Please find,( I already find a pdf article, read it), summarize, and post a PDF of a peer-reviewed academic article that deals with hip hop and feminism. For your summary and analysis, please answer the following questions:

• Who wrote the article?
• What is their position on the subject?
• Do you agree with their position?
• What kind of evidence do they use to support their claims/critiques/observations about hip hop and feminism?
• This portion of the response should be about two paragraphs and include at least two quotations from the text..
• The first part (posting and summarizing) is due on Wednesday before noon.
• Please post your article as a PDF (see below for details)

****Note: In order to receive full credit, you must save the article as a PDF and attach it to your summary. Do not post the URL. Remember, other people need to be able to access your article easily. Providing access to the PDF is part of your assignment and you will lose points for not following directions. 

What It Do, Shorty?: Women, Hip-Hop, and a Feminist Agenda

Author(s): Gwendolyn D. Pough

Source: Black Women, Gender + Families , Vol. 1, No. 2 (Fall 2007), pp. 78-99

Published by: University of Illinois Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/blacwomegendfami.1.2.0078

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/blacwomegendfami.1.2.0078

What It Do, Shorty?: Women, Hip-Hop, and a
Feminist Agenda

Gwendolyn D. Pough, Syracuse University

Abstract

This essay examines spaces within hip-hop culture where hip-hop feminist thought
and activism might make significant interventions. It offers an exploratory exami-
nation of hip-hop feminism in an effort to map out an agenda for the twenty-first
century. The essay is not concerned with hard-and-fast answers to the combination
of feminism and hip-hop but rather with what hip-hop feminism might add to cur-
rent conversations surrounding race, class, gender, and sexuality. By examining the
conscious/commercial rap dichotomy, the discussions surrounding video models,
lyrics by rapper Jean Grae, and the work of contemporary women authors, this essay
opens the door for further dialogue about women, rap, and hip-hop feminism.

I know I’m on the right path
To who I’m gonna be at last
So don’t rush me
I know I’m wrong and right
At the same time both, I’m the dark and light
And they say life means everything to live
At the same time I got everything to give
So don’t rush me
Don’t rush me

Jean Grae, “Don’t Rush Me”

Trying to capture the voice of all that is young black female was impossible.
My goal, instead, was to tell my truth as best I could from my vantage point
on the spectrum. And then get you to talk about it. This book by its lone-
some won’t give you the truth. Truth is what happens when your cumulative
voices fill in the breaks, provide the remixes, and rework the chorus.

Joan Morgan, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop
Feminist Breaks it Down

Black Women, Gender, and Families Fall 2007, Vol. 1, No. 2 pp. 78–99

©2007 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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T
he epigraphs from rapper Jean Grae and hip-hop feminist Joan Morgan
hint at the varieties and contradictions embedded in hip-hop femi-
nism.1 The third-wave feminist leanings, along with black feminist and

womanist agendas, make for a study in shifts and unevenness. The third wave
represents the generation of feminists that hip-hop feminism is a part of.
This generation of feminists is best represented theoretically in anthologies
such as Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation (Findlen 1995),
To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism (Walker
1995), The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism (Labaton
and Martin 2004), Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism
(Hernandez and Rehman 2002), and Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism
for the 21st Century (Dicker and Piepmeier 2003). The black feminist and
womanist agendas are agendas that hip-hop feminists, the majority of whom
are black women, share with their foremothers who saw their struggles with
gender oppression as intimately connected to their struggles with race and
class oppressions. They were women whose agendas kept firmly in sight
the survival of the entire people. A hip-hop state of mind—one that freely
samples, mixes, and remixes—influences the theoretical underpinnings of
hip-hop feminism as well as the activism of hip-hop feminists. This essay
highlights some of the ways hip-hop feminist agendas have taken shape while
always keeping in mind, as the epigraphs from Jean Grae and Joan Morgan
show, there won’t be just one truth but multiple ones. In fact, sometimes the
contradictions that make for the “wrong and right . . . dark and light” of it
will help feminists to better do what Joan Morgan suggests feminism needs
to do—be “brave enough to fuck with the grays” (1999, 59). This essay is an
exploratory essay that seeks to examine the various articulations of hip-hop
feminist expressions as a way to provide a starting point and possible template
for a hip-hop feminist agenda.
Women have been representing in hip-hop culture ever since the mid-
1970s, when the culture got its start in the South Bronx, and they represent
still. They have been and still are B-girls, women breakers, graffiti artists, dee-
jays, and emcees. Today, we can add to the mix women writing and thinking
about the culture who call themselves hip-hop feminists. I take the stance that
hip-hop is a cultural phenomenon that expands beyond rap music. Hip-hop
has been defined by many as a way of life that encompasses everything from
way of dress to manner of speech. Hip-hop as a culture originally included
graffiti writing, deejaying, break dancing, rap music, and the oft-forgotten
fifth element, knowledge. It has recently expanded to include genres such as
film, spoken word, autobiographies, literature, journalism, and activism. It

