Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Hip Hop: Free Write


lblack noiseFree Write:

After reading about Dr. Rose and learning about her work, it was evident that her goal is to inspire through speaking. Her work is focused on hip hop, and why it matters. Dr. Rose is internationally known for her respected work on post-civil rights culture, sexuality, and hip hop culture. Reading about and listening to her work it is evident about how passionate she is regarding her work and creating justice. She talks about how difficult and complex it is to discuss race and gender.
 


            In her work she discusses hip hop and how hip hop artist commercialize black culture, in a powerful way which shapes gender images and perceptions. I think her thoughts regarding hip hop to not be dead is such a great thought, I think there’s a lot of commercially made music today and there needs to be authentic music in her words found “underground ” to help hip-hop culture. Today artists basically sing about whatever and whenever to make money, I can think about a bunch of hip hop songs that basically mean nothing and are just catchy phrases.
            I think work is really focused on the youth and the importance of pop culture and society.
 I found this great article  about hip cop controversy and how music has became to be nasty and threatening especially to females. I think Dr. Rose touches on racial stereotypes and how music has really changed.  
Professor Tricia Rose

In the attached article, I found some interesting pictures of common /popular artists today that are recognized for ghetto culture present in mainstream American culture.
 

2 comments:

  1. I looked at the attached article you posted and the picture that popped up first with the girl who was half naked really made me think oh great I know what this article is going to be about and as I continued reading it unfortunately was true. Rap has become a very sexual and vulgar thing that should be addressed and changed!

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  2. Jenna, I would just like to caution you about the idea that rap has become very sexual and vulgar. I think that that's a common misconception that we have. I think that there's a lot of controversy that we see with music that we point to rap as being the only musical form that is filled with sexual content and misogyny. This simply isn't true. I think that we often conflate this concept of overt sexuality as being a rap/hip hop thing because of the stereotypes which are accompanied with racist texts and stereotypes which are often pushed to the background. I make the argument, as the argument has been made to me, that we focus on these racist images because it is as Allen Johnson calls it in "The Forest and the Trees", "the path of least resistance". Because we are socially constructed to think that rap is the only misogynistic - or at least the most misogynistic - form of music, we inadvertently let certain genres like grunge, metal, and industrial rock (think Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails) off the hook. While there are certainly some issues with rap and hip hop - no one can deny that, especially in commercial hip hop - we need to look at the culture of popular music as a whole in order to take a non-biased view. Especially because Robin Thicke is praised for making a song about lack of consent and rape.

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