Introduction
Rap tunes precepts each of our lives, and not just while cars with twenty-inch amplifiers drive by piercing it, trembling both the windows of our houses and the fragile membranes of our eardrums. It is a linking line originating through today’s youth culture. Lumping all rap music jointly and releasing it as unintelligible sound can harm society. Society is created of personalities connected by the relationships of every day exploits. When one sector of society is cut off or separated because of lack of understanding, it disturbs the fragile web of personal communication, and society can suffer.
Researches of rap music
Patricia Washington, an associate professor of social work at Indiana University South Bend, is occupied with the matters of understanding the matters of rap music. She focuses on individuals and the communities in which they live, she denotes “People are linked or not linked to the organizations and societies in which they live, and this has an effect on them.” Her attention in this area sprang from her practices growing up on the west side of Chicago and was advanced by becoming dynamic in the public service at the age of sixteen when she worked with the Chicago Park District. This backdrop caused her to study wrong fairness and cerebral health, and finally to obtain master’s and doctoral quantities in social work from the University of Pittsburgh. After work at other universities and colleges, which have each advantaged from her efforts to forge links between people, data, and strategy, she connected the faculty at IUSB, where she has held the location of administrator of the Master of Social Work curriculum in the Indiana University School of Social Work since 1992 (Spruell, 2002).
Rap is not a remote melodic phenomenon with a good beat, according to Washington, but “a form of protest.” It is “a form of discussing those things that one does not discuss in polite society,” she states, noting its strong connection to the blues. This connection exists in the evolution of the musical form and in the similarity of the subject matter: troubles with the police, lodging, and male/ female relations. It also survives in society’s position toward rap; “it’s the music of the outlaws,” Washington says. Her topical erudite work has dealt with the exacting type of rap termed “gangsta rap.” Gangsta rap, principal in the latter 1980s and early ’90s, exalts guns, gunfire, and murder. These themes are not as widespread in contemporary rap music. Rap is evolving from extoling this type of lifestyle to commenting on it, which Washington characterizes as “speaking about not only the activities of those who indulge in that kind of violent behavior, but also talking about the consequences,” both for the doer and the victim (Roberts, 1994).
Washington has co-authored a paper with Lynda Dixon Shaver (Bowling Green State University) like “The Language and Culture of Rap Music Videos” and wrote “The Influence of Black Popular Culture Icons on African American Youth,” but her work goes beyond such traditional educational movements to comprise use of rap songs in hands-on communal work. Washington has found rap music to be a chiefly effective tool for falsifying links within young people. There has been much recent media coverage of the problems of and with youth culture, primarily violence and drug abuse. Although the problems recorded are real and widespread, much of the media’s appearance is worrying and even treacherous, according to Washington. By bumping such troubles together as simply “youth” matters and by depicting them as obtainable only today and right now, the matter and the youth are remote from society as a whole. This advance discounts the reality that what affects youth also affects the rest of society and that many current problems, while they may be expressed in new ways, are merely expressions of long existing situations, such as high rates of unemployment, underfinanced schools, unsafe schools, lofty failure tempos, inferior lodging, insufficient health care, high mortality rates from homicide (by other youths or the police), and suicide. Using historical analysis to scrutinize the matters of urban youths from low-income households, one can see the “succession of problems over time” (Schumann, 1991).
Disparities in the compensation among male and female artists
Washington supposed, that the differences in the compensation among male and female rap artists lays in the notion, that rap is originally male kind of music art, and predominantly black. Americans who appreciate rap music feel a bit uncomfortable when listening to female rappers, and equal it with pop music, which is considered shameful among rap fans (Schumann, 1991).
Although lots of problems, originating this disparity problems are not new, there is an inclination toward growing hostility. There has always been urban aggression, but in recent years, this violence has moved from local, personal urban acts to universal and extensive aggression. It has spread to positions where it was not beforehand, to “the environment in which young people live and where they go to school,” It is said, that even the old safe locations, such as the schools, are no longer safe.” cruelty has also spread apparent from municipal centers to smaller communities countrywide. Rural America is no longer the peaceful safe haven it was long regarded to be. Augmented brutality, gang association, and drug use are moving societies of all dimensions (Kinnon, 2002).
The issues of disparity also depend on the childhood and past of the star. It is considered, that real rappers may be only with difficult childhood, criminal past and sometimes even with the imprisoning. Girls often can not bear such destiny, and choose some other ways of life. The observed violence may also impact the unstable female mind, and cause mind disabilities, while man artists become cruel, violent and of cause brutal, expressing all these features in their music.