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has also expanded enough to include its own brand of feminism. The writing
of third-wave black feminist writers such as Ayana Byrd, Denise Cooper, Eisa
Davis, Eisa Nefertari Ulen, Shani Jamilla, dream hampton, Joan Morgan, Tara
Roberts, Kristal Brent-Zook, and Angela Ards is expanding black feminist
theory and black women’s intellectual traditions in fascinating ways. What
started out as a few young black feminist women who loved hip-hop and
who tried to mesh that love with their feminist and womanist consciousness
is now a rich body of articles, essays, poetry, and creative nonfiction. But
what exactly is a hip-hop feminist? And what does hip-hop feminism do? I
maintain that although we now have a relatively clear idea of what constitutes
a hip-hop feminist, we are less certain about what a hip-hop feminist agenda
should be.
Hip-hop feminists are women and men who step up and speak out against
gender exploitation in hip-hop. From the Feminism and Hip-Hop Conference
at the University of Chicago in 2005 to the B-Girl Be conferences in Minneapo-
lis and countless symposiums and smaller conferences on the status of women
in hip-hop to the list serves and Yahoo groups devoted to women, feminism,
and hip-hop, there appears to be a surge in women and men thinking and
talking about gender issues in hip-hop and combining that talk with action.
From the publication of several key essays and Joan Morgan’s pivotal book
When Chickenheads Come Home To Roost in the 1990s to the Spelman women
who wanted to initiate a dialogue with Nelly to Essence Magazine’s “Take
Back the Music” campaign, we can begin to see the ways this movement’s
knowledge-building and consciousness-raising have taken shape. It might be
too soon to talk about the impact that the movement has had, but it is not too
soon to think about some of the key concerns and agendas that the movement
seems to be taking up. I aim to flesh some of this out by building on some of
the work that I did in my book Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood,
Hip-Hop Culture and the Public Sphere (2004) and by examining a few areas
where women have used hip-hop to claim a public voice. I want to look at the
spaces where hip-hop feminism can make interventions as starting points for
a possible feminist agenda in hip-hop. However, they will not all be feminist
spaces or even have outright feminists messages. Instead, they are spaces where
hip-hop feminists, activists, and thinkers can possibly evoke change.
Krista Ratcliffe (2006) writes about giving her students a feminist lit-
eracy through which to read society. Elaine Richardson carefully details the
ways in which the young women who listen to and love hip-hop process the
images and have thoughtful and critical conversations about the culture and
the music when she examines female hip-hop literacies in her book Hiphop

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Literacies (2006). And it has me thinking seriously about what a hip-hop
feminist literacy would allow us to do and why we need one. Thinking of
recent controversies such as Don Imus calling the Rutgers women’s basket-
ball team “nappy-headed hoes” and Michael Richards’s meltdown in which
he boldly and blatantly brandished the n-word at black men he thought
were hecklers and the quick way just about everyone quickly made a move
to blame hip-hop has me seriously considering what a worldwide hip-hop
feminist literacy could give us in these situations. Would we continue to have
conversations that blame rappers for white racist men doing what white rac-
ist men do all day every day? Or would we instead be able to really look at
the nuances of the situation and see, for example, that while there was some
racism underlying Imus’s statement, the sexism and underlying homophobia
were palpable. And like racism, the sexism and homophobia predates hip-
hop in Imus’s politics and certainly in this country that deals with both on
a regular. But even as we had these conversations and teased out these issues
with our hip-hop feminist lens, we would still be able to critique hip-hop
for its sexism and homophobia as well. We just wouldn’t blame hip-hop
when people old enough to know better show their true colors, colors they
have been showing all along. The fact is that young women who listen to
rap music and participate in hip-hop culture already have critiques of sex-
ism and misogyny. They have things to say about the culture and the world
around them if we are prepared to listen. This essay is therefore an attempt at
understanding what they might offer the larger society the next time we have
such public pedagogical moments as those offered by Imus and Richards.

So, Shorty’s a Feminist?

Several black and third-wave feminists have started to approach the tenuous
relationship between rap music/hip-hop culture and feminism in their writ-
ing. They offer a variety of different feminist perspectives on rap, rappers,
and women. Some condemn the sexism in rap and encourage others to do
the same. Others offer complicated analyses that critique the larger societal
issues that contribute to rap’s sexism, production, and consumption. Some
offer third-wave feminist critiques that question how one can be a child of
the hip-hop generation, love the music, and still critique and actively speak
out against the sexism. They all offer examples of how feminists have begun
to deal with, think about, and write about rap music and hip-hop culture.
Most hip-hop feminists believe that some of the needs of the hip-hop
generation require new strategies and different voices. They have a strong

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relationship to the “self,” and they connect their personal narratives with
theoretical underpinnings and critique. They hold themselves and their peers
responsible for effecting change in the present and future by encouraging
people to recognize and combat their own complicity. In terms of rap music
and hip-hop culture, they want to find ways to move beyond counting the
amount of times a particular rapper says the word “bitch” or “ho” to a focus
on what they consider to be larger issues and concerns. For example, they
also want to begin to complicate understandings of women’s complicity in
the objectification of women especially as it pertains to video-hoes. And as
Joan Morgan reminds us, “the focus of Black feminists has got to change.
We can’t afford to keep expending energy on banal discussion of sexism in
rap when sexism is only part of a huge set of problems” (1999, 76). They
are concerned with and spend a lot of time writing about black women’s
relationships with black men. They want to encourage a dialogue between
black men and women, men rappers and women.
A hip-hop feminist is more than just someone who likes to listen to rap
music and feels conflicted about it. A hip-hop feminist is someone who is
immersed in hip-hop culture and experiences hip-hop as a way of life. Hip-hop
as a culture, in turn, influences his or her worldview or approach to life. In fact,
one of the reasons why Elaine Richardson, Aisha Durham, Rachel Raimist, and
I decided to edit Home Girls Make Some Noise: A Hip-Hop Feminism Anthol-
ogy (2007) was because we wanted to think about hip-hop feminism beyond
the conflicted, “I’m a feminist and I love hip-hop, woe-is-me” standpoint. We
wanted to create a space to talk across disciplines through activism, the arts,
and academia to better understand the very important and vital work going
on in this area. Hip-hop feminists are working as community activists. They
are working for reproductive justice. And they are trying to think about ways
to combat the growing prison-industrial complex in relation to women of
color and the equally astounding HIV/AIDS rates. And they are also still very
much concerned with representations of women of color in rap music videos
and the harm that these images can do. So, I want to move now to one area
that hip-hop feminism continues to grapple with: the video vixen.

Shorty Wants to be a Star: Video Vixens Representing
Women of Color?

