“MUSIC WAS OUR ONLY WEAPON”: PROTEST, MISOGYNY, AND HARDNESS

IN THE MUSIC OF NWA

by

Rebekah Alexis Hutten

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the Degree of

Bachelor of Arts in Music

with Honours

Acadia University

March, 2016

© Copyright by Rebekah Alexis Hutten, 2016

i

This thesis by Rebekah Alexis Hutten

is accepted in its present form by the

Department of Music

as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree of

Bachelor of Arts in Music with Honours

Approved by the Thesis Supervisor

______Dr. Michelle Boyd Date

Approved by the Head of the Department

______Dr. Christianne Rushton Date

Approved by the Honours Committee

______Dr. Anna Redden Date

ii

I, Rebekah Alexis Hutten, grant permission to the University Librarian at Acadia

University to reproduce, loan or distribute copies of my thesis in microform, paper or electronic formats on a non-profit basis. I, however, retain the copyright in my thesis.

______Signature of Author

______Date

iii

Acknowledgements

First I would like to thank my thesis supervisor Dr. Michelle Boyd for her unwavering patience, dedication, and humour. Your Women in Western Art Music class helped me cultivate a previously unimaginable passion for learning about women’s participation and place in music. I am forever grateful for your enthusiasm, meticulous attention to detail, and passion for research.

Thank you to all of my professors at Acadia, particularly those in the departments of

Music and Women and Gender Studies. You have permanently altered my perception of the roles music can play in our world.

To my friends, particularly my boyfriend Brydone, who in their own beautiful ways illuminate my life with their love and support. Thank you for helping me to see beyond my predispositions.

Thank you to my parents: Dad, for prompting and helping to sustain my initial passion for music and intellectual thought, and to Mom, for setting an example of joy and excitement for life in general.

Finally, to my Grammy who dedicates her life to words, family, and flowers: thank you for writing down my childhood stories.

iv

Table of Contents

Title Page i Approval Page ii Permission and Duplication iii Acknowledgments iv Table of Contents v Abstract vi

Introduction: “The Strength Of Street Knowledge”: NWA and Black Women’s Place in South Central Los Angeles 1

Chapter One- “No Justice, No Peace”: Protest Through NWA’s “Fuck Tha’ Police” 14

Chapter Two- Multidimensional Oppression: Intersectional Feminism, Controlling Images of Black American Women, and Black Masculinity 28

Chapter Three- Despicable Females: Controlling Images of Black American Women in NWA’s Music 56

Chapter Four- The Sound of Protest: Musical Hardness and Black Male Survival in NWA’s Music 71

Conclusion: Continuum of Protest: The Perpetual Relevancy of NWA 90

Lyric Index 96

Bibliography 113

v Abstract

This thesis examines the ways in which reality rap group NWA’s (Niggaz Wit’

Attitudes) music functioned as protest in Los Angeles, United States, throughout the

1980s and 1990s. They did so primarily by providing social commentary on police brutality and racism, asserting control over Black American women through misogynistic lyric content and through the sound of musical “hardness,” a quality in their music which bolstered a masculinity they adopted in order to survive.

An intersectional feminist methodology is applied to develop how misogyny in

NWA’s music directly affects Black American women. This thesis draws from a wide range of Black feminist scholarship and hip-hop and rap studies.

For NWA, music was a means of creating power in a social, political, and cultural climate in which they were otherwise powerless. While their lyrics regarding Black women are blatantly derogatory, misogynistic, and sexually violent, it is not simply because the members of NWA were inherently sexist: historically-ingrained controlling images and stereotypes of Black American women permeate American society so deeply that it is quite likely NWA did not realize they were reproducing these controlling images and stereotypes through their music. It is ironic that they protested against police brutality towards Black men while simultaneously oppressing Black women through their lyrics; however, by oppressing Black women, in part, NWA facilitated their rise to power, fame, and success.

vi Introduction “THE STRENGTH OF STREET KNOWLEDGE” NWA and Black Women’s Place in South Central Los Angeles

My experience as a musician impels me to ask the question: why is music that degrades Black women accepted and normalized? Music has the simultaneous power to heal and to hurt. Reality rap imbues this unique quality. It has the potential to heal its performers and its audiences, to instill social activism and change in generations of people. NWA (Niggaz Wit’ Attitudes) had the potential to do so, and in many ways they did embody characteristics of activists. Yet, despite this potential healing power, NWA’s music undoubtedly hurts Black women by holding Black women in the place of the oppressed in order for NWA to assert control over their lives in a society that did everything it could to control them.