This contravention of violence affects not only youths, but adults as well. The result is that “the conservative role of adults to stuffing and protect kids” has customized, and now “the adults are having complexity suspicious themselves, let alone shielding the kids,” Washington states. This is not because of raised abandon by adults; it is based upon the difficulty of living with increased violence. More and more, as youths are not able to turn to their seniors for defense and support, Washington has observed them turning to each other, which accounts for the rise in the number of gangs. Other factors also have contributed to the formation of contemporary youth culture. Because most youths have grown up with television constantly in their lives, “much of their learning has been visual learning,” she notes. It is to television that they turn for information. Television provides “instant access to what other young people in different parts of the country are saying, doing, thinking, and dancing,” Washington says. Music is no longer local; it crosses ethnic, economic, and social boundaries. Rap is a common thread running through youth culture, and television is the primary medium of its dissemination. As Washington puts it, “when you’re driving down the street and you hear this base beat and you hear this throbbing rap sound coming after you, you don’t know whether the young person you’ll see when you turn around will be black or Hispanic or Asian or Euro American or what. They’re listening to the same music” (Ebony, 2002).
Female rappers
It is necessary to mention, that the main thesis of the notion that the art by female rappers is less compensated may be explained by the fact, that the words girl and rap are weakly associated with each other, as primarily this music had been developed among male black population, that I why, the appearing on the rap stage females and white men may be regarded as nonsense (Spruell, 2002).
But the appearing of such representatives of non-conventional rappers such as Eminem, Russian rappers Kasta, Indian rap Pan-jaby MC, and female singers such as Amil, Maya Jupiter, Lady Jaydee and so on was inevitable, and unavoidable. The female images are like the kind of protest against men domination even in the music sphere, and it is one of the reasons, why female rap and hip-hop projects are not so popular, and that is why producers and promoters are afraid to take the singers, inspite of their talent (Derrick, Stewart, 2005).
Each generation unavoidably distinguishes itself from the previous ones, yet there is threat when the differences are so deep that they avert the new cohort from implementation in the rest of humanity. Instead of just granding a set of limits on youths and making them to acclimatize to the rest of society, the people usually seek out components of youth ethnicity and link them to other parts of society. They build from this weak link the stronger net of mutual consideration, trust, and communication that is necessary for personalities to endure in humanity. Often, lots of matters that people are fighting with are narrated to their lack of acquaintances of the organizations that they’re dealing with and how one ought to deal with these various organizations to get one’s needs met. Ultimately, they read customary literature by such authors as Toni Morrison, Tina McElroy, John A. Williams, and Ernest J. Gaines.
As for the incomes and compensation, it is necessary to emphasize, that African American women in rap music discover themselves in a exclusive location in terms of the construction of melody and image; they should resist for arrangement and manifestation in a principally white and patriarchal society industry on the one hand and a structure of administration controlled principally by African American males on the other (e.g., Russell Simmons, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube). While the past 15 years have observed the expansion of entertainment media into large networks with a great deal more assortment than was true in the past, the executive authority still stays largely the freedom of a small numeral of men. Hence, rap has become identical with a male “core” background in spite of the attractiveness of artists such as TLC, Salt N Pepa, Queen Latifah, and MC Lyte. However, female music manufacturers such as Sylvia Rhone, Pat Charbonnet, and Jean Riggins, among others, are penetrating the music commerce and actively endorsing women artists in rap. These ground – breaking educational producers ongoingly deal with ideologies and imaginary examples in the manufacturing that hinders construction of progressive images of African American women (Shelton, 1997).
Regarded as vital to a rapper’s community acknowledgment, a music video symbolizes a combination of soundtrack and visual story that arbitrates a female – gendered tone and body in and out of American municipal sceneries. As a position for ideological resistance, music video is a key site for the operations of sexism, racism, and classism as well as a site for confrontation. While record labels continue to urge artists to make live exteriors for promotional contemplations, female performers face some stultifying shames when depicting their body to the overwhelming eye. In admired culture, African American women’s bodies are often matters to sexual images with nuances of “the celibate mammie” or “the hypersexual disastrous mulatto,” “the weak hysteric,” or “the wellbeing mother.”
As representation is bound by cultural and gender typecasts, female rappers must overturn stigmas, redefine feminine subjectivity, and repossess the gaze in order to gain respect.
Through an analysis of rap videos, I will argue that female hip hop and rap artists are effectively able to engage in struggles over the “meaning” of African American womanhood through three tactics of representation:
- A particular recognition/ symbol of urban space and class,
- The redefinition of gangster culture along lines of gender, and
- The modern merger of hardcore rap and R & B presentation.
