I remember the whispers back in 1988 when N.W.A first came out. I was living in extremely segregated Seattle, and white kids were beside themselves listening to Straight out of Compton. Giggling and saying the N word along with the record. The local feminists were up in arms because they use the words bitch and ho liberally and they were pissed that they talked about women like this.
Why are you so mad? They aren't talking about white women. They are talking about black women. Black women in their day to day lives. I got tired of 'hearing about' this record, I needed to hear it and judge for myself.
I didn't expect it to be clever, and honest, and full of rage. The rage that all black people in the hood felt. I didn't expect to be charmed by verses about dope dealing and gang banging. White kids wanted to engage me in conversation about this album, not because they were interested in my opinion about anything. It was as if they had ripped the covers off a family secret and now had some 'dirt' on me and my family and wanted to see me feel uncomfortable or ashamed. They wanted me to feel upset that NWA called me a bitch and a ho.
Not happening.
I am a black woman, yes. Defending NWA as a black woman seems crazy. Yes. However, here we are again with a biopic about black men who were not perfect saints. Just like all of the biopics before them, they are flawed humans, that occasionally made bad decisions. James Brown was famous for his temper and beating women. Ray Charles cheated on his wife. Frankie Lymon had several wives at once. We remember Mike Tyson going to prison because he didn't hear the word no when a young beauty queen told him to stop. Tu Pac also got dragged into court because a young lady was uncomfortable with what went on in his hotel room. Kobe Bryant....the list goes on. Except for Kobe's accuser all the women who were hurt were black.
It seems as if black women are collateral damage when it comes to famous black men. However I guess in NWAs case because they rap about it, honestly; it makes them irrelevant to be celebrated in any way shape or form. The behavior they describe on record is clearly predatory, coercive and violent. Is it fantasy or autobiography we wonder. If it bothers you, then don't listen to it. It's that simple. There are NWA songs I like a lot, and songs I will fast forward through. But as a whole because I fast forward through songs that I don't like to listen to, that makes the body of their work invalid?
Lets face it. Hip Hop culture will always be a boys club. It will always be centered around maleness, and it's prowess. Women will always be either prizes to be collected, and traded. Or something to be caged for their own desires. If a woman protests or declines she becomes a 'bitch'. I can't count the times in my life having been approached by a black man I wasn't interested in for obvious reasons. In case you don't know what that means, it means he was too street for me. The moment I said no thanks, I was called out of my name and "You ain't all that anyway!" The moment he can't have me, it's operation tear down. It's a systematic knee jerk reaction for some men. However I have told every race of man no thank you. But it's only black men that turn on me. Is it because they feel entitled to me?
When the casting call for women for the NWA movie came out, all hell broke loose. With women being put into categories of A, B, C or D. A class women were Beyonce' look alikes or white women. Of course going down the letters, skin tones get darker and body types get bigger. On the D list were hood girls. The girls that grew up next door to them. The D list girls were most likely their actual fans. Girls they saw at school everyday.
Watching the film, I remembered the list; and saw how it played out on film. All the women who would go to the parties at mansions in their bikins, some walking around topless. Is this just fiction for the movies, or did this actually happen. I'm pretty sure it really went down like that. Are there women who show up to parties and take their tops off? YEP. Are their women who have sex with rappers just because they are rappers? YEP. Don't get what I am saying twisted and read into it that I am saying because they show up at a party then whatever happens to them is their own fault or okay because the men throwing the party are famous. At some point a woman has to understand what she is dealing with, and act accordingly. Much of the time we aren't talking about women who even know their worth in the first place. In the crowd their are women who think if they get pregnant by one of the guys they will be on easy street. Women who see children as a paycheck. But when the rapper raps about this kind of woman, we get all upset. It's HIS reality.
The things we get pissed about are so much bigger than a rapper. It's a culture. It's a construct created not by us, that we have to exist in the best way we know how. Yes, men are given a pass when they are famous. To behave anyway they want to, do what they want, say what they want without recourse. Black women in this case are the collateral damage in this case. Some people feel like NWA climbed over black women to achieve what they did, and abandon us when the money arrived. The current outcry (since the film has been released) is the omission of the domestic violence that DRE was a part of. His beating of TV show host Dee Barnes, as well as his ex Mi'chelle. I watched Mi'chelle unravel on reality TV and say that she was suicidal. She didn't go into detail about why. This is a woman who has a child by DRE and a child by SUGE Knight. These two men are notorious for their own reasons. I can't imagine what she had to live through. I pray for her, that she gets the healing she needs to overcome any hurt she suffered, and thrive.
