Artists like Peet and Doja Cat (who demands to be taken seriously as a rapper especially because she views sex as an art) demonstrate for us what to do about the male gaze. To fuck it. Somewhat of a joke, but these artists—not to mention the lineage of black female rappers and musicians who led with their sexuality when it was more of a niche genre—highlight what is possible when you prioritize yourself and good vibes. Doja notes that most of us would not be in this world if it were not for sex—an oversimplification of how one can brought into the world thanks to modern science, but her point is taken. And the principles of creative writing suggest that you write what you know to work towards what you are trying to discover. Her response to the Dupri debacle highlights the community that she has formed around and because of her music: “I’m happy that I can love Kash Doll as much as I do. I feel lucky. It’s a great fucking era to be a female rapper….women are being good to each other right now because it’s more saturated and no one has time for the bullshit.”
However, there does exist tension in this genre of music between the people who are able to gain significant forms of capital from producing and performing and the people who make up the blueprint for their personas and vernacular—sex workers. Appropriation by definition, is taking something of someone else’s for one’s own use with the potential meaning of taking possession “through uses of 'exotic' cultural resources to sell commodities.” What is being taken when someone like Jennifer Lopez performs at the Superbowl, one of the biggest arenas for entertainment to display “an unabashed celebration of Latin culture in the most American of contexts,” uses the liking of a stripper’s work environment to amass attention and reverberate the Internet? This question is not so much about who can have (possess, own) sexual expression, but hints at the complicated nature of achieving notoriety and wealth at the expense (or without the inclusion) of those who are often the most marginalized and at-risk. Performers and listeners have a responsibility to people who are engaged in this work, especially because of regulations that are making it difficult for them to survive. Recent SESTA-FOSTA legislation is making it hard for sex workers to conduct their business online. Intended to mitigate internet activity that aids in sex trafficking, this legislation has resulted in the shadow-banning of people who use online platforms like Twitter, Craigslist, and Tumblr from making a living.
On Peet’s music, one Tits and Sass contributing writer describes her aesthetic as “...an inherent contradiction within her persona of female empowerment and sexual freedom to refer to herself as a pimp, ignoring the bloody taint of a word used to describe a man (or less often, a woman) who exists to steal the earnings of sex workers and often to beat them into submission for stepping out of line.” I recognize that it can’t be enough to position yourself as the protagonist of what is canon in hip hop: having a lot of sex and a lot money, when you still use the same violent language that keeps sex workers in danger. When the opportunity is available to do more than start a conversation, sex workers are saying that music performers and fans are actually contributing to the inequality—and violence—that their community is facing.
Paul Booth calls fan-scholars “to be more assertive against the encroaching normalization of commercialization, market forces, and neoliberal control over affect, both in education and out of it.” He also urges for a critical fandom that is against capitalist impulses that privilege the individual over the community or polices expressions of fannish enthusiasm. Neoliberal fandom makes money (and entertainment value) out of representational politics, where communities are principally invested in interpreting or extending the universes of their favorite cultural productions. Booth urges for a critical fandom that is against capitalist impulses privileging the individual over community or polices expressions of fannish enthusiasm. I have a responsibility to engage with hip hop music and sexually explicit lyrics such that critiques of capitalism, hypocrisy, and violence do not go unnoticed because it becomes the focus of a landmark event or significant cultural moment.
The goal for this website is to create a public forum for fans like me to express, grapple, and explore their desires as it relates to hip-hop and R&B music. This male-dominated industry has made its name often at the expense of marginalized communities, and when individuals in these communities use the genre for their own self-expression, it is not always considered enough. If you have ever watched a group of men debate the best rapper of all time, you will notice that it becomes a demonstration of who can best decipher the theories and strategies of hip-hop music. You will also notice that women are only considered in these debates as an afterthought because one can either be a rapper or a woman who raps. Our current iteration of rappers—including artists like Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, Chika, and Beyoncé—are shifting the paradigm for who can make hip-hop their home. I love “Shake That Monkey” more than the next guy but, must I dissociate every time the 1:07 mark approaches? There is so much more music available to us that evokes the same kind of excited feeling but also, more of us need to engage the complexities of this relationship we have formed with our favorite hypermasculine genre. It also cannot be enough for us fans to opt for a similar flavor of derogation because it is issued from the other end of the binary. In other words, when Beyoncé shouts out the OnlyFans platform on the “Savage” remix, we all need to consider how indebted we are to sex workers for modeling the radical, nonreproductive possibilities of pleasure. To that end, this forum invites its users to invest in exploring how we must keep moving the genre forward.
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