BET Hip Hop Awards try to put a positive spin on the genre
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Did anyone catch the BET Hip Hop Awards last night?
I was struck by how defensive the tone was throughout the whole evening. Seems to me, the unofficial theme of the event was “hey hip hop is not all violent and misogynistic okaaaay?”
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they trotted out both Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson as presenters, gave KRS One some type of lifetime achievement award, and gave Common not one, but two awards. (The first time he’s ever received one on TV, he said. That kind of blows my mind.)
I may be overly cynical, but those seemed like purely political plays to me: to squelch the rising criticism of hip hop. By putting forth hip hop-embracing intellectuals and by honoring an artist like Common, who is often heralded as “conscious” and “positive,” it seems to me that BET was trying to underscore the fact that dudes like 50 Cent do not represent all of hip hop (and rightly so, of course).
The whole event seemed symbolic of how conflicted people are over hip hop. Common — an artist often held up as an exception to the rule — made it a point in his acceptance speech to say that he sees himself as no different from artists like T.I. He was clearly rejecting his “good guy” status.
And as hard as the show tried to demonstrate that there was more to hip hop than guns, bitches, drugs and murder, they chose to end on a um, not so “conscious” note. Namely, with Soulja Boy’s ode to ejaculation, “Crank That.”
(Check out UrbanDictionary.com’s official definition of “superman that ho” if you want to be grossed out.)
If you saw it last night, what did you think?
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
atlasien wrote:
Didn’t see the show… I just wanted to note that I’m very, very skeptical about the “superman that ho” “official” definition. There’s a massive army of 14-year-old boys on urbandictionary.com giving high “thumbs up” ratings to all kinds of verb+noun bizarre sexual practices, 99% of which exist only in their fevered imaginations.
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 12:04 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:
Plus, all of the ejaculation-cape (shouldn’t it be more of a skirt?) definitions were added to urbandictionary.com AFTER the song became a hit.
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 12:07 pm ¶
Gregory A. Butler wrote:
from the URBAN DICTIONARY:
“1. Superman that hoe 481 up, 43 down
When you’re doing a girl doggy style, pull out, and cum on her back/ass. When she tells you to wipe it off, you pretend to, and when she wakes up, she has the bed sheets stuck to her back like supermans cape.
“Dude, tonight, im totally going to superman that hoe.”"
So THAT’S what Souljah Boy is talking about???
And that’s the rap song that every African American teenage girl in the country is dancing to!!!
And I assume that those young women (unlike me) actually know what that lyric means!!!
Oh well – it’s a catchy tune, and the “Crank That” dance is really cute (even though it seems suspiciously similar to last summer’s “Chicken Noodle Soup” dance)
But… I still have this sudden urge to wash ALL of my sheets and bedcovers…
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 12:22 pm ¶
Gregory A. Butler wrote:
Just to revise and extend my previous remarks…
Well, now it all makes sense – I can see why a song about teenage boys ejacuating would be so popular with teenage girls
After all, probably nobody else in the world spends more time thinking about teenage boys’ penises than teenage girls (with the exception of gay teenage boys, of course!)
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 12:25 pm ¶
Wendi Muse wrote:
i didn’t watch it, but for those of you who know about my miniature beef with regard to michael eric dyson’s musings on hip hop, i am not surprised he was there.
and for those (like him) who defend violence and misogyny in the hip hop that gets the most airplay by way of citing examples in corporate america or among whites, i need a little more convincing. when i listen to other artists, their songs, are nowhere close to hip hop with regard to sexism/objectification of women, violence, and self-degradation (with the exception of maybe kid rock).
i am not one for censorship to a mccarthy era degree, but i am one for community reflection and self accountability…and knowing that people subconsciously digest what they hear on a daily basis, i grow increasingly more worried that when people see women who look like me, the value they assign is quite low, especially if pop stars are quick to provide with song lyrics for encouragement.
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 12:28 pm ¶
Wendi Muse wrote:
btw with regard to the crank dat/soldja boy song…
no matter what “to superman” means, the song itself is pretty demeaning to women. they use ho many a time (and i was surprised to note that during the mtv music awards, and whenever mtv broadcasts the video, they do not bleep out “ho,” though they regular bleep out words that evoke acts of violence like “gun” or “noose” as well as “nigga,” sending a message that violence and words rooted in race hatred are bad, but words that demean women are not) in addition to referencing the sexual objectification of women.
and funny enough, “ho” is probably the least difficult to understand (99% of the words don’t contain final letters and are sometimes syllabically condensed) and most frequently used words in the entire song…coincidence? i think not.
