Music Videos, Performance and Resistance: Feminist Rappers
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Music Videos, Performance and Resistance: Feminist Rappers Robin Roberts Popular culture provides us with particularly compelling examples of the tension between dominance and resistance and one of the most engaging sites of such tensions is the feminist rap music video. Feminist rap music videos require the viewer to participate in their construction and analysis.^ This music explores tensions between black and white, male and female, in a direct and explicit fashion. Feminist rap videos are not the only feminist music videos—there are feminist videos of almost every type of music—but feminist rap performers have received less media attention than rock and roll artists like Tina Turner or Janet Jackson. There are reasons for this: unlike Turner and Jackson, feminist rap artists make little accommodation for white audiences and consequently, rap receives less airplay on Music Television, the premier music video station. This is true of all rap artists, masculinist and feminist alike. Yet for the feminist rapper, rap offers unique possibilities. What Barbara Christian suggests about blues singers applies here to the more optimistic musical form, rap: "Perhaps because the blues was seen as 'race music' and catered to a black audience, black women were better able to articulate themselves as individuals and as part of a racial group in that art form" (122). Rap, or hip hop as "the culture of clothes, slang, dances, and philosophies that sprang up in the '80s" (George 40) is sometimes called, can be seen daily on a special MTV program "Yo MTV Raps" and on "Rap City" an hour-long show on BET. Both shows frequently air music videos by female performers and some rap videos like "Push It" by Salt 'n Pepa and "Supersonic" by J.J. Fad received heavy rotation outside the rap show. Rap's increasing popularity has been accompanied by the appearance of a number of feminist performers including (The Real) Roxanne, M.C. Lyte, Shelly Thunder, Roxanne Shante, J.J. Fad, Salt 'n Pepa, Queen Latifah, Sweet Tee, Ms. Melodie, Antoinette, Precious and crossovers like Paula Abdul and Neneh Cherry. These performers draw on rap specifically as a black art form to resist racism; yet unlike most of their fellow male rappers, feminist rappers draw additional energy from their simultaneous discussion of race and 141 142 Joumal of Popular Culture gender. Evoking tbe spectres of racism and sexism enables tbem to attack tbem more effectively. Unlike otber political videos, feminist rap videos point to tbe ways tbat systems of oppression are linked and are interdependent. Tbeir message is particularly powerful in tbe context of tbe otber videos tbat air on MTV and BET. In tbis frame, tbe feminist rap videos are always, already, radical. Rap, like all otber forms of popular music, is not inberently feminist or political, and indeed some of tbe best known rap songs like Tone Loc's "Wild Tbing" are obnoxiously sexist. However, female performers manage in tbis genre as in otber popular genres, to use specific generic qualities to promote a feminist message. Rap is noted for its strong rbytbm, often only a percussive beat, and its empbasis on lyrics. Tbe melody in a rap song frequently follows tbe performer's enunciation of lyrics, wbicb usually rbyme and involve clever linguistic plays on meaning and sound. Tbrougb tbe lyrics, female rappers make explicit and overt assertions of female strengtb and autonomy. Tbrougb tbeir lyrics, style, and dance, female rappers draw wbat Audre Lorde bas described as "uses of tbe erotic: tbe erotic as power" (Lorde 53, 59). Tbe rap performer is tbe focus of tbe group ratber tban instrumentalists or record scratcbers (tbe "disc jockeys" wbo manipulate records to produce tbat sound unique to rap of a record moved back and fortb rapidly). In rap, particular stress is laid upon tbe performer's personality and name. As described by a participant in street rap, rap is "about competition and gaining attention... 'Listen to my story, about myself, life and romance; and listen wbile I tell it to tbe beat of tbe music. Tbere's poetry bere, and I'll tell you anytbing witbout missing a beat' " (Ewen 56). Wbile tbis description was produced by a male rapper, it applies equally well to female rappers. Since rap revolves around self-promotion, female rappers are able to use tbe form witbout being accused of being self-centered or narcissistic. Tbe dynamic of rap requires tbat tbe performer focus on personal narrative, a focus tbat in tbe bands of a female rapper can produce a feminist tale. Female rappers compete witb male performers and gain attention for tbeir feminist message tbrougb music videos, wbicb also, as Simon Fritb argues, function to draw attention to tbe performer. "Wbetber as video-art or as video- promotion, clips work as self-portraits: tbey represent tbeir performers to tbeir fans" (Fritb 216). Rap music doubles tbis self-promotion, making