BLACK WOMEN IN HIP HOP - Daniella 'Isha' Maison - The slaughter of Black masculi

nity: When Gangster Rap profits from a war on youth

"You've been hoodwinked. You've

been had. You've been took.
You've been led astray, run amok.
You've been bamboozled." Malcolm X When Sierra Leonean journalist, Sorious Samor
e, boldly took a bright torch and shone it with critical thought and candid repo
rting on the sinister reality of gang rape for Despatches this month the facts l
eft the morally cognisant population in a state of astonishment. Disbelief promp
tly surfaced as we realised the mug shots of diffident black baby faces flashing
before us, some as young as 12years old, were in-fact the faces of callous sadi
sts. As the cloudy vastness of gang rape statistics, comprised of the male teena
ge African and Caribbean Diaspora, poured before us one thing emerged with clari
ty: this crisis is virtually restricted to the young black working class communi
ty. 93% of whom are absorbed by, and, keenly pay attention to, Gangster rap musi
c. Out of 92 reported gang rapes 66 of the perpetrators were black and mixed rac
e. Yet, even as young girls shared so bravely their gruelling stories of being r
aped mercilessly in dank council estate corridors by their own peers, we proved
to be a divided camp. Some of us stood, fists clenched, in solidarity with torch
bearer Samore’s frank efforts (after all, whom will disentangle our gritty problem
s if we ourselves do not dare face our own reality?), the rest of us squirmed in
our seats spitting apologetically about the ignominy of having our flaws expose
d on national television. It would seem the deeper the quagmire of depravity thr
ough which we all have to wade, the more vociferous the condemnation of anyone w
ho dares to mention it. The uglier the reality peering back at us in our mirrore
d reflection, the quicker it is tabooed. One viewer, outraged at Somore’s courage
to wash our sullied laundry so publicly, spat at me in a superstore, ‘Everyone wat
ching will think all black boys are good for is sex, raping and cruelty’. The sole
mn danger with being overly concerned that the wider community may possibly look
on and decide that abhorrent behaviour is All They Are Good For, is that it dis
tracts us from observing an all important actuality: Methods such as Gangster ra
p have long, acutely, ardently, been teaching these young men that this is preci
sely All They Are Good For.
‘In Hollywood they say there s no business like show business in the hood they say
there s no business like ho business.’ (50cent)
When Snoop Dogg decided to put his energies and cash flow into the rebirth of th
e pimp, he called in real life street pimp ‘Bishop Don Magic Juan’ and turned him in
to his chief advisor and an instant celebrity. In an MTV interview Juan confesse
d defensively that he just wants to make pimping more socially acceptable. "It s
been negatively portrayed through movies and television," said Juan, unbelievab
ly, in an interview with The Associated Press. Don Juan is now making a vast for
tune thanks to his buddy Snoop (and generous doses of our low self-worth) and hi
s agenda includes promoting a pimp s ‘style’; the clothing, the jewellery and access
ories. He has even offered grooming tips, such as the proper skin care regimen,
to the readers of MTV.com (let us not forget that MTV famously refused to play b
lack music, even at the height of the Jackson fame in the 1980’s, but are now seem
ingly more than happy to endorse it, so long as it contributes to our ruin). All
of which are cunningly composed ideas to raise the young males self-esteem, at
the behest of the world around him, and to fill conglomerate pockets. Juan s ris
e in popularity among our young community has led to negotiations for a reality
TV show and a record contract with Los Angeles-based independent label Avatar Re
cords. His upcoming CD, "Bishop Don Magic Juan Presents: Green Is for the Money,
Gold Is for the Honies," will feature his favourite old classics from the pimpi
ng days he profits from glorifying, as well as new Pimp songs from rappers Ludac
ris, Snoop Dogg, P. Diddy and other such defectors cashing in our demise. Ubiqui
tously in the background, the profit to be made from any pro-prostitution agenda
 is huge, the profit to be made in trafficking humans for sex is around 5 billio
n to 7 billion dollars a year.
Each year somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 mostly women and children, are t
rafficked across national borders. This does not count the millions who are boug
ht and sold in their own countries. There are around 10 million or more women an
d children who are living at risk of violence daily somewhere in the world becau
se of illegal slavery at the hands of their pimps. 2,000,000 children in Benin a
nd Togo are sold into domestic, sex or agricultural positions to nearby Nigeria
or Gabon. In Nepal more than 5000-7000 women and children are sold into forced p
rostitution annually. Twenty percent of these prostitutes are young girls under
the age of sixteen. This is big business; globally, it is an over 30 billion dol
lar industry, all money made from selling children and young girls to be raped.
Do not think for one moment that the Gangster Rap Pimp has missed that memo.
The young boys who buy into an agenda they do not even understand are losing the
ir essence, betraying their greatness, at the hands of a system that seeks to fa
il them. The young girls who suffer a blood-spattered decline in status in the p
rocess are merely the collateral damage. As Black, ethnic, modern, wide-awake wo
men we find ourselves in a uniquely thorny position within society. We are force
d to deal with the oppression that arises from being Black in a white-supremacis
t culture and the subjugation that arises from being female in a male-supremacis
t culture. For young women, the pacifist nurturer which lies within the female d
isposition means that, even as gender roles sway drastically, young women are ea
rnestly trying to maintain the balance and find their supporting role within the
commotion. Our young women crave reassurance and they are increasingly afraid o
f the consequences of not playing along when the male power gain games commence.
As they pine for belonging they seemingly find themselves kneeling on a stone f
loor issuing oral sex to traffic jams of jaded schoolboys. Surveys in the USA sh
ow that teenage African American females who experience high exposure to rap mus
ic (14 or more hours per week) showed they were twice as likely to have multiple
sexual partners and more than 15 times more likely to catch STD’s. The female par
alysed by male terror is ensnared inside her own patriarchal-influenced mind. Sh
e sees no way out, no possible rescue, no remedy, and so she acquiesces as an at
tempt to fit within her new gender role, however detrimental.