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 12:38 pm ¶
gandalf mantooth wrote:
Common’s bit about T.I. is pretty uh . . . common . . . for artists that get classified as “conscious.” There’s the oft heard “Is there such a thing as ‘unconscious’ rap?” etc. Being classified as such is thought of as a death knell to record sales. I’ve interviewed very few artists who were comfortable with the category. I don’t think there was anything political in him recieving awards. Since Kanye’s record didn’t come out in time, Common’s record was just the kind to get lauded at these kind of ceremonies.
AFAIK that “superman” stuff is just a dance name, one of many non sequiturs on his record.
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 1:04 pm ¶
Gregory A. Butler wrote:
Wendi
What’s curious about Crank Dat is that, for such a sexist song, it’s main fan base appears to be teenage young women!
Just go to youtube, and see all the young Black women who’ve made videos of their version of the Crank Dat dance!
Remember, they almost certainly understand the lyrics (even that Superman that Ho part) – but they still like the song…
Or, maybe they like the song BECAUSE of it’s sexual content – and, sadly, perhaps they can’t imagine heterosexual sexuality without a strong dose of misoginy…
I have a friend – she’s a young Black woman who’s VERY political (went all the way down to Jena to march for the Jena 6 and everything, and she’s a full time activist up here in NYC) but she loves that song and the dance that goes with it… maybe I’ll ask her what she thinks about liking the song despite (or perhaps because of) the sexism of the lyrics…
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 1:53 pm ¶
Wendi Muse wrote:
gregory,
curious, indeed…at least if you look at it from an objective perspective. when you think about it, though, we tend to listen a lot of songs’ music first, more so than the lyrics, at least when it comes to repetetive, quasi-thoughtless songs that we hear on tv and the radio nonstop. this isn’t exactly Murs. it’s something fun to dance to. the message we take in ends up being, for the most part, subliminal, with the exception of “ho,” which we hear so much that we have basically become desensitized. ..or, arguably, we hear it so much that we have become brainwashed into thinking it’s acceptable to say in music that people of all age groups, genders, and races listen to.
it happens with other media too…we often see, hear, and experience things that we don’t register as offensive until someone slows down the pace and begins to deconstruct the message we’ve had thrown at us.
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 2:17 pm ¶
EH wrote:
I see “Crank Dat” as a modern day version of the electric slide, I am not sure that we want to go into the issue of examining all lyrics because across all genres of music and all eras because we’ll come up pretty shocked.
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 2:34 pm ¶
fb wrote:
Gone are the days of real hip hop, when lyrics actually made you think. Take away the layer of gold and fancy clothes from “artists” today and all you have are a bunch of clowns copying one another.
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 2:41 pm ¶
AverageBro wrote:
Needless to say, I had to do a recap of this foolishness.
http://www.averagebro.com/2007/10/3rd-annual-festival-of-negro-nonsense.html
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 4:55 pm ¶
Siva wrote:
I recognize that the producers at BET are attempting to appease social critics, hip-hop purists, mainstream fans and the ghettos at the same time, but this is impossible. Those are all fractured groups that overlap in some ways musically but deviate socially to such an extent that they don’t even interact with one another.
Social/Cultural Critics- Many of these journalists, op-ed writers, talk show hosts, politicians, hacks and college students don’t even like rap music to begin with. The rapping sounds like some garbled foreign dialect to their ears. The beats and melodies are too different from the music they like. The urban uniforms are enemy uniforms of an out-group, to be mocked as “childish and low-class.” Much of this is stimulated by xenophobia and can be simply ignored.
There are other critics who seem truly concerned about the effects of this music on its listeners and make valid points. Some actually listen to and own some rap records . However, whether they are clergy, liberal arts students or social activists I find that these people are almost exclusively middle-class and college educated. This is troublesome to me.
