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September 24, 1995

Still Hanging in the 'Hood; Rappers Who Stay Say Their Strength Is From the Streets By CHARISSE JONES

The young men blend together on the Staten Island street corner, a blur of baggy T-shirts and blue jeans. They smoke and laugh like any neighborhood crew. But under one baseball cap, you'll find a rap star.

"I could leave, move out of the neighborhood, but the neighborhood is still in me," said Jason Hunter, the rapper, better known as Inspektah Deck of the platinum-selling rap group Wu-Tang Clan. "I stay in my neighborhood because the people there, they keep me in touch with where I'm from. Park Hill is like my bloodstream."

For many rap artists, the decision whether to stay or leave is difficult. Stardom may mean a mansion far from the humble surroundings where many of their lives began, or a more secure environment for their families. But performers struggling to keep their creative edge, and credibility with their audiences, are pulled by the communities where their talent took root. So many have chosen to stay.

But remaining in the old neighborhood can bring a new set of problems: the jealousy of former friends and the feeling of not quite belonging anymore. Many rap performers have chosen an uneasy compromise, moving to more comfortable neighborhoods that give them easy access to their old turf.

Some rappers, like Snoop Doggy Dogg, have been criticized for rapping about poverty and urban violence, yet living like millionaires in suburbs miles away. "It has a lot to do with the credibility," said Havelock Nelson, a columnist for Billboard magazine who often writes about rap. "Even if you don't live in the neighborhood, you've always got to go back to make sure you're keeping it real."

But many rappers argue that they have as much right as anyone to prosper and live where they choose. The rapper Ice-T lives in the Hollywood Hills, while Speech of Arrested Development lives in the upscale suburbs of Atlanta.

Those who have stayed in their old neighborhoods say their reasons have nothing to do with the expectations and pressures of others.

They stay because they hear their muse on the stoops of Flatbush, Brooklyn, and in the streets of Hollis, Queens. They buy homes near childhood haunts because their parents never moved, and neither did their schoolyard friends. They stay because when they are home, they don't have to posture and pose.

"Where is there to go where I would feel natural," said Edward Archer, 23, a rapper known as Special Ed, who was raised in Flatbushand now lives only blocks away in Canarsie. "This is what I know. This

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is what I was raised around. I don't feel the need to go somewhere else, feel uncomfortable and have to start all over again."

Mr. Archer, 23, has rapped on the soundtrack of Spike Lee's "Crooklyn" and appeared on "The Cosby Show." But he chose to open his recording studio in Brooklyn. And he bought an apartment five minutes from the house where he was raised.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Church Avenue pulsated with the thump of dance hall reggae. But when Mr. Archer was a teen-ager, hip-hop was the siren call. He answered, rapping on the steps, in the hallways, in the park. At 16, he had his first hit record, called "I Got It Made."

When he tells his memories to a stranger, rhymes mingle with recollections of stickball and cheese doodles, sweet girls and passers-by, floating by his parents' house as they exited the No. 2 train.

People often ask why he has stayed.. Occasionally, he even asks himself, "late at night, when I'm driving and I'm just looking at the environment."

Then he remembers. "There might be better scenery" somewhere else, he said. "But it doesn't outweigh staying, because my foundation and my people are here."

Still, Mr. Archer admitted, he is not the fellow he used to be. Age and musical success have opened his eyes. Yet, as much as he has changed, the neighborhood has stayed the same, and sometimes he is reminded of the chasm.

"I'm not really concerned with the hangout policy of the 'hood," he said. "And that's a problem a lot of kids have. They feel they owe something to the corner. You owe something to yourself."

But many people feel that stars who come from poor and working-class communities do owe something to the neighborhoods that spawned them.

Joseph Simmons, 30, stayed near his old Queens neighborhood, and he says it was not to be a role model. But he knows he is one, not only to younger rappers, but also to the children of Hollis, the working-class neighborhood where he grew up, and his group, Run-D.M.C., was born.

Mr. Simmons, 30, recently moved with his wife and four children to Jamaica Estates, an upper- middle-class community less than a mile from Hollis. "I can drive down the street, pass a little boy and he says, 'There goes Run, and he's from Hollis, and he's still here.' They can feel they can achieve the same goals. It doesn't seem out of reach."

Mr. Simmons, an ordained minister, is on Hollis Avenue most days, driving his Mercedes-Benz to the hardware store, taking his children to school, joining friends for a game of basketball.

