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Abstract:
The lyrical content of hip hop music is a widely contested, yet understudied popular culture phenomenon. This article presents a content analysis of the lyrics of the 49 most popular mainstream rap songs over a two year period. The analysis revealed three over-arching themes regarding women of color: 1) consistent with trends in mainstream pornography, women are commonly characterized as sex workers, particularly strippers and prostitutes, 2) women's voices are used strategically in songs to "sell" particular images of women and gender ideologies, and 3) women are often valorized for their loyalty to male partners despite danger to themselves. We find that popular rap music draws heavily from mainstream pornography contributing to a "pornification" of youth culture.
Keywords: pornography; rap music; hip hop; popular culture; youth culture
In 1994, Queen Latifah released the song, "U.N.I.T.Y." as a response to the rising tide of pejorative lyrics about women in rap music. "Who you callin' a bitch?" she asks the listener and the larger hip hop community. More than a decade later, the African American women of Spelman College asked the same question, and found themselves in the middle of a media frenzy about rap music videos and representations of women. In the decade that has passed since Queen Latifah initially posed this question, many have argued that representations of women have only spiraled downward in mainstream rap music (Cole & Guy-Sheftall, 2003; Perry, 2003; Sharpley- Whiting, 2007). In music videos, women wear less clothing, and perform more explicit sexual acts on screen. This trend toward the pornographic began early in rap music, and accelerated as pornography expanded into the cultural mainstream (Caputi, 2003; LeVande, 2008; McFarland, 2003; Miller- Young, 2008).
In 1990 members of the rap group 2 Live Crew were arrested in Florida on "obscenity charges" for the pornographic depiction of women and sexuality on their album, As Nasty as They Wanna Be (George, 1998; Perkins, 1996). In 1994, DJ Yella of the notorious group, NWA (Niggaz With Attitude), made a pornographic video and marketed it with his name and association with NWA. But rap music's relationship with pornography has only expanded in recent years (Miller- Young, 2008). Many rappers' entrepreneurial skills have taken them into the markets of fashion, energy drinks, liquor,...