In her groundbreaking book, Prophets of the Hood, Imani Perry notes the
following about the recent trends in hip-hop music videos: “It seemed to
happen suddenly. Every time one turned on BET (Black Entertainment

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Television) or MTV, one encountered a disturbing music video: Black men
rapped surrounded by dozens of black and Latina women dressed in bath-
ing suits, or scantily clad in some other fashion. Video after video proved
the same, each one more objectifying than the former. Some took place
in strip clubs, some at the pool, at the beach, or in hotel rooms, but the
recurrent theme was dozens of half-naked women” (2004, 175). With the
release of Karrine Steffans’s tell-all memoir, Confessions of a Video Vixen
(2005), the topic of women, music videos, and objectification is once again
on everyone’s minds. But even more so, the questions surrounding objec-
tification have become complicated in important ways. No longer can we
make claims about what is happening to the women in the videos without
complicating the discussion by adding their voices. Although Steffans says
that she wrote the book as a cautionary tale for little girls who want to grow
up and be video girls, the book reads more like a how-to with just enough
name-dropping and gossip to fill inquiring minds. In fact, with the release
of It’s No Secret by Carmen Bryan, rapper Nas’s ex-girlfriend and the mother
of his child, it seems as if some marketing person in the publishing industry
figured out a way to capitalize on mixing the current Zane-inspired erotica
fervor with hip-hop glitterati in order to cater to a gossip-obsessed culture
and recent trends in reality programming. These kinds of books appeal to a
variety of people because of the way they play into the genres listed above.
However, what does come across clearly as one reads the Steffans’s memoir
and Bryan’s tell-all are the ways in which some women have chosen to buy
into the sexism and misogyny that limits the roles that women can play in
hip-hop culture.
The issues of representation and objectification in hip-hop offer many
variables that all must be considered if we are going to have a meaningful
conversation about the topic. The ways in which the men artists and male
and female video directors objectify the women in their lyrics and videos is
one aspect. The ways in which the women video models and hip-hop artists
choose to objectify themselves in a quest to make money and earn a living
is another. And the way these images straddle the very thin line between
validation of black women bodies and objectification is yet another aspect.
The truth of the matter is that we are now in a historical moment where
the bodies of women of color flood popular culture in ways that they never
have before. As hip-hop culture expands and dominates mainstream popu-
lar culture, the hip-hop video becomes more than just a music video. The
impact of these videos on women of color is vast. Hip-hop music videos are
spreading representations of U.S. women of color around the globe.

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I have written elsewhere that hip-hop culture did not spring up full grown
on its own and that it builds on other legacies that exist in the culture and the
community that we are not always willing to own (see Pough 2001). Others
have noted that hip-hop does not exist in a social-cultural vacuum, that as
a part of the larger culture it takes on elements of the larger culture as well
(see Potter 1995; Rose 1994). So when we look at the hip-hop centerfolds
that exist in Source Magazine and XXL, with their monthly “Dime Piece”
and “Eye Candy” sections, we cannot discuss them in isolation and certainly
not without at least mentioning the long-running Jet Magazine “Beauty of
the Week.” And when we talk about the ways in which hip-hop videos are
similar to pornography, we cannot have the conversation without looking
at the ways in which pornography has infiltrated the larger culture as well.
Can you say “girls gone wild”?
None of this is meant to take away from the damage that these porno-
graphic images of women of color in hip-hop do. What I do want to look
at, however, are the ways in which these tropes impact our thoughts about
women of color and how they in turn impact the lives of young women. The
words of women like Zulaika Jumaralli (2005) who claim “Music Videos
Broke My Spirit” come to mind as I think about the power of these videos and
the impact that they have. I think of women like the black women students
at Duke, who, outraged by the recent alleged gang rape of a black woman by
white members of the university lacrosse team, loudly proclaim, that they
are “not your video ho.” In an article written by Fiona Morgan (2006), these
students share stories of being expected to be sexually available and inap-
propriately propositioned by white men on campus just because of their race.
One student says, “As a black female, you go to a party. You’re expected to
dance. You’re expected to be sexually provocative. You are expected to want
to be touched, to be grabbed, to be fondled.” Another student adds, “As if
they’re reenacting a rap video or something. As if we’re their video ho, basi-
cally. We can’t just be regular students here. We can’t just go to a party and
enjoy ourselves” (F. Morgan 2006). As much as we try to move away from
allowing negative images to impact our lives, there are real implications that
we need to contend with. Add to this the multiple stories of black women
who have traveled to other parts of the world only to be approached as if
they are a video vixen by the men in the countries they are visiting, and we
can see how far these attitudes about women of color extend.
I also think about the hip-hop feminist warriors who are bringing wreck
in the public sphere by talking back—women like the Spelman women, who
wanted to initiate a dialogue with Nelly after viewing his derogatory video

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“Tip Drill,” only to have that attempt at dialogue stilted and to receive criti-
cism themselves for being elitist college women looking down their noses
at the women who are making an honest living in the video and the poor
artist who only wants to share his art with the world. While I offer the state-
ments above in a tongue-in-cheek manner, several interviews in which Nelly
spoke about his “ordeal” painted the Spelman women in this way. I am also
informed by hip-hop feminist writers like Karen R. Good, who, fed-up with
the whole images, representation, and objectification debates, offers her own
treatise:

But as of late, many of hip-hop’s children have been playing the cheapest
trick: depending on undulating female, colored bodies to entice weak minds
and compensate for weak rhymes. Or our bodies are used for verbal target
practice. I am way past anger. Shock went the way of “Bitches Ain’t Shit.”
Don’t feel like being sad. I just wonder about the worth of a black girl. You
know, like the difference between what happens when little white girls go
missing and little black girls go missing. Or get raped. Pissed on. That type
of shit. . . . That said, not one more lecture. I put my hands up. Man, if you
want to swipe a credit card down the crack of a woman’s behind, or Miss,
if you want to let yo ass be the machine, fine. To each his own. The culprit
is not hip-hop, which is undergoing a beautiful evolution, by the way (hear
Mos Def’s “The Rape Over”), it’s our reliance on the baser nature as opposed
to the higher mind. Hip-hop is the thinker’s form. (2005, 29–30)