The neighborhood was, and is, his inspiration. "What you saw in Run-D.M.C. was what Hollis brought out," said Mr. Simmons, whose group became the first internationally known rap superstars. "The hats, the sneakers: the image was hard. That's what Hollis made."

Some may question the merits of teen-agers looking up to rap idols, trying to attain something as elusive as stardom. But, the rapper Craig Mack said, "I'd rather hear somebody say they want to be a rapper than a drug dealer."

Last year, Mr. Mack, 25, had one of the biggest hits of the year, "Flava in Ya Ear." But a hit record does not necessarily mean instant wealth. For now, he lives with his wife and 1-year-old son in a

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comfortable, modest town house a few miles from his childhood home in Brentwood, L.I.

There are some rappers who want to move farther. "I used to feel like staying in the 'hood was keeping it real," said the Notorious B.I.G., perhaps the biggest rap star of the moment. "But now it's not the thing to do. There's a lot of jealousy and envy. So it's time to go."

Raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, B.I.G. (also known as Chris Wallace) used to sell crack near his doorstep and served time on Rikers Island and in North Carolina. He used the fear and paranoia he felt as a street hustler to fuel the lyrics that turned his debut album platinum.

Recently, he bought his mother a home and moved with his wife, the singer Faith, into a Fort Greene duplex, near where he grew up. But he dreams of moving much farther, to "a place with a guard, a gate."

"To me, if you stay in the same spot as you were in when you were doing nothing and now you're doing something, that's not progression," said Mr. Wallace, 22. "Being real is taking care of your family, your mother, your children, doing things with your money. When you think about getting wealthy, you think of mansions. Ain't no mansions in Brooklyn. You don't want to deal with the subways and the gunshots. You want to be comfortable and safe."

Heather Gardner, the rapper Heather B., feels a cocoon of warmth in her hometown, Jersey City, where she still lives.

"I never really know what I miss about it till I'm gone," said Ms. Gardner, 24. "When you're in other places, you always have to ask where the mall is, where's this, where's that. There's a certain security about being home. You just know where you're going. Always."

Ms. Gardner, who currently has a top 25 rap single, moved downtown when she couldn't find an apartment in her old neighborhood. But she opened a nail and hair salon five minutes from where she grew up. Several days a week she takes the short drive to that worn section.

She bumps into her cousin as she walks down the street. Her name is still splashed in ink on a generator next to Crown Fried Chicken, where she wrote it during her days at Lincoln High.

She lived in Manhattan once, as part of the inaugural cast of the MTV program "The Real World," but Ms. Gardner held on to her apartment on the other side of the Holland Tunnel. "I was like, I don't belong around here," she said. "I was like, I'm going right back to where I came from. Orange juice don't cost $4 around my way."

But living in the old neighborhood sometimes means dealing with its pain.

The Wu-Tang Clan, whose members grew up in Park Hill and most of whom still live there, were friends of Ernest Sayon, a 22-year-old man who suffocated in police custody last year. His death sparked protests in the community, and members of the group say that they miss Mr. Sayon still.

"Everything from now on we're dedicating to Ernest," said Method Man, 24, one of the group's members.

The group has been the host on its own MTV special, and traveled to Japan. Its debut album, "Enter the Wu-Tang," went platinum.

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Yet they are bound to Park Hill, a Staten Island neighborhood where the red brick housing project towers over weather-beaten storefronts, and a mural names the neighborhood's young dead. The group's nine members no longer live in the projects, but most still call the community home. They opened a business, the Wu Wear store, nearby.

"The only way I would really leave this right here is if I feel there's no hope of me getting through with what I'm saying through my rhymes," said Mr. Hunter, who says the group's hard-core lyrics bear a warning to the young. "If I wasn't here, they'd say, 'You just saying that.' But I'm taking the step to live it."