For one, the spearheads of this, the Christian Right(Black ministers have been preaching against rap for over 20 years) and Progressives tend toward Puritanism. This may not seem to fit leftists, but consider the alliance between fundamentalists and 70’s feminists against pornography. There is definitely a segment of the left that is just as embarrassed about human sexuality as any believer is, and just as apt to consider women to be frail creatures defenseless against rapacious masculinity. Also, both are convinced that they speak for decent people in the country (the “moral majority” in one case, “The People” in the other).
More imortantly however, is the fact that the middle class has largely abandoned the inner cities of America, where rap is largely created. Michael Eric Dyson in particular has slammed the middle-upper class blacks who fled the city, taking their community leadership, businesses and tax-dollars with them to the suburbs, where they become no different from most other suburban folk. They look down on people from the inner city, and I’ve had plenty of personal experiences that confirm this. There is a class issue to all of this “Hip-Hop controversy.”
As for the attempt to showcase Common, I am unmoved. He’s like Black Thought from the Roots or Talib Kwali in that he has more depth than your average rapper, problem is, in my 31 years of life I have never, Evar heard a car blasting their music in any hood, anywhere. We need to stop pretending he is relevant to the same people who like T.I. or 50. Common is delusional; T.I just got arrested by the ATF for trying to purchase machine guns. Being that he is already a convicted felon, T.I is looking at a long bid in federal prison, while Common doesn’t look like he could crush a fruit fly with a granola bar he bought from Whole Foods.
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 5:36 pm ¶
Nina wrote:
Siva I love your last paragraph! And not to excuse hip-hop’s errant ways but there is violence, sexism etc. in all genres of music. In Carrie Underwood’s current hit ” Before He Cheats” she calls a woman a white trash tramp and talks about smashing up her boyfriend’s car. Nickelback’s “Rockstar” glorifies easy women and cheap drugs (their words not mine). I could go on.
Obviously hip-hop is a business and money speaks louder than anything else. Hip-hop, as an industry, will only revamp itself when people stop buying music that glorifies “money, hos and clothes.” Unfortunatley the people that buy the music are that much coveted (and easily influenced) 18-25 set (or maybe even 14-25). This age group has few responsibilites and more disposable income than the rest of us. And they probably haven’t developed a critical eye. They just want to throw their hands in the air and not care what the lyrics are saying.
As I said in my post about the hip-hop summit on Oprah some months ago, I am guilty of enjoying some questionable songs in my youth (does anyone remeber “Gangsta Bitch”) but maybe ,as a columnist said in a recent issue of Vibe, commercial hip-hop will stop being relevant once it appeals to anyone over 35.
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 7:26 pm ¶
Gregory A. Butler wrote:
Siva –
I’ve been a hip hop head since the days of Run DMC, Kool Moe Dee and Scott La Rock (I got turned on to rap back in 1983, when I was a High School sophomore, and I’ve never looked back).
And, like I said, I LIKE a lot of commercial hip hop (even the more misogynist stuff)
But I do think that we need to take a long hard look at the content of a lot of hip hop.
And that’s not me being bourgie either!! (I’m a furniture installer by profession, so I’m far from bourgeois!)
Just we need other voices out there – in particular from the sistas…
How come we never hear rappers like M.I.A. on BET or mainstream Black radio?
Maybe because she (and rappers like her) are too far outside of the sexist booty shakin’ mainstream of hip hop?
Something to think about…
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 7:41 pm ¶
Gregory A. Butler wrote:
Wendi -
Yeah, you’re absolutely right – a lot of times, we’re so busy enjoying the song that we don’t take in the message that the lyrics are sending.
Or, to go even deeper, the sexist sentiments feed so directly into the broader society’s default misogyny that they simply don’t register.
I’m sure that for a lot of folks (men and women alike) they simply could not imagine non sexist egalitarian male female sexual relations – and if they could imagine it, it would be so far outside their comfort zone that they wouldn’t see it as sexual as all.
Remember what Joan Morgan said in “When Chickenheads Come Home To Roost” –
“Am I no longer down for the cause, if I admit that while total gender equality is an interesting intellectual concept, it doesn’t do a damn thing for me erotically? That, truth be told, men with too many feminist sensibilities have never made my panties wet, at least not like that reformed thug nigga who can make even the most chauvinistic of wassup, baby feel like a sweet, wet tongue darting in and out of your ear.”
Think about it – if even a feminist like Morgan can’t imagine male-female sexuality without a strong element of male chauvanism, what can we expect from the young sista on the block?