As I think about the video vixen and her relationship to a hip-hop feminist
agenda, I do so keeping the fervor and the sentiment of these very differ-
ent responses to the images in mind. As the black women students at Duke
remind us, the images have the power to hurt. As the negative backlash to
the Spelman women shows us, when we speak out or try to initiate a dia-
logue, we open ourselves up for criticism. And as Karen Good reminds us,
the images are not the sum and total of hip-hop and certainly not what is
representative of the culture, which is in constant evolution. But they do exist
and we do need to interrogate them. And when we do, we need to add to the
mix the voices, stories, and reasons these women give for participating in
the objectification. Only then will we get a more nuanced and complicated
discussion of the video vixen.
By adding their voices, we indeed get a discussion that highlights the
gray areas that Joan Morgan writes about. These women see the videos as
their entry into the world of stardom. They are aspiring actresses, models,
singers, and even rappers themselves. They gladly pose in the magazines and
preen in the videos, and the best and brightest of them are paid very well

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to do so. Some even make up to $3,000 a day.2 These are not necessarily the
poor, victimized women of old. Some of them have a critique of the busi-
ness, and they recognize their role in a society in which sex sells. Video girl
Tawny, interviewed by Jeanne Amber for Essence Magazine, notes: “If video
girls are being exploited, then every female artist who is out there being sexy
should be blamed too. To me, it’s all bull——” (Amber 2005, 165). Former
video model, BET host, and entrepreneur Melyssa Ford notes of her own
career and decisions:

I’m the highest-paid video girl to date. I’ve endured all the snide comments
and ignorant remarks from people who presume to know me because I’m
on their television screens and in the pages of their magazines. But I’m not
the promiscuous twit I’m often mistaken for. I am a business-woman who
has used videos to launch a multimedia career. My product is me. Besides
being the lead girl in hip-hop and R&B videos, I am a sex columnist for a
men’s magazine. I star in my own DVD. I’ve hosted television shows, and
I’ve produced my own calendar, which I sell on the internet. My job is to
sell fantasy and perfection. When the cameras go on, I detach myself and
play the sexy vixen who will turn a nigga out. (quoted in Byrd and Solomon
2005, 219–20)

The fact is, these women are making decisions—decisions informed by a
variety of variables—to be in these videos, to pose for these magazines. While
I do not pretend that their decision-making takes away from the systems of
oppression surrounding them that make not making the decision to objectify
themselves difficult, I do not want to ignore the agency, real or imagined,
that these women have. How does their agency complicate our discussions of
objectification? I don’t pretend to have the answer to this, and I don’t even
want to suggest that there is one cut-and-dry answer. But I do know that
as feminists, we can no longer have these conversations without including
their voices and their stories. And when we add their voices and stories to the
mix, they bring with them those dark and light, wrong and right mixtures
that Jean Grae raps about and the subtle shades of gray that Joan Morgan
writes about.
The video vixen’s agency is important, and the work of visual artist Aya-
nah Moor adds layers to this conversation by thinking about the ways these
women may be exhibiting agency even as they participate in the demeaning
videos. Her collection of video shots, “STILL,” is one example of the way
Moor uses her art to complicate the discussion. The text that goes along with
the montage of video stills represented in the collection states:

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STILL Images of women surrounding male rap stars in music videos is as
common as the jewel encrusted subject matter of today’s rap lyrics. Females
are seen in packs hovering around male rap stars, playing the part of enthu-
siastic cheerleader or die-hard groupie. Rap music videos sell not only hip-
hop culture, but also the very image of its women. They serve as eye candy
designed to satisfy an assumed male video audience, affirming critiques of the
culture as hyper masculine and misogynist. STILL is a series of photographs
from contemporary rap music videos. These artworks invite a second look at
the hip-hop video vixen, displaying an interest in moments unintended by
music video narratives. Some stills reveal agency rather than victimization,
while others provide reminders of the narrow representations of women in
hip-hop. (Moor 2006)

Moor’s “STILL,” the hip-hop feminist discussions surrounding video models,
and the video models voices and stories show, I hope, what a rich space the
issues of video images and representation can be if we think about issues of
agency in more complicated ways. Combining these might allow us to bet-
ter interrogate the following questions. For example, what does it mean that
hip-hop has the capability to make a woman a pseudosuperstar, sought after
by magazines and video directors based on solely on how she looks? And
how does this further complicate our understandings of how black women
respond to things like the ideal beauty image? Does the influx of other kinds
of beauty—meaning black and women of color—into the mainstream disrupt
the norm? Does it simply add yet another impossible ideal for women to yearn
for that now makes women of color, particularly black women, vulnerable
in ways that they haven’t been in the past? All of these questions are compli-
cated and warrant far more space than this cursory look at possible hip-hop
feminist agendas allows. But they are spaces in which hip-hop feminism can
make meaningful interventions. I will now move to another space in which
there are possibilities for a hip-hop feminist agenda by examining female
emcee Jean Grae.

Shorty Got Love For the Game: Jean Grae, Hip-Hop, Feminism, and
Change (Or . . . Simply . . . I Wish She Were a Feminist . . .)