Music’s ability to function as a lens through which to analyze culture and gender relationships is evident across all genres; however, it is particularly poignant in an analysis of reality rap. Reality rap, referred to in popular media as gangsta rap, is a derivative of hip-hop—a genre that was born through resistance to oppression and racism.

NWA was a seminal rap group in Los Angeles during the late 1980s and early 1990s that simultaneously inhabited both the potentially negative and positive aspects of the reality rap genre. Reality rap can be understood as existing in two spheres: first, social activism, and second, the perpetuation of discrimination. It is often ironic, hypocritical, and contradictory within itself; however, these contradictions stem from one site: a reaction to and often a protest against institutionalized oppression.

Reality rap was a means through which Black American rappers, specifically

NWA, could protest their own oppression when faced with violent white masculinity—

1 however, in order to protest and oppose this dominant culture, they relied on using racist and sexist stereotypes of Black American women in many of their song lyrics to enact power and dominance. Additionally, NWA embodied a constructed masculinity in the aural quality of their music, evoking a musical “hardness” which, when working in tandem with the violent lyric content, allowed them to access a sense of both constructed and very real power.

NWA’s roots are in South Central Los Angeles, specifically Compton and Watts.1

LA in the 1980s saw the birth and resounding popularity of reality rap into mainstream media; the music functioned as protest during a time of rampant police brutality and unadulterated racism towards Black American peoples and communities. Reality rap originated in Watts and later in Compton, two neighbourhoods in South Central LA particularly affected by discriminatory housing, police brutality, widespread drug usage, gang violence, and overarching racist practices imposed on Black communities by dominant white groups.

South Central was violent and dangerous throughout the 1960s and up until the

1980s and 1990s. This was not due only to inner-city gangs like the Bloods and the Crips, but due to police brutality directed primarily towards young Black men. Many of these young Black men realized that they could take an art form indigenous to their specific region and employ it to function as protestation against discriminatory housing practices, lack of city and government support, poverty, violence within their community, and police brutality. Because there was so much dysfunction, self-produced songs disseminated by cassette tape became wildly popular on the streets of South Central. This

1 For a comprehensive history of reality rap, see Jeff Chang’s novel Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop (New York: Picador, 2005) and Brian Cross’ It’s Not About a Salary: Rap, Race and

2 historical, cultural, and social context provided a space for NWA to create music and pioneer the genre of reality rap.

Eazy-E, Ice Cube (who left NWA in 1989), Dr. Dre, MC Ren, DJ Yella, and

Arabian Prince (who left NWA in 1988) were active from 1986-1991. Eazy-E founded

NWA in 1986, joined initially by Dr. Dre and later by Arabian Prince and Ice Cube. MC

Ren joined in 1988. They originally produced their own songs and disseminated them in the streets on cassette tapes. Due to a record deal with Bryan Turner of Priority Records,

NWA were given the opportunity to begin producing music in a recording studio. Priority

Records signed NWA as Priority’s first act in 1981.

When recording their first album, NWA member Dr. Dre commented that he wanted “to go all the way left. Everybody trying to do this Black power and shit, so I was like, let’s give ‘em an alternative. Nigger niggerniggerniggernigger fuck this fuck that bitch bitch bitch bitch suck my dick, all this kind of shit, you know what I’m saying?” 2

Though Dr. Dre isn’t particularly descriptive in this passage, he was alluding to NWA’s desire to produce songs that were shocking to the public, a departure from the less- outrageous social-commentary-style of the influential rap group The Watts Prophets. Jeff

Chang, an American journalist, author and music critic, interpreted Dr. Dre’s statement as such:

If the thing was protest, they would toss the ideology and go straight to the riot. If the thing was sex, they would chuck the seduction and go straight to the fuck. Forget knowledge or self or empowering the race. This was about, as Eazy would put it, the strength of street knowledge.3

2 Brian Cross, It’s Not About a Salary: Rap, Race and Resistance in Los Angeles (New York: Verso, 1993), 180-181. 3 Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop (New York: Picador, 2005), 318.

3 Though Chang is undoubtedly correct, his book glosses over the reasons behind going, to put it bluntly, “straight to the fuck.”4 Dr. Dre believed NWA’s music was an alternative to “Black power shit,”5 when in fact their music functioned as protest. Their lyrics were their protestations; their music was a cry for help.

The lyric content of NWA’s music focuses primarily on three topics: social justice, gun and knife violence, and degrading sex with women. This thesis will focus primarily on the topics of social justice and degrading sex with women. Lyrics that target women typically interact with lyrics about gun violence and social justice; this thesis will also explore what implications there are in the connectivity between semantic topics in the lyric content.