Girl Gimme Yo Number: Girl, gimme yo number! (haahh-ha!)

Forget it I don t need ya number! (I don t need ya number!)
Bitch climb up in the hummer (GET IN!)
Cause you gonna get fucked tonight (BITCH GET IN!)
The intricate impact of the Pimp crusade on its listeners understanding of relat
ionships, and the treatment of women, cannot be underestimated for a second. Cru
cially, the pimp ideal has redefined modern notions of ‘love’. It has subsequently a
ided the tendency for our youths to conspire and aspire to rough non-consensual
sex in slum alleyways and snub the old appeal of soft beds, magnetism, and dimme
d lights. Gangster Rap pimps have drawn from street pimp practice and turned the
term ‘love’ into something which denotes control, ownership, and violent possession
. A street pimp would claim that prostituted women and children give their money
to him because they ‘love’ him. In pimp language, ‘She loves me’ means ‘I can control her’
or, ultimately ‘I own her’. When T-Pain declares he is ‘In love with a stripper’, he is
speaking in the pimp terms he is hoping will proliferate.
Sony Pictures, never to be left out, have rapidly realised the appeal of the Gan
gster Rap Pimp to our youths and has set about producing an animated feature fil
m ‘Lil Pimp’. ‘Lil Pimp’ will tell the story of a 9-year-old boy who abandons his subu
rban realm after being introduced to the superior world of pimping by ‘master pimp’
Fruit Juice and ‘working girl’ Sweet Chiffon. The film which features the voices of
Gangster rappers Lil Kim, Ludacris, is yet another ‘fun’ and ‘harmless’ masquerade atte
mpt to replace masculinity with misogyny. Evidently, and even as Obama strides i
nto our collective midst as the unmistakable depiction of an educated, married,
articulated black man, the proverbial Gangster Rap pimp crusade is working harde
r.
Channel 4’s Despatches featured the account of a young girl whom was lured to her
childhood friend’s home with the offer of playing computer games. Once she was ins
ide, doors closed, a frenzied, lengthy attack ensued at the hands of her male pe
ers. Another was gang raped in an apartment block as punishment for calling her
friend’s boyfriend ‘not a very nice person’. As the punishment ensued in the form of a
queue of adolescents awaiting their turn, more arrived as they stood text messa
ging their friends to come and take a crack at their battered, hysterical young
hostage. A young girl who confessed to spending time in her teens ‘organising’ gang
rapes for her male counterparts spoke of how location and times were schemed via
text messaging, all she had to do was lure an unsuspecting friend to an arrange
d and isolated spot, and abandon her before the young attackers surfaced threate
ningly from the surrounding hedges. A harrowing experience, which once passed ar
ound the playground on a mobile phone movie, inspired ridicule aimed at the fema
le victim, not dismay at the male aggressor. Such is the success of the Gangster
rap apparatus. Our children are not being taught an obsession with sex, they ar
e being taught an obsession with hatred. A hatred that festers, contaminates, cl
utches and has far more financial leverage than traditional concepts of love.
I ain t never been arrested for nothing domestic
But I ain t gon lie I ll punch a bitch in the eye
When I’m F****n around… (50 Cent, ‘F****in around)
In our persistent denial, the ‘Pimping’ promoted by Gangster rap has been so success
ful in swindling our young men and women that it has even spawned an energy drin
k, ‘Pimp Juice’, owned and marketed by rapper Nelly. Marketed as "Hip-Hop s #1 Energ
y Drink." Pimp Juice is the brand name of the non-carbonated energy drink inspir
ed by the Nelly song Pimp Juice. Such has been its success that two follow-up dr
inks have been released, PJ Tight and PJ Purple Label. The drink, which boasts t
hat through excelled levels of vitamin C, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B12 and 7mg of Tau
rine, the average man will feel more like a ‘pimp’. So popular is the Gangster Rap P