What would happen if we had feminist emcees moving millions toward a
critique of gender that motivated them toward change? Why haven’t we
had any women emcees with this kind of feminist agenda? What would
happen if we could harness the power that rap music has to make people
dance and make them work toward change in women’s lives? When studying

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feminism in relation to hip-hop, one thing becomes abundantly clear: most
women emcees are not checking for the F word. They won’t claim it. Won’t
label themselves with it. Will not touch it. This is not to say that there are
no feminist women rappers. However, the fact remains that as much as we
champion and claim certain women rappers for their lyrics, their outreach
activities, their “positive” messages, or their “prowoman” messages, very
few women rappers will go on record saying that they are feminist.
Taking a page from black feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins, who in her
essay “What’s in a Name? Womanism, Black Feminism, and Beyond” (1999)
ultimately comes to the conclusion that quibbling over what we call ourselves
is less important than the work we do to evoke change, I posit that while we
cannot in good conscience place the label of “feminist”—hip-hop, third-
wave, black feminist, or womanist—on most contemporary women rappers,
we can—as feminist scholars and activists—use the music they produce and
the issues they raise to begin to enact change. In this regard, rising hip-hop
artist Jean Grae becomes an interesting case study for hip-hop feminism even
if she denounces feminism for herself: “I’m not a feminist by any means, I
just want people to enjoy the music” (Thomas 2004). In much of her music
to date—her two CDs, Attack of the Attacking Things: The Dirty Mixes and
This Week, as well as her EP, The Bootleg of the Bootleg—we can easily see the
concerns of hip-hop feminists put to music.
Grae’s two albums and EP have garnered critical acclaim, and just about
every review I have read noted her stellar lyrics and vocal delivery but
bemoaned the production and the lack of killer beats. What comes across in
most interviews is the fact that she is going to make music and have a career
on her own terms. We won’t see her taking off her clothes to sell records. But
she is quick to stop interviewers who want to label her the Anti–Lil’ Kim,
Anti–Foxy Brown, or Anti-Trina. She does not have a problem with her fellow
women rappers. She has a problem with an industry that won’t allow a fullness
of black womanhood to be represented. She notes: “You know what, that’s not
me. That’s not how I live. And that’s not how I do. But there are females that
do. I think it’s messed up that there is not an opportunity for someone who is
not doing that to have an equal chance. And that is the problem. It’s like there
has to be some choice . . . have some other shit. Balance it all out. Apparently
for some odd reason, that is not allowed” (Bloom 2004). She knows what she is
willing to do and she knows what she has to offer: “I want to break the formula,
and make history for myself. I want people to know I’m a skilled writer and
lyricist that isn’t afraid to be honest. I’m stubborn. I refuse to change myself

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for a machine” (Dyer 2004). I have to admit, when it comes to hip-hop, I am
all about the lyrics. The beat is important, yes—couldn’t be a true hip-hop
head and not acknowledge that. But the beat is not going to make me buy the
record. In fact, I’m much more excited when the beat takes me back to the
essence, the simple boom bap. So, the reviews that bemoaned the lack of cut-
ting-edge production and beats on Jean Grae’s CDs didn’t faze me. Her lyrics
blew me away. Her lyrics, style, and delivery are like one part Jigga, two parts
Nas, a healthy dose of gender consciousness, race consciousness, and, lo and
behold, a pinch of a global awareness for good measure.
On her first album, Attack of the Attacking Things, Jean Grae critiques
the sexism in hip-hop. In the song “Knock” she raps, “Ask me bastard if
I’m signed / I rhyme sick / but niggas is quick to turn they back on spitters
with clits / Hit em with this, and ridiculous phrase flow that exit my lips
/ Hey yo, I mean my face, though / they still want chicks with tits and ass
out / my respect is worth more than your advance cash-out.” In the song
“What Would I Do?” she raps: “I’m Jean Grae, honorable team player for
years / Emceeing on the low, in videos devoid of the hoes / For sho’ it’s
crunch time / I’m the one they sent to piss your label off / they won’t fuck
with me unless I’m parading and taking it off.” She is very conscious of
the sexism in the music industry and the exploitation of women in par-
ticular. And her lyrics and her interviews show that she is raging against
that machine.
Perhaps what is most worthy of mention is the way that the song “What
Would I Do?” aims to inspire change. The chorus asks: “What, what, what
would I do? / If like my people said, I left it to you. / Tell me what, what, what
would I do. / If I didn’t try a verse, if I didn’t rhyme. / Tell me what, what,
what would I do. / If I just hated and did nothing to change it” The chorus
makes the listeners question themselves as well. For all of us complaining
about the status of hip-hop, what are we doing to change it? Listening to
Attack of the Attacking Things is almost like reading Joan Morgan’s When
Chickenheads Come Home to Roost. Although the outright feminist agenda
is missing from Jean Grae’s album, the themes that come out in Morgan’s
book about the need for change and the vulnerability of wanting to be loved
are all there.
Perhaps the most poignant representation of a hip-hop feminist state of
mind and potential agenda comes across in the song “P.S.” from Grae’s latest
CD, This Week. The song is a series of e-mails, which are basically apologies
to people she has wronged in the past, a friend she betrayed, a lover she

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cheated on, and herself. The song calls to mind the hip-hop feminist need
to question our complicity in our oppression. She questions it and owns it.
In the last verse she raps:

Dear Jean
I see you’re doing big things
Congratulations, hey I even saw that big ring
Who would of thunk it huh? LOL
You even seem content
I notice that you’re more focused
Drinking less as well
Anyways it’s been too many months having henny days
I think it’s plenty brave, plus you get your pennies saved up
And say what?!? Second album?
Whatever happened to the thought of ending rapping?
Still living in Manhattan?
Sidetracking note, just on the low
All apologies, I used to hate your fucking guts
Please pardon me, tried to kill you more than once
I’ve acted horribly, and all my pessimism towards your life
Still bothers me
But you’re a big girl now
You’ve fought and made it through
Best of luck homie
And everything I say is true
XOXO Space Smiley Face dot dot dot Comma Much Love, you

The fact that the speaker in this rap is writing this particular e-mail to her
“self ” is telling; it brings to mind many questions about how young black
women internalize the negative influences bombarding them. Hip-hop femi-
nist writings have dealt with some of these issues. What has been criticized
as a self-absorption and an excessive focus on the individual in most hip-
hop feminist writings is really a genuine concern and a search for meaning,
particularly what it means to be a young woman in often dangerous urban
environments; what it means to be a woman who participates in and loves
a culture that doesn’t always love you; and how you deal with it when some
of the hatred aimed at you becomes internalized and affects how you treat
others and how you feel about yourself. Jean Grae’s “P.S.” is all of those
hip-hop feminist questions and issues put to music. And in a world where
young black women grapple with so many images that objectify and sexualize
them, such artistry is needed. I move now to a discussion of one of the most

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problematic images that young women who listen to contemporary hip-hop
face: the ride-or-die chick.