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 7:51 pm ¶
Siva wrote:
Nina- The Hip-Hop Industry will never revamp itself because people will never stop consuming music they enjoy. For every hundred women such as yourself who are offended by songs like “Teabag Dat Hoe” or oldies like the Baltimore club song “Beat That Bitch Wit a Bat” there are a hundred others who will laugh and dance to them. They know exactly what’s being said, but it doesn’t bother them.
Most people want money and material goods, and most men want to sleep with every attractive woman they see, regardless of what they say in public. Post-industrial era pop culture isn’t telling us to desire things we didn’t already desire before. No homo-sapien ever purchased a rap song purely because of the lyrics. When a song comes on the radio, it usually takes no more than 20 seconds for someone to decide whether to turn the station or keep listening. The beat and melody are central to a song’s likeability, the singing or rapping is secondary, lyrics are of minimal importance to most people.
If all a person listened to were Soulja Boy, Young Jeezy and Lil’ Wayne it is fair to call them superficial and dull-minded. If a person went out of their way to avoid this music it is fair say this person is putting ideological integrity over openess and curiosity.
Gregory- The masses get exactly what they want. They vote with their money and attention. If you give them what you think they should have they will spit it back at you. Most of the music, films and books produced are failures, and some of those were forced down our throats throught advertising and still flopped.
The kind of person who would like M.I.A. or lets say Bjork will find those artists eventually on their own. If most people loved the sound of wind-chimes and bought wind-chime ring-tones and danced to the sound of wind-chimes in the nightclub that’s what you would hear on the radio. This deluge of Atlanta snap-music is a hurricane that is just going to have to run its course until the next thing comes along. Of course Art is dead, but that’s another post in itself.
Racialicious community-I think what we need to take a hard look at is why the only viable economic activity in the American inner city is the drug trade. 50 years ago if you had a high school education or less you could be assured of decent union wage at a manufacturing plant or a factory. There was also a thriving industry of shops and stores to service those workers. Now those jobs and businesses are gone and what has replaced it is the drug industry.
Excuse me if I’m not concerned about feminist/progressive Neo-Victorian sensibilities being aroused by the word ‘bitch’ when black men have been slaughtering one another in ghettos across this country for going on 40 years now. It’s actually counted as a victory when our country “only” has 13-15,000 murders a year, compared to the late 80’s-93′ when we were clocking over 20,000 murders a year. A disproportionate number of those were black, and it’s a human tragedy that is largely ignored. In my hometown of Philadelphia alone we have around 400 murders a year. If you look at this map,(http://inquirer.philly.com/graphics/homicide_map_2007/default.asp)you can clearly see where the murders take place and where they don’t. See that huge area of Northeast Philly, Foxchase, etc. with like 5 murders? That’s a predominantly white middle class part of the city. Same with areas like Manayunk or Chestnut Hill. See where the hundreds of other murders are clustered? Those are poor mostly black parts of the city. Can we try to make a contribution to these problems, which have a strong racial component, rather than worrying about being offended by advertisements or television shows?
Only someone insulated from the day to day violence and anxiety of the ghetto can actually take these other shallow, naval-gazing preoccupations with pop-culture dreck seriously. Perhaps they should remain as light snacks, but not as priorities.
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 10:59 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
Siva –
No one is insulated from pop culture. It isn’t as if youth in the inner cities (or in pockets of poverty in the suburbs, for that matter) live in a vaccum, devoid of any media images. They absorb these messages – and many times they do not have the filter to tune that out. What most of us take as a blip on the radar screen, some people take as their ticket out of poverty.
Men absorb the message that if they stay in the streets, they get money. Or if they get a record deal, they will get money. Women absorb the messages that if they can work their body in the right shape, they can be famous. They can make money like Melyssa Ford. If you go to Karrine Stephan’s website, she rails against the letters she gets from women trying to be like her. Or, women absorb the message that the key to life is to be pretty enough to roll with a baller.
Whether you want to admit it or not, pop culture speaks to the youth more than well meaning adults do. Sad. But very true.
Posted 19 Oct 2007 at 8:52 am ¶
Mike wrote:
Yeah BET is definitely on the defensive but with good reason. Blogs like Whataboutourdaughters.com and other organizations have stayed digging in there butts about there programing. The show was definitely trying to play both sides of the fence. Im still not sure how I feel about BET and there programing. I can see how these shows offend but unless it’s forced on you you can self censor. Plus there are other alternatives.
