I was introduced to hip-hop very early in my life through the various adults in my life, and through these different people I have been able to create my own meaning of what hip-hop means to me. From my father I have seen how hip-hop reinforces hypermasculine values in a drastic way. The type of hip-hop my father has listened and is still listening to is more of underground hip-hop or what some refer to as gangster rap, which I think has further influenced my father to have homophobic and mysogynistic ideals in his life. From my mother I have seen how the early women mcs have empowered my mom and allowed her to be the strong single mother that she is, and also allowed her to be more open about things such as sex and sexuality. From these experiences with my parents I have grown to see how influential and dynamic hip-hop is in terms of shaping people’s ideas.
One of the common trends I found in my quote collection is how these authors analyzed manhood/masculinty in hip-hop, and how that impacts women and queer people within the hip-hop industry. One of these quotes from the article by Jeff Chang explains that one would expect queer people to be seen as innovators within the hip-hop industry because of their early contributions to the genre. However, queer people are not seen as innovators of hip-hop because their contributions have been masked due to the hypermasculine nature if hip-hop that continously allows queer people in hip-hop to be pushed into the shadows. A handful of the other quotes explain how women within hip-hop should be treated with more respect and should be seen as more of a contribution to hip-hop beyond their bodies. These quotes connect because they all have the same underlying meaning of hip-hop being more inclusive and representative to those that are in the genre besides the hypermasculine figures.
Two quotes among the ten express how hip-hop has and is still discrtely seen as feminist as many women within the industry do not take on that label. The problem with that is that it does not further the conversation about how dynamic and influential hip-hop is. I feel as though when the work of women in hip-hop is feminist, but it is not outspoken as femninst it does not reinforce the idea that hip-hop can be feminist. There is a quote that explains that in order to improve the future of the genre there must be teachings of the past and present. This is so the youth can get a more in depth idea about the purpose and influence of hip-hop.
Even though, all of these quotes are not directly connected togther to me they speak to communicate that in order for hip-hop to be more inclusive and representitive of women and queer people there has to be teachings of hip-hop’s past and present to the youth. These teachings of the history of hip-hop must not leave out the contributions of women and queer people in order to reshape the meaning of hip-hop.
( If you click the link my images are there I was having trouble trying to upload the images from canva to here. I am so Sorry)