Shorty Wanna Ride? Ride or Die Chicks and Real Black Girls

But got a women that ain’t afraid
to tuck the toast in the escalade
Pop on niggas that showin me shade
But only for the Rule ’cause that’s my baby
Got me a down ass bitch with red hair, that don’t care
Blazed by the shots and flares
Girl c’mon, follow me, and bust back at police,
Conceal ya heat

Ja Rule, “Down Ass Bitch”

Shorty, you ridin’ with me?
Stic tell ’em bought them RBGs
I like ’em real trill,
Gold in the grill
Cold as Pam Grier
swoll in the rear
Hard, smart, strong in the heart
Sexy thong when we alone in the dark
Dark skin, red bone, slim in the waist
Them legs so long
Queen earth, jean skirt, head wrapped up,
Pimping them converse
And she down for the dirt
For better or for worse
Got my gun in her purse
In case a nigga get searched
She got a mind like Assata
A body like Trina
A heart like my momma
Nigga tell me have you seen her?

Dead Prez, “Real Black Girl (Revolutionary Love)”

Finding a way to combine feminism and hip-hop in politically meaningful
ways is one of the premier goals of hip-hop feminism. This is not easy work.
The negative lyrics of most contemporary hip-hop are enough to make even
the most die-hard hip-hop feminist contemplate giving up the music and
the culture. Articles by dream hampton (2001) and Eisa Nefertari Ulen and
Tara Roberts (2000) both speak volumes about the frustration of being a
hip-hop head who is also a feminist.

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The fastest-growing prison population statistically in this country is black
women. They are going to jail largely because of their relationships with men
who are involved with criminal activities. They are going to jail for things
like smuggling drugs; they are women like Kemba Smith, who simply fell in
love with the wrong man and was too afraid to leave. As Smith recounts, “At
age 24, without so much as a parking ticket on my record, I was sentenced to
more than 24 years in prison—without parole. Technically, I was convicted
of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine, but I contend that I went to jail for
dating a drug dealer.” She was finally pardoned as a last minute act of President
Clinton, but she still feels that justice was not served. She notes, “You’d think
I’d have been doing cartwheels when I was released. Truthfully, my feelings
were in conflict. It was tough to leave behind the incredible women I met in
prison—especially since many of them were victims of the same laws that put
me away” (Booth 2001, 86). The incarceration rate for black women continues
to grow because of the messages young women are getting from the videos.
Messages from contemporary rap lyrics about being a “down ass chick” are
everywhere, and they are not just coming from men. Women rappers also rap
about the illegal things they would do for their men.
In my book (Pough 2004), I critiqued the image of the ride-or-die chick
as it is represented in hip-hop, the girl willing to do whatever she can for
her man, a girl that the lyrics of Ja Rule’s “Down Ass Chick” call to mind. I
urged black feminists in particular to look at these representations as a threat
to young black womanhood and to find ways to have conversations with
young women and reach out to them before we lose an entire generation.
The situation was and still is that dire for me. However, I’d like to complicate
things just a little by thinking about what I see as another version, albeit a
revolutionary version, of the down ass chick. The recent revolutionary but
gangsta messages from rap group Dead Prez have also included some inter-
esting messages for what they call Real Black Girls—girls who are “down for
the dirt, / for better or for worse, / got my gun in a purse / in case a nigga get
searched.”
Given the hip-hop feminist fondness for all things ’70s and revolutionary,
it is easy to see how a RBG (Real Black Girl/Revolutionary but Gangsta) image
is more appealing than a Down Ass Chick. The reggae beat of the song and
the reggae chant of the first stanza calls to mind those Black Panther sisters we
see in all the footage of that time but never hear about. Or the revolutionary
sisters who are still in prison as political prisoners for their acts against the
establishment but whose names we have yet to learn, let alone start a Free
(fill in the blank) Movement for.

