The Growth of Hip-Hop

Hood to Hollywood,Lust to Love

“ Ay yo I got a resolution This year I’m playing right/ No six fifteen this year/ Yea you can stay the night/ we can go bowling it ain’t like before/ Can’t y’all see that I’m growing? I was so immature” says Jay-Z referring to his once misogynistic and objectifying attitude towards women. Hip-Hop is a world where bicep flexing, gun toting, aggressive, patriarchal attitude possessing males seem to not be able to express any sensitivity, respect, or admiration toward the opposite sex. Well it seems like the new attitude of contemporary rappers is making it cool to trade in the playa cards for wedding bands. The aesthetics and visuals of the videos are changing as well along with the attitudes. The videos are changing, we once saw cash throwing rap matriarchs inebriated off Cristal, their head surrounded by marijuana clouds, bandanna hanging, fitted cap titlted, shiny chrome firearm tucked under a couture Gucci print belt with $3,000 dollar bottles of champagne. Funny that it is not even being drunk, rather the contents are being poured from the bottle onto the bodies of voluptuous scantily clad females dancing on the pole, objectification which almost reminds me of a chef pouring basting butter to on a rotisserie chicken, which notes the extremely objectifying image it could create. Bell hooks candidly speaks about this expected form of gender role within the culture.

“they know if they can make a million dollars talking about how they want to fuck a woman…..the capitalistic forces that drive these men are going to make them go for the gusto (money)” she says as she talks about the misogynistic and anti-feminist sentiments that males in Hip-hop for years have clinged onto harder than the stack of rubber banded hundreds in their video. Though it seems the climate is changing and gender roles are being queered and the same misogyny based premise can no longer to apply to all of hip-hop videos. Now the visual picture painted depicts a whip cream white G5 Private jet being unloaded by one rapper and his one special lady. Affectionate stares between the two as he hands over the keys to a fleet of exotic European luxury vehicles parked at the strip, as he handles her butter leather louie vuitton bags to the back seat. A move which would’ve got your playa card revoked with three years pimp probation years ago. Though now it is cool as everyone from Jay-Z to Fat Joe to 50 cent does it. Like T.I. and Lil Wayne express on their hit singles though “everyone knows it aint tricking if you got it!”. Then you look at the lyrics and it expresses the same sentiments, “ So I put her car in park, and never let her cry alone/ I listen to her heartbeat cuz it plays my favorite song!” declares Wayne, the admiration is no longer in financial gifts but verbal and emotional expression. Hip-Hop is finally is jumping over the gender hurdle over the finish line of misogyny to get its’ grown man on. They are showing sensitivity, vulnerability, emotional attachment, and respect to the females they once degraded in the expected gender roles, and even admitting mistakes “ They say you can’t turn a bad girl good/ but once a good girl has gone bad, she’s gone forever, I mourn forever, shit I got to live with the fact I did you wrong forever” admits Jay-Z on Song Cry. Though now they have learned and giving their special someone “Whatever You Like” as T.I. proclaims “my chick can have whatever she wants, and go up in the store and buy any bag she wants”.

It’s basically the same idea you get when you saw the once dating but now married Jay-z and Beyonce, hard to imagine for a guy who once stated “Shit I..parts with nothin, y'all be frontin Me give my heart to a woman? Not for nothin, never happen I'll be forever mackin”. The transformation has shown that there has been tremendous growth in the expectations of gender roles in Hip-Hop, North or South, Jay-z or Wayne, Conscious or Crunk. They have reformed and found a new attitude as they reflect and declare “they love it when im hard on hoes/ they say a G don’t give a bitch keys or security codes/I agree BUT my lady aint no bitch , she gets whatever I own, so when you see understand that’s me nigga, understand im the same O.G. nigga, I know the difference between a bitch and a B nigga” – Jay-Z