No Trivia

Spin: “Rap, Rape, and R&B: Battle of the Sexes, Round 2.”

one comment


Round Two is up!

My conversation with Latoya Peterson of Racialicious continues. In Round One, some of my guycentric critical oversights were addressed, and then we tackled the Weeknd (a.k.a., Abel Tesfaye), who I found to be symptomatic of a “Date Rape & B” trend, and who Latoya found to be nothing more than a creep.

We did, however, agree on the way that “murky” issues of consent have snuck into R&B and that something is indeed changing in hip-hop right now. Round One ended with Latoya responding to my rather sunny interpretation of hip-hop’s subtle shifts, as she observed that just because “Kanye gets to have a few reflective moments… doesn’t mean society has suddenly started caring more about what women want…”

Written by Brandon

May 7th, 2011 at 3:05 am

Posted in Spin, Spin column

«
»

One Response to 'Spin: “Rap, Rape, and R&B: Battle of the Sexes, Round 2.”'

Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'Spin: “Rap, Rape, and R&B: Battle of the Sexes, Round 2.”'.

  1. I don’t know if this is just some idiosyncrasy on my part, but morally I find manipulation a lot more problematic than the sorts of things said in the most misogynistic work of N.W.A. or Three 6 Mafia. Everything that goes on in the latter is between consenting adults, and I don’t know that they’re really saying anything that isn’t true – promiscuous women who are really into rappers do exist, and they’re probably not people with whom one would want to get into a long-term relationship. On the other hand, a lot of r&b, as you say, and more generally a lot of discourse about women these days (e.g. the whole pick-up culture), is all about robbing women of their moral autonomy.

    Tray

    10 May 11 at 3:37 am

Leave a Reply