I started this post to give light to an article I came across today. The piece, titled Jack the Rapper: Patriarchy and Hip-hop, was a great read with well thought out insights into “patriarchal” sexual expression within the context of Hip-hop and the varying reactionary viewpoints offered by consumers and critics. Intrigued by the authors language and opinions I found myself perusing a blog he setup for what he calls the Democracy and Hip-Hop Project.
The Democracy and Hip-Hop Project was established for the study and investigation of the practical, historical, economic, and political implications of hip-hop music and culture. It was founded in 2003.
I urge you to read some of his writings, not so much because I agree with all of his opinions but because, as is rarely the case, he discusses aspects of hip-hop culture which rarely get touched upon by the majority of popular media outlets. democracyandhiphop.blogspot.com
Excerpt from David Drake’s The Death of Hip-Hop: …he considers hip-hop as an ensemble of contrasting ideas and influences. While refusing to fashionably reduce hip-hop to bombastic, reactionary or puritan rhetoric, he situates hip-hop, not as something static or even linear, but as a democratic and participatory organism; as something alive which is authored by people and which perpetually undergoes change. Thus, he endeavors to break from hip-hop’s narrow definitions with a revolutionary view emancipating it from the claws of conventional understanding.
Excerpt from Jack The Rapper: Inconveniently enough, there is no one person we can isolate from society and hold up as the architect of patriarchy. Every individual, from birth onward, enter into relations which are patriarchal, whether we are on the dominating or the subordinate side of the coin. Oftentimes we say that people simply perpetuate sexism, whether they are the cause of it or not. This is partially true. Yet sexism is perpetuated daily, whether we actively participate or not.
Who takes the blame for this social construct? Young, black, male, rappers, of course. It is true. Black men in general have been the scapegoats whom society pushes off its ugliest of ills: violence, poverty, crime, etc.; all have found black men at the center of these social phenomenon. And because hip-hop has always been the creative medium for many young, black men, it takes on a more acute guilt.
