"The power of sex is more powerful than the motherfuckers in Saudi Arabia." Although this quote from Ice Cube in Tricia Rose's Essay "Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile" may be slightly exaggerated, he sums up why men and women are constantly at odds so much when it comes to relationships and respect. Even though the battle between men and women has been occurring long before hip hop was invented, hip hop has been a unique forum where men and women can express their problems with each other. At its beginning hip hop was a platform where both sexes had an equal voice, over time however, as the genre grew more popular, men started to dominate the airwaves of hip hop. This dominance by men gave hip hop a very antifeminist voice, especially with the huge popularity of "Gangsta" rap in the early 1990s, degrading most women to "bitches" and "hos."
Gangsta Crunk
Gangsta Party
Ice CubeHowever the antifeminism in hip hop is not without reason, many artists draw upon experiences where a woman has scorned them in one way or another. By identifying these instances where women use their sexuality to gain personal or financial wealth; rappers are not only explaining the cause of their degradation of women, but also providing solutions on how women can fix their image in hip hop. In this essay, I will give several examples of artists describing actions of women that fuel the antifeminism in hip hop. These descriptions not only explain the antifeminism, but also show efforts by rappers to change this situation.
In Tricia Rose's essay "Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile," she explains that "men are hostile toward women because the fulfillment of male heterosexual desire is significantly checked by women's capacity for sexual rejection and/or manipulation of men"...