rap videos especially suitable for feminist appropriation. Cornel West identifies tbis quality of self-promotion as distinctively African-American. "A distinctive feature of tbese black styles is a certain projection of self- more a persona—in performance. Tbis is not simply a self-investment and self-involvement in musical rbetorical, and atbletic enactments; it also acknowledges radical contingency and even solicits cballenge and danger" (West 93). Tbe cballenge and danger tbat be describes is redoubled Feminist Rappers 143 in feminist rap because of the paradoxically strong position black female performers have as a result of their perspective as both a part of rap scene and in opposition to its misogyny. Significantly rap involves postmodernist qualities, an aspect of rap that has been ignored, perhaps because it is usually associated with white "high" masculine culture. I agree with West that "For too long, the postmodernism debate has remained inscribed within narrow disciplinary boundaries, insulated artistic practices, and vague formulations of men and women of letters" (90). Rap music videos provide a site to explore postmodernism in the intersection of African-American and mass culture. Scratching demonstrates the postmodern qualities of rap because it involves the appropriation of another record. This method of producing music and the frequent use of snatches of melody from other songs as part of a rap record, sampling, emphasize pastiche and fragmentation, two fundamental aspects of postmodernism. The music video's use of rapping situates it in another postmodernist style—that of grafting older forms of art to newer manifestations. Rap music videos belong to a long and venerable tradition of rapping in African-American culture, including for example the tradition of the toast.^ To appreciate feminist rap videos, the viewer must first redefine the idea of a "text," expanding it to include a multitude of nonverbal signs and freeing it from monologic and auteurist assumptions. In a music video the performer's dress, gestures, enunciation, and style all become signs liable to interpretation. Redefining "text" also means redefining "author." The author of a multivoiced and polyphonic video is no longer, what he (or less likely she) would be in the auteur theory, the purportedly male director only, supposedly controlling all meanings, but also the female performer, who interweaves and juxtaposes meanings through her delivery, her look, her gestures, and in many cases the music and lyrics. Well-established performers like Janet Jackson choose their own choreographers and work with them to create an image. In this type of interpretation, the female performer is legitimated as an agent and her role fuses with that of the traditional director.' The star-centered institution of music videos further empowers the performer. Information on music video directors is difficult to obtain, while every video carries the name of its star^ and Music Television's programming, for example, emphasizes the primacy of the star. "Rock Blocks" on Music Television consist of three or more videos by a particular performer, rather than a particular director. The director as well as the performer's agent undoubtedly have hands in the final product, but poststructuralist theory licenses the discussion of the performer as an equal participant, another voice, rather than as a puppet of a director. ^ 144 Joumal of Popular Culture This poststructuralist view is especially appropriate for black feminist rap videos. Both the black audience and the black performers have an intense relationship with music videos. A recent study suggests that music videos are a particularly potent form of social construction for women and minorities; according to this study, women and blacks watch more music videos than other groups of teenagers (Brown 19- 32). In an article on black female sexuality. Hortense Spillers discusses blues singers and sexuality, but her reasoning applies equally well to music videos and may further explain the attraction of music videos for women and blacks as viewers. "The singer is likely closer to the poetry of black female experience than we might think, not so much interestingly enough, in the words of her music, but in the sense of dramatic confrontation between ego and the world than the vocalist herself embodies" (Spillers 86). This sense of duality, of confrontation, is central to the female appropriation of the music video form and helps explain why so many black female performers are so effective in this subversion. Black female performers have a tradition to draw on—a tradition in which, as Spillers notes, the singer's "sexuality is precisely the physical expression of the highest self-regard and often the sheer pleasure she takes in her own powers" (88). While female blues singers did focus on melancholia. Daphne Duval Harrison argues that blues songs like "Every Dog Has His Day," performed by Sippie Wallace, involve "an assertion of power" (89).