Hip Hop's Betrayal Of Black Women By Jennifer Mclune

In her essay "Hip-Hop's Betrayal of Black Women," Jennifer McLune expresses her stance on the positions some African American women receive from both the songs and music videos pertaining the hip-hop music genre. According to McLune, hip-hop would not be as successful as it is today if it were not for the objectification of African American women. Although this may be true to some extent, McLune seems to not realize that African American women are not the only ones being degraded in the contents of hip-hop, but instead women in general. The author also seems to assume that all African American male rap artists objectify women, when the reality is, many other music artists of different subgenres have been found guilty of committing the same

With the author's almost vulgar choice of words, it is obvious that she is frustrated about the obscene descriptions African American women perceive not only from the lyrics of hip-hop, but also from the appearances in hip-hop related music videos. Although her frustration is understandable and of good reasoning, she comes off as discourteous and sarcastic many times in her essay. With statements such as "as long as the boys can agree that their common enemy is female and that their power resides in their penis," is evidence that McLune is using a manipulative-like tone (222). From then on, she continues to use an emotionally charged language throughout her essay, resulting it to become

Something that McLune seems to not have taken notice in yet, is that the African American women presented in the music videos of hip-hop are there by choice. None of those women were stripped naked and forced to dance in front of the cameras. Another fault in McLune's claims is that she seems to imply all hip-hop artists are African American. This is not true at all. With famous rappers such as Marshall Bruce Mathers III, who is better known for his stage name Eminem, has no roots of African descent. McLune then goes on to saying "hip-hop is a manipulative narrative that sells because it gets men hard," insisting that hip-hop only generates its money from horny males (224). But the truth is, hip-hop sells because it is "hip." The upbeats from the music genre is favored by many since it makes people want to either just jam out to or