imp ideal that the drink has expanded internationally into Europe, Australia, So
utheast Asia, the Middle East and South Africa. We live among such a powerful br
ainwashing medium that young African boys can now save their earned pennies and
purchase a western drink, which will turn them into the Gangster Rap Pimp, such
is their want, such is their hope, such is the irony.
Let us never forget that there is a significant portion of young British black m
en whom are entering universities, happily engaged in monogamous relationships,
successful fathers, and professionals. They are the portions that snub gangster
rap or take it all in good humour, mere entertainment, too on-the-ball to be man
ipulated by a medium so kitsch. This we must never doubt. Even so, we cannot for
one moment discount that there is a significant portion of young impressionable
men whom are fast becoming young Nimrods, mighty hunters notching up scores of
casualties in their efforts to mimic a money making dupe.
Writing this article I asked a young British Jamaican boy who his ‘hero’ was. His re
sponse was, Gangster Rapper Triville. For those whom don’t know, Trillville is the
Gangster rapper best known for the hits "Neva Eva" and "Some Cut." He was also
recently arrested for orchestrating the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in Litho
nia. The rapper, whose real name is Donnell Prince, was arrested on charges of r
ape and aggravated sodomy. In this befuddled climate, he is not a villain, he is
a young boys hero. Why? In his music and in his reality, he is the ultimate pim
p: knighted by his loyalty to a lifestyle, which gives him command, however temp
orary, of his small pathetic environment. Suavity, dapper and smooth perhaps onc
e made a man a man, but we now live in an age where imposition, force and atroci
ous brutality define masculinity.
‘You can’t control your hoe? (She hard headed, she just won’t obey)
Can you control your hoe? (You’ve got to know what to do, and what to say) You’ve go
t to put that bitch in her place, even if it’s slapping her in her face. (SNOOP)
As the sickening realisation that our young men are in troubled waters dawns upo
n us, we hang our heads as the tide comes in over theirs. Slowly, we recognize t
hat we are in low waters, deep waters, frozen seas, and the skies looming above
our troubled heads are ice white. In the meantime, young men rummage within thei
r limited prepubescent psyches; saturated by a macabre music genre, and search f
or ways to regain the great status they know runs inherently in their veins. As
we sit probing for ways to construct a new black male identity and heed our yout
h’s deafening pleas for help, the Gangster rap medium has long pipped us to the po
st. Where biological parents remain terminally absent (mental and emotional abse
nce being just as damaging as physical), Gangster rap has trodden in, softly clo
aked by the darkness of our sightlessness, and claimed the minds of our children
. Their new mentor has long answered their needs for recognition with the captiv
ating ideal of the Black Male Pimp. Tempted by their marketing campaigns, which
lure so effectively, they respond to the harsh reality that their freedom cannot
be willed into existence and set about achieving it, snatching it, independentl
y of us and by any means necessary.
If we perhaps think we are isolated, ahistorical individuals, then there is no c
ase for apologizing, for caring, simply because we have done nothing wrong: our
sons have never raped and our daughters have never been raped and those who do k
now no better. The fact remains knife, gun and violent crime is no longer reserv
ed for hard-boiled yardies, shaven headed football fascists or evil hedge-lurkin
g perverts, but increasingly includes our impressionable, black and mixed race y
ouths. Youths whom are astonished when their peer keels over and dies in agony,
after ‘only’ stabbing him once, in a school playground to fulfil their feelings of i
nsufficiency. The fact remains that young girls whom are sexually ‘loose’ can no lon
