Volume 1, Issue No. 2 - Revolt Magazine

a teaching tool, one which can help young people
recognize their collective and individual stakes
in civic society as they dissect paradigms of race,
class and gender. 11 We rebuke the pimp-ho dogeat-bitch
game because we have daughters that are
telling us Rap ‘hurts.’ 12
We are Hip Hop Feminist because we too are
seduced by the lyrics, the images, the beat we bow
our heads to affirming its sacredness. Sometimes
we even want what they promise ‘all the keys and
security codes…the cheese.’ Because we were born
knowing that successfully negotiating male space
– male space that’s paid – reaps great rewards. 13
We know the real roots of Hip Hop and we are proud
of them. We know that Hip Hop was born in the Bronx
following New York City’s structural redevelopment
that literally bulldozed through vibrant ethnic
communities. Hip Hop is the response of a young,
creative, piss poor Black ‘underclass’ faced with
jobless fathers, skyrocketing imprisonment rates
for non-violent drug-related crimes, dwindling
educational options, no affordable housing or
healthcare.
We are the African Roots of Hip Hop. We celebrate
the utilitarian nature of African Art: of dance that
initiates adulthood, of a mask that channels spirit,
of a cloth pattern that conveys status, of a drum that
talks. 14 A drum signifying territory, and belonging;
a drum that calls the community to battle. We are
Call and Response. We are boasting, toasting,
and bragging. We are rappin’, rhymin’, beat boxin’,
battlin’, breakin’ and drawin’. We are 18th Century
slaves emerging from our ships with half-moons
and stars we carved into our scalp by broken soap
bottle. 15 The tom-tom laughs, the tom-tom cries. 16t
We are the undeniable appeal of the communicability
of Transatlantic cultural memory. We are the visual
production of Black bodies as shiny commodities at
once hypervisible and disappeared, the meaning of
America as a global brand, which shines bright but
remains shadowed by its history of race relations at
home and abroad. 17
We are Hip Hop Feminists and we believe Black
female roles in Hip Hop must be understood in light
of the political economies that inform their cultural
practices. 18 We believe that ‘bitches do[ing] what
they have to do to get paid’ may be its own form of
Feminism, although we recognize that these Pussy
Power platforms glamorize and glorify the hard
core sex, drugs and rough street life that, in reality,
accounts for black women’s comparatively higher
rate of AIDS-related deaths, imprisonment, ‘forced’
single parenthood and domestic violence. 19 We
connect the sexual objectification of Black female
bodies to the fact that in 2001, HIV was the number
one cause of death for African-American women
between the age of 25-34. 20
We are Baby Mamas but not only Baby Mamas. We
are Hip Hop Feminists and we engage in critical
discussion around the effect of public policies
on the lives of young Black women whose bodies
have come to be viewed as active sites for the
reproduction of black poverty and the projection
of national anxieties at the hands of both Black
men and conservative politicians. We are Hip Hop
feminists committed to deconstructing Baby Mama
as a singular trope employed to obscure the role of
the state in the undercutting of love relationships
and removal of Black fathers. 21
We are Hip Hop Feminists and we know that when
Martin Luther King Jr. gave his ‘I Have a Dream’
speech, more than 70% of all Black families were
headed by married couples and that in 2002 that
statistic had dropped to 48 percent. 22
We know our declarations may not always be met
with praise and love. We know that acknowledging
the rampant sexism in our community, for example,
means relinquishing the comforting illusion that
Black men and women are a unified front. 23
We are committed to shedding light on the way
in which Hip Hop influences and informs racial
stereotypes that perpetuate a neo-slave existence.
We are Hip Hop Feminists because we know that
Black music exists in a neo-colonial relationship
with the $12 billion music industry whereby Black
inner cities act as ‘raw cites of cultural production’
where conditions (low per capita income, high birth
rate, economic dependence on external markets,
labor as major export) resemble a third world country
and produce a ‘product’ – Hip Hop – that is sold
back to the ‘motherland’ (in the case of American
suburbs teeming with bored white youth). 24
And we still love Hip Hop, and we can still back
it up and dunk it. We still love Hip Hop because
we are Hip Hop Feminists and we know that no
one can ever ‘own’ Hip Hop. We are Hip Hop Feminists
because those reformed nigga thugs make our
nipples hard. 25 Because Black-on-Black-love is
the backbone of Hip Hop Feminism and just phat
dope mack bitches ridin’ love-on-love-on-love cuz we
got it like dat in generals.
