, guns, or “beef”. By talking about these things it shows that guys have to be tough, stand there own ground, be in control, etc. Music videos always have girls shaking there bottoms, along with lots of money and usually there muscles bulging out to show how ‘tough’ they are.
For example, Luda's video for "Shake Your Money Maker". This is the typical hip hop music video of today. In the video Luda is surrounded by women who are wearing next to nothing, "shaking there money makers for him" as he is rolling in money with girls on his sides and girls are turning into money, and lying all over cars. When you actually listen to the lyrics they are actually quite terrible as they are extremely sexual and i really can't believe they played this song on radio stations. Just because they bleep out 2 words doesn't mean people don't hear all the other words that mean such sexually things. Here is Luda's video, take a look!



Russell Simmons stated that poetry reflects society, which I think is partially true; yes it is a problem as our society is so accepting to this music, but it is just as much a problem that our artists produce all of this for the society to see. It’s kind of like they are trying to mold our society. Our society as a whole definitely doesn’t look anything like music videos. There aren’t guys walking down the street surrounded by girls wearing next to nothing.
Personally, I definitely believe that change is needed as hip hop today is getting ridiculous. All songs talk about the same things over and over again and all artists need is a solid, catchy verse with a good beat and there set.

If all artists rapped the way Tupac use too, hip hop wouldn’t be the same. Tupac actually rapped about things against the masculine stereotypes.

For example, in his one song “Keep Ya Head Up” he sings

“You know it makes me unhappy (what's that)
When brothas make babies,
and leave a young mother to be a pappy
And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it's time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don't we'll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies
And since a man can't make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one
So will the real men get up
I know you're fed up ladies, but keep your head up”

Every word he says makes a lot of sense because without women (moms) there would be no men, yet nowadays in hip hop tends to show women as sex objects instead of showing them respect.Tupac’s songs actually have meaning and messages. They are not just showing off money, or showing women as sex objects, or ‘rollin’ in rich cars. I also noticed that Tupacs video actually shows the life of the ghetto. You see them gambling on the streets, the setting looks grungey, and it is just a bunch of guys standing around, instead of all these rich guys standing around flashing there money.

Rappers need to take a stand individually step by step in changing their music. Even if they don’t change their lyrics; they just don’t write music contaminated with swear words, it would still be a small step in change. Why do rappers feel the need to talk about their “gats” and “hoes” anyway? If they really are talented, they should be able to sing about other things and still be popular. Personally, I love Tupac, and he will always be high in my books and I respect him greatly for his music.

For other music videos showing masculinity issues, search any of these music videos on YouTube.
50 cent - Candy Shop
Eminem - Shake that
Fat Joe - Lean Back

On the other side, search "Tupac - Changes" for another example of how different today's videos are compared before and how Tupac actually shows the life of living in the ghetto.