Photos: Method Man of Wu Tang Clan talking with children at the rap group's clothing store, Wu Wear, in Staten Island. The group's members grew up in the Park Hill housing projects, and most still call that neighborhood home. (pg. 43); The rapper Special Ed at Flatbush and Church Avenues, in his old Brooklyn neighborhood.; The rap artist Heather B. in her old neighborhood in Jersey City, where she still lives. (pg. 46) (Photographs by Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times) Chart: "Rappers Who Stay Say Their Strength Is From the Streets" From "Sucker M.C.'s" By Joseph Simmons of Run-D.M.C. (co-writer) AGE: 30 OLD NEIGHBORHOOD: Hollis, Queens I'm D.M.C. in the place to be, I go to St. John's University, And since kindergarten I acquired the knowledge, And after 12th grade I went straight to college, I'm light-skinned,, I live in Queens, And I love eating chicken and collard greens, I dress to kill I love to style, I'm the M.C. you know who's versatile. From "Respect" By the Notorious B.I.G. (Chris Wallace) AGE: 22 OLD NEIGHBORHOOD: Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Hearing the coach scream Ain't my lifetime dream I mean I wanna blowup Stack my doe up So school I didn't show up. . . My moms said that I should grow up And check myself Before I wreck myself Disrespect myself Put the drugs on the shelf naww I couldn't see it Scar face king of N.Y. I wanna be it. From "The Bush" By Special Ed (Edward Archer) AGE: 22 OLD NEIGHBORHOOD: Flatbush, Brooklyn If you come to the Bush, Keep a low pro cause you might catch a knot or a shot, or a blow to the face in this place if you base you'll be broken coming off the train you gotta pay another token.

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REVIEW

Conflicting Paradigms on Gender and Sexuality in Rap Music: A Systematic Review

Denise Herd

Published online: 21 November 2014

� Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract Rap music has major social and cultural significance for American and global youth audiences and, along with other media, is believed to play a central

role in shaping adolescents’ beliefs, attitudes and intentions related to sexuality.

However few studies concerned with health issues have explored the content of

lyrics regarding sex and gender, with most research in this area focused on the

effects of media portrayals on sexual behavior and problems. Much of the schol-

arship analyzing sexuality and gender issues in the media comes from disciplines

outside of health and the behavioral sciences, such as cultural studies. This paper

compares literature related to sexuality and gender in rap music from a variety of

perspectives such as feminism, cultural studies, and sociology as well as from health

and behavioral research in order to deepen understanding of the lyrical content that

may influence sexual attitudes and behavior. The review illustrates that conflicting

paradigms, for example of sexual agency or misogyny, emerge in this literature and

that few studies are both conceptually rich and empirically strong. Future research

should address this challenge as well as explore changes over time in how sexual

and gender relationships have been depicted in this musical genre.

Keywords Rap music � Sexuality � Gender relationships � Feminism � Masculinity

Introduction

This review focuses on the presentation of gender relationships and sexuality in rap

music lyrics. This is a compelling research issue because of the major cultural

significance of rap music for American and global youth audiences (Mizell 2003)

D. Herd (&) School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94707, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

123

Sexuality & Culture (2015) 19:577–589

DOI 10.1007/s12119-014-9259-9

and the critical role the media is believed to play in shaping adolescents’ beliefs,

attitudes and intentions related to sexuality (Aubrey and Frisby 2011; Martino et al.

2006; Primack et al. 2008; Peterson et al. 2007 Brown 2002; Brown et al. 2006).

Despite widely held perceptions that popular music influences sexual behavior,

little health related research has analyzed the content of lyrics regarding sex and

gender—most research in this area is concerned with the effects of media content on

norms and behavior related to sexual behavior and problems. Literature focused on

understanding how sexuality and gender relationships are portrayed in the media

often come from disciplines outside of health and the behavioral sciences, such as

cultural studies and the humanities. Few studies have incorporated these diverse

perspectives that could provide insight into the social and cultural role of media

portrayals of sexuality and gender portrayals as well as their impact on behavior and

social problems.

In addition, there is a wide methodological gulf in how these issues are analyzed

in different disciplines. Research from a cultural studies perspective is usually based

on in depth qualitative analysis of a limited number of selected texts or cases; while

public health and empirical work is often quantitative and based on a large number

of cases, but with little interpretive depth. As a result, there are substantial gaps in

the field regarding the social meaning of sexuality and gender in a genre known for

heterogeneous and complex depictions of gender and sexual issues.

The purpose of this review is to explore and compare literature related to

sexuality and gender in rap music from a multidisciplinary perspective which

crosses conceptual as well as methodological boundaries. This is an important task

with the goal of enriching perspectives on the content of images of sexuality and

gender in rap music to better inform how rap music constructs sexual and gender

related phenomenon as a baseline for more nuanced understanding of the

implications of media portrayals and sexual health.