ger be confined to the comfortable stereotype of the insecure, giggly bimbo but
are increasingly normal, bright, sensitive girls, whom have simply bought into t
he Gangster Rappers, and the boy next-door’s, insistence that to be a whore is to
be wanted, desired and to belong.
Yet they are the privileged descendants of an illustrious and rich African linea
ge. A lineage, which when ardently upheld cannot fail to awaken in their hearts
a profound love which, at present, lies dormant in their bosoms. A long career o
f bamboozlement appears to have obliterated from their minds the triumphs of gen
erous forbearers who, for us, bled in every vein. We must not let the Gangster r
apper continue to shrug his shoulders and say ‘I’m just showing them how it is, this
is all I know’ for he is serving a great injustice, and one not in keeping with o
ur past or our inherent nature. Historically, our African epistemological constr
uct has, for centuries, been that the rights of citizenship have matching obliga
tions and responsibilities to the community in which one resides. In the African
worldview the mere accumulation of individual property and wealth did not autom
atically accord status and prestige. Wealthy individuals who desired an esteemed
name and recognition of status were required to demonstrate their social consci
ousness and responsibility by contributing to the society s welfare. Africans ha
ve historically rejected the notion of the competitive, isolated individual. In
the indigenous African view, the concept of the individual makes sense only with
in the concept of the community. This is the African ‘personality’ and ‘consciousness’ t
hat renowned African leaders and social thinkers like W. E. B. Du Bois emphasize
d. This is the personality and consciousness that is inherent to our young peopl
e.
For the modern generation, ‘Blackness’ has become a political metaphor for the disad
vantaged and the dispossessed. Music, particularly gangster rap, is accepted as
a case of our atmosphere producing a context for art. Yet, when an enslaved Afri
can wrote poetry or sung he or she did so knowing that the lives of his people w
ere at stake. He did so knowing that his words might potentially be a way of upl
ifting and freeing his people. Young people need to know that they are heirs to
this tradition of struggle. That they are worthy of stimulation, enrichment and
elevation, not sucker punches and low blows. That their contemporary fight is fo
r freedom of the mind, freedom to conceive and achieve a new and better world. T
hat they can reclaim and orient their lives, re-define their existence and disco
ver purpose, without carnage and self-loathing. That in their veins runs the blo
od of a great people. A people who spawned champions like Thomas Molineux (the f
irst boxing champion of America in 1810), great orators like Sojourner Truth, gr
eat minds like Prince Saunders (the descendant of slaves so renowned for his elo
quence and learning that he was acclaimed in 1700’s America), painters like Juan D
e Pareja (one of the greatest painters of our time), from the depths of adversit
y and improbability. They need to know that, the Gangster Rap Pimp which seems t
ailor made to alleviate their inadequacies is a great fabrication, a sick ploy,
to mentally, spiritually, self-harm an entire global community for capital gain.
That each time they buy into the gambit that the Gangster Pimp is the biggest a
nd best of black men, and that the whore is a black woman’s inborn and paramount p
osition, they are being hoodwinked, had, took, led astray, run amok, bamboozled.
That this is not, and never has been All They Are Good For….

Imamu amiri baraka

Young soul

First, feel, then feel then

Read, or read, then feel, then
Fall, or stand, where you
Already are. Think
Of your self, and the other
Selves… think
Of your parents, your mothers
And sisters, your bentslick
Father, then feel, or
Fall, on your knees
If nothing else will move you,
Then read
And look deeply
Into all matters
Come close to you
City boys –
Country men
Make some muscle
In your head,
But use the muscle in your heart