Gender and Sexuality in Hip Hop

“Women can be kings.”-Little Simz, The Guardian

Hip hop encapsulates the richness and shortcomings of black and pop culture. These different aspects of culture come to a head and are expressed to a large audience of people through hip hop, since it is currently one of the most influential genres.

Hip hop has come a long way from its origins. While it almost entirely spoke from and to a certain male perspective initially, it is currently more inclusive and speaks to many different intersections. However, it is needless to say that the art form still has a long way to go. Its harder for women to break the top 10, to headline festivals, and the intersectionality of it all plays into it in regards to women as well. Additionally, there are very few open members of the LGBTQ+ community represented in hip hop either. People like Mykki Blanco, Big Freedia, and Nicky Da B have seen rare success that isn’t usually afforded to members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Gender

The discussion of gender roles in rap is not as simple as men objectifying women, just as gender roles in Western culture is not that easy. In the 1980s, rap was not necessarily offensive to women. The narrative around rap was very different during the 80s, artists were still getting a grip on the art form. The objectification and offending of women came along with the emergence of G-rap. 

Along with G-rap came with the short -lived genre, new jack swing. New jack swing was influenced by jazz, hip hop and R&B and objectified women in the same ways that G-rap did. But one sounded gritty and one sounded pretty.

 Rap helped create a duality between the Jezebel and the MadonnaThat is, loose women who had sex with many different men and chaste women, who was not mentioned in the same conversation with sex. Any deviation from this duality was rejected in one form or another, which we’ll discuss more in depth later.

The gender roles in hip hop often create many contradictions. Rappers often hold certain women to a higher standard, usually women that are members of their own families (mothers, daughters, sisters etc.). However, if women withold sex from these same men, they are degraded, just the same that they are if they give the men what they want.

Many men balance objectification and a certain level of vulnerability in order to remain relevant to both men and women. However, this isn’t necessary. Men can make a song objectifying women and women will love it, but women cannot do the same. Lil Kim has penned some of the best and most influential verses in the history of the genre. The reason that women will rap lyrics that objectify them, but men wont, is because of niche representation.

Women are also used to degrade men in hip hop culture. The most obvious is the term “bitch.” This word is used to degrade men by pointing out their supposed femininity and cowardice. The biggest insult to a man is degrading his masculinity, manhood and heterosexuality. Similarly, men will degrade the female significant other of another man, in order to take shots at the man.

“Other songs such as “Crack” (2 Chainz, 2012) perpetuate rape culture with lyrics including ‘I take ya girl and kidnap her, beat her to my mattress,’ in which he suggests kidnapping another man’s girlfriend or wife and presumably forces her to have sex with them.

The main topic discussed about women in hip hop is the idea that there can only be one at a time and that this one, is usually overly sexual in nature. Rapsody, a prominent woman in hip hop, said, “We have to fight a little bit harder to prove our worth, to prove we’re talented enough, to prove we can coexist together, to prove that there can be more than one.” However, even when women in hip hop are attempting to bring about an air of comraderie, listeners often fight back against this, because of their own roots in competition. Look no further than the recent controversy between Megan Thee Stallion fans and the rapper Saweetie and the way that several outlets reacted to the collaboration between Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj.

Gender and Sex

Similarly, the way that women and men are “allowed” to be sexual on records differs. It is no secret that men have been using women and their bodies to sell their own records. Look no further than one of the first sexualized rap records, “Me So Horny” by 2Live Crew. Men talking about their own sexual desires without somehow bringing in the bodies and desires of women, would not be marketable to other men.

As previously mentioned, men create two women in their music: the jezebel and the Madonna. Often, rappers that are women are pigeonholed into one of these two images as well. Rapsody notes that there is a concerted effort to typify women in music, having them either be sexy and forcibly dumbed down or super lyrical, but presented as almost asexual. When women do not fit into one of these, they automatically receive criticism. Nicki Minaj received a lot of criticism upon her emergence as a mainstream artist. She is a woman that embraces her sexuality, but also has the power to write some hard hitting lyrics. Even moreso, toward the beginning of her career, Minaj oscillated between hard hitting lyrics and more happy go lucky songs like “Starships.” making it even harder for critics to put her in a box. Men, on the other hand, do not receive the same criticism for making records that do or do not cater to their sexuality.

Megan Thee Stallion is receiving praise for her deromanticizing of sex in her work. Rather than describing sex as the act of a couple (whether in love or not), she describes it as a sort of game, even a competition. This is a viewpoint that we have not seen from a woman in rap thus far.

Sexuality

Homophobia has long been synonymous with hip hop culture. Femininity attributed to a man in any way is often equated with homosexuality in a bad way as well. We still see rappers using the f-word to refer to someone sexuality and their weakness. Like in mainstream culture, there is more of a tolerance for femme lesbians, than there is for any other members of the LGBTQ+ community. We see this with Young MA, a woman in rap that appeals to men and women, but gets little credit and recognition.

Lately, we’ve seen femininity and masculinity in terms of appearance being used more creatively. For example, Young Thug and Jaden Smith are given lots of credit for changing the way that men see their own femininity. Similarly, rappers like Dej Loaf and Angel Haze dress both “feminine” and “masculine” depending on their own desires. Of course, gendered clothing is not related to a person’s sexuality, or even their gender, but this openness displays a change in hip hop culture.

It will be interesting to see how hip hop culture shifts along with popular culture as time goes on in terms of open-mindedness and tolerance. While it is very possible for hip hop culture to mirror popular culture exactly, it is more likely that there will be some resistance to change, just like there has been thus far. However, as time goes on, it is safe to assume that hip hop culture will rise to the challenge. The question of how long it will be for this change to occur, still remains.