RA #2 - From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos

From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos is a provocative analysis of Joan Morgan’s view of the root causes of the prevalence of misogyny in rap music lyrics.  Written in 1999 as part of a collection of essays entitled, When Chickenheads come Home to Roost…. My Life as a Hip-Hop Feminist, the author being both a woman and an African-American brings her personal experience to bear giving this writing significant credibility.  Morgan illuminates the hidden causes of the harsh sexism in rap music lyrics and argues that one needs to look deeper to understand why the misogyny exists and how women in her culture need to respond and also start taking responsibility for its existence in order for changes to begin to take place. The catalyst for Morgan’s writing appears to be her desire to shift the focus on the rap culture from condemnation to a deeper analysis of the root causes.  I believe her intended audience is primarily the men and women of her own culture, but also the American public at large, in order for us all to understand what drives this seemingly hateful and self-destructive behavior. 

Morgan weaves both description and narration in this writing, as she paints the picture of rap musicians and their attitudes and activities that are very much present in their lyrics. She describes “On booming track after booming track I hear brothers talking about spending each day high as hell on malt liquor and Chronic. Don’t sleep.  What passes for “40 and a blunt” good times in most of hip-hop is really alcoholism, substance abuse, and chemical dependency” (603) and she goes on to explain how these same men casually talk about killing each other and don’t really have high expectations for their own survival.  “This is straight-up depression masquerading as machismo”.  The dysfunction is evident, yet somehow it is seen and admired as manliness and success.  She describes the life of the Notorious BIG, one of the kings of rap also filled with drugs, sex, jail time, murder and then reveals to us that “The seemingly impenetrable wall of sexism in rap music is really the complex mask African Americans often wear both to hide and express the pain” (603). Her descriptions are vivid as is the extent of the pain the men must be feeling if they feel such a need to use the hard, crude and hateful lyrics in writing their music.  The narration that she uses to weave in and out of the description often comes in the form of her personal views, feelings and questions and they come with a powerful punch. “I need to know why they are so angry at me. Why is disrespecting me one of the few things that make them feel like men? What’s the haps, what are you going through on the daily that’s got you acting so foul?” (603).  It’s as if she is making a personal plea, coming from a strong yet knowing place, that there is something wrong on a daily basis in their lives that is causing them to show up this way. 

Another mode Morgan uses is exemplification, giving us concrete examples of the dysfunction in the African-American community with statistics from the “U.S. Census Bureau, the number of black two-parent households has decreased from 74 percent to 48 percent since 1960. The leading cause of death among black men ages fifteen to twenty-four is homicide.  The majority of them will die at the hands of other black men” (602). Her examples show the incredible amount of anger and deteriorating state of things in this community, currently less than half of families have two parents and the statistics also show that young black men are killing each other in big numbers.

Another mode that Morgan uses is Cause and Effect.  She states that “Black men are engaged in a war where the real enemies – racism and the white power structure – are masters of camouflage. They have conditioned our men to believe that the enemy is brown” (604). Therefore it seems that Morgan wants us to understand that the cause of the Rappers misogyny and sexism stems from their low self esteem, their ability to be unable to love themselves and the need to use music lyrics to put women down in order to boost their own self image.  All of this created by the racism and white power structure that has always controlled them, and led them to believe that the problem is really theirs.

My Response:  I really liked this piece of writing for several reasons; firstly, condemning this culture of rap music is very easy for us all, however Morgan really allows us to take a completely different perspective on it and see the pain that exists at the very base of it.  Another reason I liked this was because it was written by someone who is in the midst of the pain and she was able to say things that, had they come from a person of another race, could have been misconstrued to be racist or judgmental.  Her ability to take this issue personally and her honesty about this topic made in very powerful.  I liked how she spoke about both women and men in her culture needing to take responsibility for this war that is going on between them that it was not just the lyrics but also some of the women who were enabling the rappers by cheapening themselves.  I really liked that in this gloomy writing she ends on an empowering and positive note saying that “hip-hop can help us win” “that its incredible ability to articulate our collective pain is an invaluable tool when examining gender relations”(606). So in the end this music is a way for people to hear and express the pain and if they are willing to hear each other’s pain, perhaps they can start figuring out how to heal.