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Now, I’m not going to argue that down ass chicks and real black girls are
problematic for the same reasons. That’s not the point of the comparison.
The point of the comparison is to look at the ways in which a mentality of
being down for whatever—even when that whatever is revolution—can add
to the growing black women prison rate. The point is also to complicate
our thinking about hip-hop in ways that stop us from creating dichotomies
that place rappers like Ja Rule in one category labeled commercial, nega-
tive, and therefore bad, and rappers like Dead Prez and others in another
pile labeled conscious, underground, revolutionary, and therefore good.
The point isn’t to single out Dead Prez, because they do build on a legacy
of the Black Power Movement that had its own gender issues to work out.
Even though one would hope that in the twenty-first century conscious
rappers would not be replicating those dated and retrograde ideas in such
problematic ways. And even though I have no problem with the concept
of doing what we have to do for the revolution, per se, I have to ask, if
we are talking about a revolution, then what is my role in it, brother? Is a
woman’s role in the revolution still pussy power and prone and now I have
to conceal your weapon to boot? All of that aside, my point in using Dead
Prez’s “Real Black Girl’s (Revolutionary Love)” as an example is simply
to say that if we are pushing hip-hop feminism forward as a movement
concerned with creating change in the culture and eventually change in the
world, we cannot be one-sided with our critiques. Everyone gets called out
if they need to be called out. Thinking about “Real Black Girls” as a deriva-
tive of the “Down Ass Chick” is one area that we could exam that would
allow us to break apart some of the false dichotomies between conscious
and commercial hip-hop.
In her novel Picture Me Rollin’ (2005), Black Artemis tells the tale of a
young woman who has been released from jail on a mandatory gun posses-
sion charge. The protagonist, Esperanza, was dating a street entrepreneur who
dabbled in armed robbery when she got caught in the getaway vehicle with a
gun that he gave her. She was the only one out of the crew to serve time, mainly
as a lesson because she refused to testify—to snitch—against the guys. When
the novel opens, Esperanza is being released from jail, and throughout the
novel she grapples with several things. The first is “Thug Life,” an obsession
with rapper Tupac Shakur that is so delusional she thinks that the rapper is
still alive and chilling in Cuba with Assata Shakur. The second is her new-
found knowledge of women of color feminism, thanks to her older sister’s
community college course books. And the third is her old life as a drug dealer
and generic ride-or-die chick for her drug dealer boyfriend Jesus. Esperanza

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tries throughout the novel to make a better life for herself, and Black Artemis
does an excellent job of showing another side—a female side—of growing
up in the urban environments and landscapes made famous by hip-hop.
The character Esperanza offers some insight that we all need to consider
as we grapple with and complicate the down ass chick. In the prologue to the
novel, Esperanza is getting ready to be released from prison and is having
a talk with fellow prisoner and roommate Isoke, a political prisoner jailed
for her activity with the Black Liberation movement. Isoke is trying to get
Esperanza to move beyond an embrace of Tupac’s “Thug Life” in order to
join the larger struggle. Isoke also works in the prison library, so she has given
Esperanza a lot of things to read. At this point, however, if it isn’t related to
Tupac, Esperanza is not really interested in reading it. When Isoke flat-out
asks her if she is going to be a thug or a revolutionary the older political
prisoner lectures to Esperanza: “Because I’m afraid that brother Tupac was
wrong. Thug Life is not the new Black Power. It makes no sense to rage against
the machine without purpose or principle. You cannot be both a gangsta and
a soldier, Esperanza, so you must choose.” In response to this, Esperanza sighs
and thinks “neither ’cause either way I’ll end up back in this muthafucka or
dead.” When Esperanza speaks, she responds, “All I know is that I am never
coming back here” (Artemis 2005, 2). Esperanza’s words bring the connec-
tion between the lyrics of Ja Rule’s “Down Ass Chick” and Dead Prez’s “Real
Black Girls” home in powerful ways. We can see that when it comes down
to it, there really isn’t that much difference between the oppression and the
limitations placed on women; that patriarchy in criminal circles is not better
or worse than patriarchy in revolutionary circles; that patriarchy in gangsta
rap is no worse or better than patriarchy in conscious rap.
What the novel and the lyrics highlight to me is a real need for hip-hop
feminism to be engaged with all aspects of black girls’ lives—we don’t want to
be accused of being irrelevant to young black women in the ways that some of
us have categorized academic black feminism. It makes no sense to pick and
choose images and the artists who create the images and lyrics by deeming
some negative and some positive, all the while creating false dichotomies.
The issues and the artists are much more complicated than these simplistic
readings allow. Rappers like Tupac Shakur, Dead Prez, Common, Mos Def,
and others are nothing if not complicated and sometimes conflicted young
men. A cursory look at their work shows us that. Hip-hop feminism needs
to be bolder in its critiques, even if it means calling out the so-called good
guys every once and a while.

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Shorty Wrote this Book Yo!: Hip-hop and Feminism, Is it Fiction?

In her 2001 novel, The Haunting of Hip-Hop, author, lecturer, and scholar
Bertice Berry tells the chilling tale of a Harlem brownstone haunted by
souls tortured due to U.S. racism and oppression. One of the souls, a former
enslaved African, has a message for the hip-hop generation: “We gave the
drum back to your generation in the form of rap, but it’s being used to send
the wrong message” (Berry 2001). The novel tells the story of rap producer
Harry “Freedom” Hudson and his lawyer Ava Vercher.
If Freedom represents hip-hop in the novel, then Ava represents the con-
sciousness that echoes in hip-hop’s ear and tries to keep it on a righteous
path. Ava Vercher is a new-age Afrocentric womanist with uplift tendencies.
Freedom is a producer who makes two kinds of music: one is the kind of
commercial music record companies want and the other is “music that no
major record label would ever release because it was filled with the messages
of love he longed for and the revolution he dreamed of starting” (Berry 2001,
16). You see that the ghost of the enslaved African has been haunting Freedom
ever since he was a child, and he hopes to influence Freedom to do the right
thing with the drum before it is too late.
I’ve found the most compelling representations of hip-hop feminist rep-
resentations in hip-hop literature. This is not to say that we should discount
the music or the nonfiction writings of hip-hop feminists but simply to offer
other spaces within hip-hop culture in which people are trying to imagine a
better way. I closed Check It While I Wreck It with the call for us all to imagine
a better way to use the culture of hip-hop to enact change. I believe that some
women writers of popular fiction have begun to do just that.
In the “Reader’s Guide: A Conversation with Black Artemis” at the end
of her first novel Explicit Content, Black Artemis defines hip-hop fiction as
fiction “about hip-hop as a subculture, as something that gives people voice
and their lives meaning.” For her, “hip-hop is a form of cultural power and
whether that power is a force for progress or destruction depends on how
people use it, whether you use it on the street or in the studio, for fun or
for profit, to build or destroy” (2004, 338). Of the recent trend to call urban
fiction hip-hop fiction, she notes:

