The Ying Yang Twins, or, The Sun Can Still Shine While It's Raining

A few Saturdays ago we experienced a phenomenal rainstorm here in New York City. From my apartment perch, I could see the sun going down over the Hudson while at the same time a rainstorm also approached from the west, drowning New Jersey. The effect was truly gorgeous. I had no idea that it could rain while the sun was still shining. Of course I have been witness to midday drizzles in the midst of an otherwise beautiful day, but this downpour was illuminated by the bright orange glow of sunset. I could hardly tear myself away from my window.

Like anyone else who grew up with a press ‘n’ curl, I am generally no fan of the rain. Still, the vision of a retiring sun fighting through a deluge inspired me to think about other metaphorical areas where it seems to be raining, but the sun’s struggle to peek through creates something new and magical. One of those areas is hip-hop. As Common said, “I used to love H.E.R.”, but the genre has gotten to be so violent and lurid that the love has turned into no more than a passing radio interest.

Essence Magazine has declared a “Take Back the Music” Campaign whose purpose is to draw attention to, and hopefully create some change in, the hip-hop industry that has been mercilessly degrading black women and glorifying the “gangsta” lifestyle. Essence, as a magazine dedicated to black women, is right to focus on the omnipresent violent and misogynistic lyrics aimed at the “b*tches” and “hos” whose sole purpose is to sexually pleasure their men and dance like strippers. Every popular video features half-naked women whose sole purpose is to shake their chests and behinds in the camera. Many times, you don’t even see the women’s faces. Songs revolve almost exclusively around money, loose women and violence. The male rappers vie to see who can look more menacing, who’s been in jail longer, and who has been shot more times than the next “artist” and the female singers/rappers compete for most-skin-shown-in-a-prime-time-video and who-can-give-the-best-head awards. Since Queen Latifah became a model/actress/jazz singer, there hasn’t been any voice in hip-hop to remind the gents that it’s “Ladies First.”

I have long felt abandoned by the musical form that I cherished as a child. Hip-hop was my generation’s language, our news, our laughter, our jokes and our fist. We were young, determined, on the cutting-edge and we were not going to back down. My alienation from hip-hop started as surprised shock, segued into a mature weariness and then finally morphed into an anger that someone had run off with something that was mine, that was special, that was revolutionary, and that the thief had left me with nothing but an empty gat, rusted spinners, a busted thong and some clear platform shoes with a broken heel. At least that is how I felt.

Yet, there is something electric about even the worst of our lyrical music. Just last Saturday I stood angrily in the club listening to Lil’ Jon & the East Side Boyz’s club banger, “Get Low.” I was upset because all of the club, men and women, were dancing, having a great time, and then there was me, holding up the wall. I took a vow a while back not to be one of the women in the club shaking her tailfeathers to songs that are nasty or degrading because dancing to a song is a bit like owning it and demonstrating to all and sundry that you agree with its import and lyrics. “Get Low” is a song with which I definitely cannot agree. The song (click here for the lyrics) references sweat rolling down a man’s genitalia, sperm shooting out of said genitalia and worst of all, women (“b*tches” is now synonymous with “women”) crawling. But hang it all, the song is catchy. It’s fun! In the privacy of the car on our civil rights road trip, Shannon and I would often break the silence with a spontaneous outcry: “From the windows. . . .to the wall (to the wall)!”

The meteorological phenomenon of a rain shower bathed in sunlight gave me a ray of hope for hip-hop, or at least a different perspective on it. Perhaps the sun can still shine while it's raining. Like all revolutionary movements that become mainstream, hip-hop has been co-opted by uninspiring commercial forces that hope only to consolidate cash—like a picture of Che Guevara on a $30 t-shirt. Much like communism, hip-hop gave a lot of people a lot of hope and made some people extremely rich while the rest of us "true believers" were bankrupted waiting for its promise to be fulfilled. It is pouring in hip-hop; something else will have to be our salvation. Yet, even some of the most offensive songs can embody the spirit of pure, unabashed fun so well that the most righteously outraged protester has to stop thinking and just “stomp and wiggle it.”

I applaud Essence’s work in its campaign, but I will admit that this proud fully-clothed black woman will be getting crunk to a chu’ch beat in the club tonight. Not because I love the rain, but because the sun is still shining.