Hip-hop music is a genre often associated with rap music, a style of music originating in the 1970s among black, Hispanic, and other minorities. Improvisation, chanting, street poetry, and other forms of lyrical expression are combined with familiar forms of music such as disco or funk. While many enjoy rap music or hip-hop, viewing it as the work of socially and politically insightful young minority musicians, more view it as the glorification of violence and misogyny.
In the world of hip-hop music and dance, political correctness disappears as lyrical content involves any or all of the following: bitch-slapping women (more commonly referred to as “ho’s” in hip-hop, street slang for whore), busting a cap in ho’s, fags, and cops (i.e., shooting), gang-banging ho’s, and having ho’s suck dick. These and other lyrics glorify violence and abuse against women. Women are often viewed as possessions of the man who they sleep with. As disposable as the condoms they do not wear, women are viewed as instant gratification receptacles and little more in the lyrics of most hip-hop music. Girlfriends and wives are not the only targets for attack – even mothers are prone to abuse in hip-hop lyrics. Rapper Marshall Mathers, more popularly known as Eminem, was sued by his mother because he portrayed her as a drug-abusing whore in lyrics on his latest CD. As his grandmother said of the alleged musician “In just over 12 years he’s gone from telling me ‘Grandma, I love you’, to ‘Go to Hell’” (Dowdney 1).
Alan Iverson, a popular Philadelphia Sixers basketball star, recently apologized for the misogynistic and violent lyrics against women and gays on his latest hip-hop, i.e., rap, CD. Despite the pervasive misogyny and violence in hip-hop lyrics and music, those who defend it suggest that critics are misperceiving the intent of the music. It’s all about the shock-value and imp
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