The dialogue becomes clear, if these women would have been included in the film, they would also have to had been paid for the use of their likeness. Why would the group shoot themselves in the foot like this? Besides once you add that element, it becomes a movie about DRE and not NWA. I am not dismissing the violence at all. Just saying that, there are other less public ways to deal with this issue. Not sweep it under the rug. Just have some dignity, and deal with it in a way that doesn't depend on public opinion to vindicate you.
Hip hop once we hit the late 1980's took a turn for the mysogynistic worse. Too Short, Too Live Crew and the like made their careers off of sex raps. It was a fact of life at that point if you went to a party or a club, eventually you would hear some sexually explicit, insulting male fantasy. I took to sitting down for these songs. As if you were out there shaking your tail along to it, you were pretty much saying ' come and get it guys, I'm that chick.' But Luke and Short were only doing what Redd Foxx and the like were doing in the 1960s in their comedy routines. Black women are no strangers to hearing explicit scenes of what black men want to do to us. Even back to the blues people sang 'blue' songs that were explicit sex tales. But suddenly NWA hates women. This has been going on for a hundred years, but I guess because they have a smash hit movie 27 years after the lyrics were written there is an outrage. Because people went to the film in droves, that is seen as condoning violence against women.
Interestingly enough, none of these explicit sex raps were in the film. The concentration was on eff the police, and their first hits " Boyz in the Hood" and "Dopeman". But still people are bent out of shape about stuff these guys wrote in their youth. Can you imagine what YOUR life would be like if today someone came at you about something you did when you were 19? The stupid crap you said and did? The question is did the mentality and behavior continue? OR did you grow up and out of it?
People are crying about how black women are being screwed and murdered in a fantasy world on a record. Are you this mad about them being treated this way in real life? Are you part of a movement to protect and educate girls and women about making safe choices in real life? Or mentoring young boys, and educating them on NO meaning NO.
NO? hmmmm
As black people we have a habit of wanting to point fingers and blame someone or something for our quality of life. It's much easier to be mad at a movie, than it is to take action in our community to stop women from being ground up in the machine that is mysogeny. What happens when girls grow up in this culture... You get women who grow up to be Nikki Minaj. The one successful black female rapper / pop artist, has been captured at Madame Toussads wax museum, on all fours, ass in the air. Nikki herself has shot herself full of silicone to become this black male fantasy doll. Then willingly spends most of her day bent over for the camera, but can't seem to understand why no one takes her seriously. She also takes a video of an intimate moment with her boyfriend, featuring her fake bottom, and posts it on line for the world to see. When people comment 'enough already' they are branded haters. If someone tells you to have some cooth, class and dignity about yourself, they are a "hater". This is the mentality this culture produces.
You can't have it both ways. Walk around naked all day long, then get mad when someone sexually harasses you. Take some responsibility for YOUR part in it.
There are people all over FB saying they refuse to see the film because NWA promotes mysogeny. Ok, then don't. Here's a response I had to one person.
Don't you mean they aren't revolutionary, they sold out? I understand this rather long rant, with a pouty 'I'm not going to see the film' at the end. That is your perogative, no one is forcing you to watch a movie about NWA. Back when they came out , people were whining the same way. I took it upon myself to not take someone elses word for it and listen to it for myself. I am a diehard fan of conscious rap. Tribe Called Quest is my favorite group of all time. I sat down and listened to NWA on my own. The things they said were shocking at the time. No one else had managed to say what they were saying. I sat back and went on a tour of the hood, in detail. A daily life, dealing with a life that offers few choices to stay alive. The writing was brutal, and uncomfortable. I think that was the whole point. To make people uncomfortable. To tell the truth about the ugliness of their lives. The ugliness of how black women are used and abused. The reality of living in a gang infested neighborhood and your chances of surviving. If you had seen the film, and since you aren't Ill give you a spoiler. There is a scene where there is a press conference. A reporter asks if they are glamorizing selling crack and gang life. None of them were in a gang, and none of them own a passport or an airplane. Professor X rapped about 'burning the crack house down' the flipside was NWA. So according to your rant, Professor X's voice is valid and NWAs is not. So it's ok for black people to live though genocide, just not write about it, and definately not over a fly beat. Tu Pac wrote 'Brenda Had A Baby' which is also about a young girl being raped. Is it because it wasn't a banger that that song doesn't make your blood boil? Angel Haze raps about being raped herself, do we shut her up too? Where does it stop? So negro suffering is fine as long as you don't drop a dope beat and sell a million records. GOT IT.