We are Hip Hop Feminists speaking up
about an industry produced image of Black
ghetto life which serves to buttress the Prison
Industrial Complex, a contemporary ‘leviathan’ of
racial inequality maintained through a ferocious
combination of government law, private corporations,
police terrorism and racist cultural attitudes. 26
We are Hip Hop Feminists and we rebuke
the constant turn to ’ghetto blackness’ as a model
of ‘authenticity’ and hipness in rap music 27
limiting ‘blackness’ to ‘a primal connection
to sex and violence, a big penis and
relief from the onus of upward mobility.’ 28
We are Hip Hop Feminists speaking up about
how you’re more likely to die living in the
American ghetto than if you were fighting in Iraq,
the leading cause of death for Black men ages 15-
24 is black on Black homicide, 29 and that for too
many black men there is no trust, no community,
no family. 30
We are Hip Hop Feminists committed to countering
mainstream journalistic discourse that relies on a darky
spectacle hook linking Hip Hop with ‘pathological’ black
behaviors. A hard-core feminist talking with a hardened mack
about the political, spiritual and emotional
self-determination of Black people does not good
copy make. 31 We are Hip Hop Feminists because
communication has to be the ‘dope’ thing in Black
liberation struggle – like you and me talking culture this
way down home and revolutionary-like. 32
We are Hip Hop Feminists because we believe
Hip Hop is healing, and that men and women
have been conditioned to express themselves in
problematic ways. We know that A nigga forgets
feelings, recognizing, instead, that affects are
communicable, particularly the hardcore ones
of anger, rage, intense pleasure. 33 We know that
many – white, queer, Asian, Latino/a, straight,
male, female, you name it – have adopted the nigga
trope in performative, exciting and safe ways.
And yet we also want to raise children, especially
young Black boys, who feel comfortable expressing
feelings and affects, especially love.
We are committed to Hip Hop as an expressive,
holistic, liberatory and extralinguistic mode of
multidirectional communication. We are our
vernacular, A language without a nation… a culture
whose condition is exile, wandering and resistance
to a dominant power. 34 We are Hip Hop Feminists
because Hip Hop satisfies our profound need to
have our territories acknowledged, recognized and
celebrated. 35
We are Hip Hop Feminists because we love
Hip Hop and we use Hip Hop to fight for social
change. We are Hip Hop Feminists and we
are brave enough to fuck with the grays. 36
*Hoopty Hoop Hip Hop Feminism: The Manifesta was originally
published online on the Native Shout Blog www.nativeshout.com/2012
1Sujatha Fernandes, Proven Presence, Home Girls Make Some Noise:
Hip Hop Feminism Anthology Gwendolyn D. Pough, Elaine Richardson,
Aisha Durham, Rachel Raimist, eds., 2007
2Michael Jeffries, The Name and Game of Hip Hop Feminism,
Home Girls ibid
3Jocelyn A. Wilson: Tip Drills, Strip Clubs and Representation in the
Media, Home Girls ibid
4Joan Morgan, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, 1999
5Paradigm of the queer rap group BQE, Eric Darnell Pritchard & Maria L.
Bibbs, Sista’ Outsider, Home Girls ibid
6Kaila Adia Story, Performing Venus – From Hottentot to Vixen,
Home Girls ibid
7Kaila Adia Story, ibid
8Alesha Dominek Washington, Not the Average Girl from the Videos,
Home Girls ibid
9Chyann L. Oliver, For Sepia “colored girls” who have considered self/
when hip hop is enuf, Home Girls ibid
10Angela Davis quoted in Heather Duerre Humann, Feminist and
Material Concerns, Home Girls ibid
11Michael Jeffries, ibid
12Dream Hampton quoted in Aisha Durham, That’s My World,
Home Girls ibid
13Eisa Nefertari Ulen: They’re Not Talking About Me, Home Girls ibid
14Eisa Nefertari Ulen, ibid
15Krista Thompson, A Sidelong Glance: The Practice of African
Diasporic Art History in the United States, Art Journal, California Art
Association, Fall 2011
16Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, 1926
17 Krista Thompson, ibid
18 Fatimah N. Muhammad, How to Not be 21st Century Venus Hottentots,
Home Girls ibid
19Fatimah N. Muhammad, ibid
20Kates and Leggoe (2005) sited in Kimala Price, Hip Hop Feminism at
the Political Crossroads, Home Girls ibid
21Brittney Cooper, The State as Patron of the Baby Mama Drama and
Other Ghetto Hustles, Home Girls ibid
22Joy Bennet Kinnon, The Shocking State of Black Marriages, Ebony,
2003
23Joan Morgan, ibid
24Norman Kelley, The Political Economy of Black Music, 1999
25 Joan Morgan, ibid
26M.K. Asante, Jr. It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the
Post-Hip-Hop Generation, 2008
27Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary
America, 1994
28John Leland Hip: The History, 2004
29Joan Morgan, Real Love, VIBE, 1996
30 Joan Morgan, ibid 4
31bell hooks, Gangsta Culture Sexism and Misogyny, Outlaw Culture,
1994
32bell hooks, bell hooks and Ice Cube in Dialogue, Outlaw Culture, 1994
33R.A.T. Judy, On the Question of Nigga Authenticity in That’s the Joint:
Hip Hop Studies Reader M.Forman and M.A. Neal, eds. 2004
34Russel A. Potter, Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip Hop and the Politics of
Post-Modernism, 1995
35Tricia Rose, ibid
36 Joan Morgan, ibid 4