In modern music videos, women rappers walk urban streets in look for the friendship and to make a space for lonely indication outside of the household sphere and the place of work. leaving a privatized domestic area, the rapper enters a new field of authority relationships in community sphere. Michel de Certeau hypothesizes that community gap can be classified by supremacy yet leaves room for the focus to react and resist control. De Certeau calls for an investigation of the “style” of the body in transportation, the features of the paces, the way walking as group “speaks.” The depiction of women rappers apparently begs for such psychiatry, as they are imaged moving through municipal roads of different cityscapes. (Roberts, 1994)
To regard the dangerous variety of a rap music video, we need to realize how locations in videos balance a rapper’s persona (i.e., the rapper who appears from a specific American setting is described by her geographic position, such as Watts, Detroit, Queens, Oakland, Brooklyn, Atlanta, or Newark). Lyrics, videos, and advertising photos time after time eloquent a given artist with a precise geographic location or district. A process of detection through geographical sites allows the rapper to be an influence of a definite environment. Hence, in lots of videos, set positions allow visual physicality to connect a rapper with precise race and class government, while making an aura of genuineness.
Concerning the matters of disparity, it would be necessary to signify, that the past and the background plays rather significant role in the future creation. It is often displayed in the musical videos by the artists.
In the most universal sense, modern rappers operate as storytellers who underline modern white flight and the decay of urban middles in mixture with music videos which depict the rising number of jobless and poor African American youth who stay in the deserted city space. Though, the more winning and wealthy a rapper happens to be, the more movable she becomes. When the music business necessitates an artist to tour in arrange to gather a larger audience, travel affects the rapper’s discussion. She moves from her most important site of knowledge as superior access and opportunity communicate to her rise in attractiveness. As a result of popular achievement, a rapper’s association to the tough street life is harder to uphold.
For instance, gangsta rap artist BOSS employs urban topography to articulate her desire to move among urban backdrops as well as to combine a lower-class ethos characterized by gangsta culture with middle-class sentiments endorsed by normal video civilization. BOSS made headlines in the February 3, 1994, Wall Street Journal as she was lifted in the middle-class society in Detroit, while her words explained crime prospects more ordinary to a lower-class population. Therefore, BOSS offers a case study of the link among image and legitimacy. In the dialogue, BOSS disputed for the soundness of her lyrics by making known a short spell as a drug trader to weaken any middle-class categorization. BOSS performs a crossing of gender boundaries as well as class and physical borders when she raps: “I’m attempting to get to Watts, but I’m stuck in Baldwin Hills” on her entrance album Born Gangstaz. In addition, the arrangement of the album incarcerates the division anxiety among middle-class and gangsta charges for the artist in the fashionable rap music industry. For instance, parental influences that communicate middle-class awareness as well as feminine typecasts operate as bookends to reveal and close the album. BOSS’s parents call her as Michelle, her birth name, and decline to distinguish her professional name. Furthermore, they condemn her foul words and “unladylike behavior” to coherent class anxiety. The foreword and epilogue by these scrupulous voices of authority lampoon the discernment of women as childish as BOSS refuses her middle-class parents’ image of “the good little girl” and as a substitute commiserates with gangsta culture (Kinnon, 2002).
Moreover, music videos offer texts that depict the complexity in track African American women in the town setting. For example, Queen Latifah’s video Just Another Day puts her in an town site as she is seen stepping along New York City roads and calling out addresses: “We’re going to take this one over to 275 Halsted.” Concurrently, letter explications spell out the address 275 Halsted, using the non-diegetic likelihood of music video to arrangement narration. In addition, graphics permit fictional print along with rap’s oral and music practice to define Latifah’s urban place.
Women rappers rejoice the marketability of their abilities and the profitable petition of hip hop culture and rap music. As the Conscious Daughters hark back their listeners: “So as I start ta flow my funky rap, I’ll kick back and watch my money stack. Yo, so there’s a little motivation building in my body? Rapping allows for financial stability and autonomy through rewards of popular performance, yet, despite financial independence, women rappers express an inevitable, inextricable relationship with men and define themselves by their ability to be incorporated into a “man’s world.” The Conscious Daughters miscorrelate themselves from the feminized pleasure sites of a group like Salt N Pepa, for example, and articulate a proactive ideology. In gangsta rap videos, the public spaces where women take command are crime-infested urban streets. By using a working-class and gangsta aesthetic, women tappers challenge the leisure mythos associated with domesticated women (Spruell, 2002).