I don’t have a problem with Common wanting to distance himself from the “good guy” image that every one has put on him. Who really wants to be drafted as the poster boy of some one elses cause, when all your trying to do is sell a record?
Crank Dat bothers me only at the hours they play it. It’s like an R movie should’nt be played at 12 in the afternoon unless your paying for it. So I should’nt have to here Crank Dat on the radio during the day time. That is as close to censorship that Im willing to get.
Im just glad my man KRS jot a little shine even it was’nt sincere. Down here in ATL I had people calling me all night asking me who he was. I thought that was shameful, but thats what happens when you treat rap like a product. It gets used then traded for the new.
Posted 19 Oct 2007 at 10:28 am ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
I cosign with Gandalf – when I interview artists (and this spans hip-hop/r & B/neo-soul) they all tend to eschew the “conscious.” Most of them tend to stress the need for balance. When I interviewed Eric Roberson for Clutch, he was quick to say “he gets his collar poppin to ‘Buy you a drink’…but there needs to be a balance.”
Also, Gregory/Wendi – My own PERSONAL theory (no field testing or research on this one…just what I happen to see) is that this kind of hip-hop appeals to people because everyone can relate to it on some level. The guys I know may not be out there trying to Superman someone (whatever the meaning) but they can relate to trying to get what they want sexually. Hip-hop that’s actually about something? Well, that takes a little more time and investment to listen to. It requires thinking beyond the basic things in life – money, sex, drugs, anger. And, quite frankly, everyone isn’t there yet. But a fun dance tune? Something to shake my ass to? Most people can get down to that…
Posted 19 Oct 2007 at 10:47 am ¶
Mike wrote:
Latoya Peterson
“But a fun dance tune? Something to shake my ass to? Most people can get down to that…”
So True.
Posted 19 Oct 2007 at 10:55 am ¶
Fiqah wrote:
Hip-hop continues to be a broad genre that is (frustratingly) narrowly-defined…like everything Black people create/produce/do. It’s part of the fun of being a member of an oppressed and despised group. So… lucky us!
Re: “Crank That” and Superman-ing – eeeeuuwwww. That is skeet-skeet-skeevy.
Posted 19 Oct 2007 at 5:20 pm ¶
cw wrote:
Usually as a genre ages it expands but rap seems as if it has narrowed.
Posted 21 Oct 2007 at 11:35 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:
So that’s what “superman” means? The song sounded like it might be about ejaculation, but I never knew that.
I also doubt that all young black women know what “superman that ho” means. It seems like something that males would know, and females are less likely to know, which is why you can trick them.
Eww. Now I understand the response, “Crank Dat Spiderman”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iALCItRQJtY
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spiderman
Posted 21 Oct 2007 at 11:39 pm ¶
Brandon Sims wrote:
Well i have been looking to respond to what controversy that has aroused from the Superman that hoe line from soulja boy’s song, which has been utterly obcsurred. The term means nothing to the likes of what the media, along with Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, whom I have much respect and admiration for, make it appear.
I am a twenty year old college student from Memphis, Tn. Soulja “Deandre” Boy, recorded and often travelled to Memphis years before he ever became the renouned teen star that he is. He is also is from a town, in Misssissppi, not too far from Memphis; therefor sharing some common dialect. The term Superman that hoe has nothing to do with what half of America has made it and I’m quite sure of it. In fact I’m positive. The term Superman is merely the name of the dance that resembles the pose of Clark “SUPERMAN” Kent in flight. And as far as the hoe part goes, the term is used merlely to acknowledge the dance. In fact, the term hoe, in the way Soulja uses it can be used interchangeably with the word thing. Ebonified, this phrase would simply be “Superman that thang” as a command, referring to the dance itself. In Memphis and surrounding areas we refer to many things as hoe but usually never a female. And a misinformed listener or a listener not from the area might not, understand the word usage, APPARENTLY!
So why such a big hassle? I think everybody should lift up off of Soulja’s word usage because they are taking it to mean what they want it to, because, down here line dances are done at the club, not in the bedroom.
Posted 26 Jun 2008 at 8:36 pm ¶