The following analysis of the scholarly and research literature on sexuality and

gender relationships in rap music is based on exhaustive searches of the literature

from a variety of data bases that focus on research in social science, cultural studies

and the health fields. The key perspectives are derived from work within studies of

feminism and masculinity; folklore and media studies; sociological studies; and

public health.

Feminist Perspectives on Sexuality in Rap Music

An important thread of feminist theory argues that images of black women and

sexuality represent modern day resurrections of historically constructed derogatory

images. Evelyn Brooks Higginbothan (1993) and Patricia Hill Collins (2000) show

how European thought and the American political economy of slavery, race, and

labor relations helped control black female sexuality and fertility through creating

stereotypes of black women that deny black female equality and denigrate healthy

sexuality or femininity in black women. From this perspective, images of black

women have been shaped by the following principles: black women are unfeminine;

their sexuality is abhorrent (either hypersexual, asexual; or anti male and sexually

578 D. Herd

123

punitive) their economic and social outlook is similarly deviant (they are predators

or lazy and dependent on public assistance and men). The resulting ‘‘controlling

images’’ of black women as stereotypical mammies, matriarchs, welfare recipients

and ‘‘hot mamas’’ are used to justify black women’s oppression and to normalize

racism, sexism, poverty and other forms of social inequality. Countering and

challenging these controlling images has long been a central focus of black feminist

thought.

These viewpoints have emerged in some social science analyses of sexual images

in rap music. Stephens and Phillips (2003) used this framework and argued that the

basic stereotypes applied to black women historically—e.g. the ‘‘Jezebel, Mammy,

Matriarch, and Welfare Mother’’—form the basis of the modern more sexually

explicit and demeaning portrayals of black women as ‘‘Freaks, Gold Diggers, Divas,

Dikes, and Baby Mamas’’ in rap music today. In fact they argue that despite the

availability of a diversity of images for black women, the substance of media

portrayals has changed little over the past century. Furthermore, these authors state

that Hip Hop is a male oriented cultural space in which controlling images of black

women are mediated through a patriarchal framework that ‘‘includes sexism and

both the physical and emotional abuse of women’’, p 37.

In contrast other theorists, primarily those focusing on female rappers (Roberts

1991; Troka 2002; Goodall 1994; Pough 2007; Rose 1990; Shelton 1997; Skeggs

1993; Phillips et al. 2005) have identified counter narratives in this music which do

several things: promote women’s right to assert their own desires for sexual

fulfillment and pleasure apart from meeting the needs of men or being controlled by

them (Roberts 1991; Goodall 1994; Rose 1990; Skeggs 1993); resist patterns of

sexual objectification (Rose 1990; Skeggs 1993): promote women’s independence

and economic prowess (Troka 2002; Oware 2007) provide critiques of male

dominance (Troka 2002), and sexual and domestic violence (Troka 2002; Oware

2007). Tricia Rose’s (1994) earlier work asserts that rap music is heterogeneous and

fluid rather than monolithic with respect to female images of sexuality and gender

relationships, and that men and women rappers have rapport and are in dialogue

together. One of her central arguments centers on the sexual empowerment of

women to not only hold the ultimate power to control male sexuality, but to also

enjoy sexual expression, play, and innuendo without the need for sanctioning

through romance and dating. In fact, Rose’s explanation of misogyny in men’s rap

lyrics focuses on men’s fears and anxieties regarding women’s ability to control

heterosexual sex. In addition, she described a broader range of empowering

activities through which female rappers expressed feminist agendas—e.g. support-

ing and protecting women; responding to the needs and perspectives of working and

lower class urban women; redefining stereotypes of derogatory female images to use

them as images of female agency and empowerment.

Other important strains of feminist theory in this tradition emphasize the role of

women rappers in defying broader structural forces such as sexism and racism that

oppress black women and men. For example Shelton (1997) agues that women

rappers subvert traditional roles and the focus on the nuclear family through

presenting unmarried women enjoying motherhood—images which undermine

images of the welfare mother and combat the Norplant era ideology. Skeggs (1993)

Gender and Sexuality in Rap Music 579

123

asserts that women rappers ‘‘defiantly speak to the system of institutionalized and

hegemonic masculinity that places all women as objects through the representa-

tional processing of masculine fear and fantasy’’ p. 301. In her view women rappers

display assertive sexuality to liberate themselves from moralizing and victimizing

discourses promoted within the society as a whole. In fact Skeggs’ states that while

all music objectifies women, rap music is the only genre that responds to or protests

those views. Making similar points, Phillips (2005) identifies three strands that

define women’s oppositional voices in rap music—‘‘talking back to men in defense

of women and demanding respect for women; women’s empowerment, self-help

and solidarity; and defense of black men against the larger society’’ p. 261. Song

lyrics expressing these points include dialoguing (dissin) songs between black

women and men (e.g. Roxanne songs); songs critiquing domestic violence; and the

‘‘ride or die songs’’ showing black women’s loyalty to their men opposed to the

society or criminal justice system.