Women rappers who suitable tropes from the “gangsta” custom break from the cult of domesticity and puzzle the principal image of mannish working-class culture. pictures of Working-class ladies illustrate an consciousness of the long history of female workers in society as they destroy myths nearby the erotic-woman-as-object shame in visual culture. Loose jeans, work shirts, and winter jackets unclear the bodily qualities of the female sex while supplying the woman with a burly physical occurrence. Queen Latifah and Yo Yo are plump, full-figured rap singers who compare with the muscle-bound, low-fat bodies of Salt N Pepa. BOSS reprimands women rappers who option to exposing, fitted clothing: tight clothes mean “weak lyrics.” Gangster-styled clothe worn by women indicate a lower class rank as well as restrained gender winding.
The gangsta culture in rap music videos symbolizes a marginal society making do and using unlawful activities to exist, and is mostly recognized with masculine role-playing. When tapper BOSS, for instance, sports sunglasses, carries an Uzi, and wears masculine garments topped with a skull cap, she widens the hurdles of female gender categorization. By stepping out in the gangsta streets in women’s rap, which seems more of a fantasy than a reality, BOSS enters a dangerous environment to obtain power. BOSS has little opportunity to walk the inner street as a nongangsta woman.
Technology can simplify or aggravate the challenge to uphold the street reliability of the artist, depending on the advance. The single “Afro Puffs,” for example, presented artist Rage to typical airplay by riding on the coattails of Dr. Dre’s and Snoop Doggy Dog’s mass popularity. Rage’s video symbolizes cooperation among the appropriation of an imaginary artistic and the confront to set up a hard-core female rap act. The video’s introduction, introducing the call for Rage’s female voice, originates from a masculine source. A large, black “buck of a” man walks down a steamy stairwell and presses a button to awaken Rage from her slumber. By this call from a masculine catalyst, Rage rises and looks out upon an urban Los Angeles skyline from her stark, metallic bedroom. In gloom, we see Rage descend in a winch and then walk to her car, which revolves on a platform, reminiscent of the Batmobile. The sleek convertible invokes a privileged class position, especially since the rotating display mimics a dealership’s salesroom. Immediately, the video illustrates technology’s contribution to Rage’s movement. In order to conquer the Los Angeles terrain, Rage requires an automobile.
In Afro Puffs, Rage raps about her hairstyle and refers to her large physique. Her statements boldly revise dominant notions of Black femininity as her video image alters the traditional representation of the Black female body. In contrast with Foxy Brown or Lil’ Kim, who show their bodies and construct from Salt N Pepa’s authorized sexual prejudice, Rage’s video makes sex appeal through glimpses of black net cleavage, perfect skin, and coiffed hair to create a smartly corporeal composure. Rage intrigues her listeners to issue at the unfathomable, beautiful quality of Black lady-hood with a tactic that confuses and increases the impression of Black beauty as it discovers an optional aesthetic to leading loveliness customaries. Afro-puffs are a suitable style for escapade and orientation the 1970s’ use of the afro as a signifier of Black arrogance. The pigtail/plait suggestions of girlish innocence obvious artistic power and maturity when symmetrically puffed (Kinnon, 2002).
Women rappers’ expression in music videos admits a range of activities within a female society. Women can enjoy child-rearing errands and untroubled joyrides with an all-female posse. Salt N Pepa’s videos and lyrics underline women taking pleasure in each other’s company and marginalizing the full contribution of men. Women rappers through music video manufacture encourage harmony and counter to misogyny in rap music and society by supporting collaboration between men and women. Women rappers attempt to resolve the unenthusiastic energy during inversion. The Conscious Daughters argue: “If I’m going to be a bitch, I’m going to be the best bitch you’ve ever seen.”
It is significant to note the illustration design of this video’s bedroom setting as these private gaps usually engrave femininity lines.
Conclusion
As it can be seen, female rap artists are paid less, just because they are females. This reason is general, but for the successful rap artist career, rappers need to have some urban or suburban background, in order to get the rap under their skin.
References
- Alridge, Derrick P., and James B. Stewart. “Introduction: Hip Hop in History Past, Present, and Future.” The Journal of African American History 90.3 (2005): 190
- “Ebony’s Surprising Music Poll: The Best Singers and Rappers and the Best Black Song Ever!.” Ebony 2002: 70
- Kinnon, Joy Bennett. “Rappers Go Hollywood: Big-Time Musicmakers Take Their Skills to the Big Screen and Stage.” Ebony 2002: 88
- Roberts, Robin. “”Ladies First”: Queen Latifah’s Afrocentric Feminist Music Video.” African American Review (1994): 245
- Schumann, Willy. Being Present: Growing Up in Hitler’s Germany. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1991.
- Shelton, Marla L. “Can’t Touch This! Representations of the African American Female Body in Urban Rap Videos.” Popular Music and Society (1997): 107.
- Spruell, Sakina P. “Hip-Hop at the Movies: Rappers Produce Reel Profits on the Silver Screen.” Black Enterprise 2002: 62