I think that street life should be referred to as street life fiction, period, and
that the term “hip-hop fiction” should be reserved for novels that are about
hip-hop. Eventually, there’ll be some works that can be referred to as both,
but something that has nothing to do with hip-hop subculture should not

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be referred to as hip-hop fiction, especially if it perpetuates the myth that
hip-hop is all about violence, drugs, misogyny, etc. These phenomena are not
the sum total of hip-hop, and hip-hop is not the only subculture in which
those elements exist so it is wrong to treat them as if they are one and the
same. (2004, 339)

Her distinction has caused me to rethink many of my earlier definitions about
what constitutes hip-hop fiction and cinema. The distinction is necessary
and important for those of us looking for ways to more fully use the youth
culture to enact change. And it does not rely on a dichotomy of positive and
negative, conscious and commercial. The work simply has to be about one
of the elements of hip-hop culture to be classified as such.
Black Artemis’s Explicit Content documents the story of two women
rappers, one black and one Latina. The novel explores what it is like to be a
female with rapping skills trying to gain recognition in the music industry. It
follows the women into the world of hip-hop and examines their hopes and
dreams. It’s also a novel about female friendship, with just enough drama
to keep the average hip-hop head focused and interested. The two women
are a rap duo to rival all rap duos until a gangsta rap label comes between
them. Of her work Black Artemis notes, “in these times when hip-hop is
often used as a cultural weapon of destruction, my mission as a hip-hop
artist and activist is to tell stories that relay the power of hip-hop as a tool
of transformative expression” (2004, 340). The activist in her comes across
in her fiction. It is fiction with a mission; in the tradition of the poets and
playwrights of the Black Arts Movement who created art for people’s sake,
Black Artemis’s art has an activist goal and agenda in mind.
Another writer who has political threads in her work is L. A. Banks.
Her Vampire Huntress Legends focus on the life of spoken word artist and
vampire huntress, Damali Richards. She is the Neturu, which means God’s
divine power latent within humans. She is the only Neturu to span two mil-
lennia. Damali uses her art—her spoken word music—to bring the light.
Her lyrics are about hope in a time of hopelessness. And her band is also
her vampire hunting crew. When I asked Banks why she decided to write
horror and focus on vampires, she replied: “I wrote this series because I’m a
mother living in the urban environment—and horror, because I have been
horrified by what I see on the nightly news, and hear on the trolleys and
subways, and by what I read in the newspapers. Vampires—because they
suck blood, in a metaphor, they suck the life-blood out of the community
as predators, and really have no sense of mortality or moral compass. I

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wanted to create a cautionary tale, but one that also delved into the social,
economic, and political infrastructure within our own society that creates
predators” (Pough 2005, 168). Each of the novels in the series uses art to
highlight the pitfalls of excessive materialism. Each of the novels work as
metaphors for the age-old fight between good and evil. However, by mak-
ing Damali a young spoken word artist, Banks is making a huge statement
about the power at hand for young women, the power to change the world.
And as for hip-hop, she hasn’t given up hope. Banks notes, “I see plenty
of room for Hip-hop as an awesome catalyst, and I’m not so ready to give
up on all Hip-hop artists, their messages, or their lyrics. I think what has
happened, as metaphorically alluded to in the novels, is that vampires have
infiltrated the genre of music, have co-opted the culture, and have twisted
it. But there are still some very young, savvy, ready-to-stand-for-their-beliefs
young folk out there. . . . that’s the message, that’s my hope. . . . guess it’s
really my prayer” (Pough 2005, 171). Like Black Artemis, L. A. Banks has a
mission in her art, and that mission is in line with many of the goals that
hip-hop feminists have set out. Their novels offer hope and a spark for hip-
hop culture, at least in terms of having a political mission aimed at change.
Race, class, sex, gender, and the intersections of these are present in this
new fiction in startling, surprising, and uplifting ways. Writers like L. A.
Banks and Black Artemis, rappers like Jean Grae, and the hip-hop feminists
that I have mentioned here can in varying degrees be seen as pushing the
hip-hop feminist agenda forward. They represent—along with the video
vixens and the women hip-hop heads who buy the music and support the
culture—a small sampling of women in contemporary hip-hop culture.
Together their stories offer versions of the truth that Joan Morgan suggests
we could achieve. Together they also give us a glimpse at the possibility for
change and a sign that hip-hop feminism just might be on the right path
to what it is going to be at last. And then we might be a little less concerned
with “what it do” because we would be so awed by all that the movement
has done.

Endnotes

1. I realize that the word “shorty” as a term that is often used to refer to women in hip-
hop culture and rap music is problematic. Although not as derogatory as some other terms,
such as “chickenheads,” “bitch,” “ho,” and so forth, it is still a term that more often than
not objectifies women. It is also a term in hip-hop culture that refers to younger people,
often children. Because “shorty” is used within the culture to refer to women and children,

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it can be argued that the term therefore infantilizes women; thus, it is not a term I use
lightly. I use “shorty” throughout this essay because of its multiple meanings, because
it showcases just how fraught the relationship between hip-hop and feminism is. And I
also use it because it calls forth the generational issues between hip-hop feminists and
older black feminism. In a sense, hip-hop feminists are the shorties, the next generation
of feminists on the “come up” ready to continue the legacy of black women’s intellectual
traditions and activism.
2. Most of my information about the dreams and aspirations of video models and how
much they make comes from a survey of the interviews and photo spreads I’ve read of
in the Source Magazine’s monthly “Dime Piece” section and XXL’s monthly “Eye Candy”
section. Each month these magazines pick a video girl to highlight. And while most of
the “coverage” is the photo shoot of the scantly-clad woman, there is usually a two- to
three-page write-up and interview of each girl. And it is in these limited spaces that we
get their voices, hopes, and dreams.

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