In sum, feminist analyses of black women’s roles and portrayals in rap music and

rap music videos are polarized with respect to critiques of hegemonic controlling

images identified in the Hill-Collins framework, in contrast to the frames of

resistance and empowerment emphasized by hip hop scholars and feminist writers

such as Rose (1994) in her earlier work. Emerson (2002) and Oware (2007) both

attempt to reconcile these conflicting viewpoints through empirical analyses of rap

music videos and music lyrics. Emersons’s qualitative analysis of 38 music videos

concludes that they reflect features of both perspectives—e.g. the ideological

controlling image of the hypersexual ‘‘jezebel’’ as well images of agency,

independence, strength, and autonomy. Emerson also points out that the videos

often feature reversals of the traditional focus on female bodies from the male gaze.

Instead he notes that the videos have in common ‘‘the construction of the male body,

and particularly the black male body, as the object of Black female pleasure’’,

p. 131. In addition he states that the videos show mutual sexual fulfillment with

women’s sexual pleasure predominating. Oware’s (2007) analysis of 44 popular

songs by women rappers showed that their songs differed from men’s in more

frequent references to empowering lyrics about women. However he emphasizes

that some of these lyrics undermine empowering messages by strong sexual themes

that ‘‘self-objectify and self-exploit, seemingly employing a male gaze’’, p. 790.

Images of Masculinity in Rap Music

For the most part, scholars agree that images of manhood in rap music are

hypersexual, misogynistic, and violent. However, these writers offer different

explanations to account for these portrayals. They include the importance of

historical controlling images (Hill-Collins); sociology of black life in the ghetto

with a major sub-theme of strained relationships between African American men

and women; media constructions of black male sexuality and the impact of

corporate influences on rap music.

A few scholars locate the origins of misogynistic rap music in larger structural

forces such as capitalism and patriarchy which are mediated through racism, elitism

580 D. Herd

123

and sexism (Adams and Fuller 2006) or as part of the general valorization of

masculinity and cultural resistance to feminism (Weitzer and Kubrin 2009). For

example, Bell hooks (2006) states that the ‘‘sexist, misogynist, patriarchal ways of

thinking and behaving that are glorified in gangsta rap are a reflection of the

prevailing values in our society, values created and sustained by white-supremacist

capitalist patriarchy’’ (p. 135). In her view, hedonistic consumerism that richly

rewards young black men for lyrics promoting violence and misogyny is one avenue

through which these values are propagated. Hooks argues that this process mirrors

the essence of mainstream culture, which in her words ‘‘would not lead us to place

gangsta rap on the margins of what this nation is about but at the center. Rather than

seeing it as a subversion or disruption of the norm, we would need to see it as the

embodiment of the norm’’ (p. 137). From her perspective, members of white

mainstream culture are not concerned about misogyny and sexual violence

unleashed on black women and children, but only become uncomfortable when

young white consumers use it to rebel against bourgeois values.

Important themes in this literature trace the images of black male hypersexuality

and violence in rap music to the social construction of black sexuality during

slavery and post reconstruction segregation as part of the apparatus of institution-

alized racism (West 2001). Hill-Collins (2004) pivotal works describes the creation

of the stereotype of the ‘‘black buck’’ that embodied images of black men as ‘‘tamed

beasts’’—wild, violent, unintelligent and hypersexual beings used to justify

domination and labor exploitation under chattel slavery in the mid nineteenth

century (pages 56–57). After reconstruction, the image of the black man as a hyper

sexual rapist possessed by the insatiable desire for white women emerged in era of

wide spread lynching. These images helped fuel the campaigns for disfranchisement

and provided ideological support for extreme anti-black terrorism (Herd 1985).

Media and Folklore Images

Studi

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