NWA successfully perpetuated harmful stereotypes of Black American women, stereotypes that were in fact created during slavery, through the dissemination of their lyrics to their audiences. These stereotypes are not just inappropriate; in both the 1980s,

1990s, and in a modern context in 2016, they are dangerous to Black American women.

All women inevitably experience either subtle or blatant effects of patriarchal society. All women risk experiencing violence, but some groups of women are more at risk than others. As race and gender scholar Dr. Carolyn West writes, Black women face a higher level of oppression, and oppressive images maintain the standard of oppression.6

Black women face discrimination not only because of their gender, but also because of

4 Ibid, 318. Chang is referring to the tendency for the lyrics of NWA’s music to be blunt, direct, and unintellectual. 5 Cross, 180-181. “Black power shit” refers to the Black Power political slogan in America which originated during 1960s Civil Rights Movement. 6 Carolyn West, “Mammy Jezebel, Sapphire, and their homegirls: Developing an ‘oppositional gaze’ towards the images of Black women,” in Lectures on the Psychology of Women ed. J. Chrisler, C. Golden, and P. Rozee, 4th edition (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008), 286-299.

4 their ethnicity. The intersection of these two markers of identity, gender and ethnicity, place them in a position to experience the most extreme levels of subjugation, violence, and inequity. Recognizing how multiple identities converge and function together to create unique experiences is known academically as intersectionality, coined by Kimberlé

Crenshaw in her groundbreaking article “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity

Politics, and Violence Against Women of Colour.”7

Of course, Black men have also suffered. The way that American male reality rappers fought for equity when targeted by violent police officers must not be undermined and admonished because they discriminated against women. The issue was the lack of a capacity for male rappers to understand the implications of their sexist attitudes towards

Black women. It is akin to earlier suffragette movements: white women wanted equality for women but actively fought to exclude Black American women in early feminist movements.8 Black American rappers, similarly, actively exclude Black American women from their protest for civil rights because of the way they speak about Black women in reality rap. Their lyrics suggest that Black women are barely human, good only for sex and deserving of violence and disregard. By applying stereotypes created during slavery to Black women, violence towards women is justified not in just a musical context

7 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Colour,” Stanford Law Review, 43/6, (1991). This article will be discussed more fully in Chapter Two. 8 Black women’s exclusion in the suffragette movement throughout the 19th and 20th century often lead to segregation within feminist and suffragette clubs, organizations, and protests. For more information, see the following website: “Rights for Women: The Suffrage Movement and Its Leaders,” National Women’s History Museum, Accessed March 27 2016, https://www.nwhm.org/online- exhibits/rightsforwomen/AfricanAmericanwomen.html

5 but in real, lived experiences.9 If NWA can rap about inequity and inequality but ignore the struggles of women who shared the same ethnicity, it sends a message to the broader public that Black women are not deserving of the rights NWA fought for through their music.

Because of the complex lived experiences of Black American women, reality rap analyses necessitate the need for intersectional feminist methodology. White feminist methodology excludes and erases experiences specific to Black women, and has long been the default when analyzing women and gender issues and topics (in both academia and popular media). By approaching reality rap through the lens of intersectional feminism, I hope to adequately express the specific troubles reality rap presents to women of the Black diaspora. Though any degrading stereotype of women consistently perpetuated by men solidifies patriarchal constructs, these stereotypes are significantly more harmful to Black women.

Kimberlé Crenshaw writes in her 1989 article, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,”10 that there is a tendency in feminist theory and antiracist politics to ignore experiences specific to Black women. This common methodology of perception

“creates a distorted analysis of racism and sexism because the operative conceptions of race and sex become grounded in experiences that actually represent only a subset of a much more complex phenomenon.”11 This complex phenomenon is intersectional experiences, typically ignored by feminist theorists and antiracist policies. Crenshaw

9 Chapter Two explores how these stereotypes of Black American women can result in higher levels of domestic violence and abuse of Black women by their intimate male partners. 10 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum, Vol. 1989: Issue 1, Article 8. 11 Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection,” 140.

6 advocates for being critical of dominant views, advocating for unity by dismantling the

“top-down” approach to understanding discrimination.12 Struggles cannot be categorized as “singular issues.”13

By adopting Crenshaw’s methodology of ethical intersectional analysis, I hope to contribute to deconstructing the marginalization of Black women. Crenshaw illustrates that Black women experience combined race and sex discrimination, but traditionally, their discrimination is considered valid only if it coincides within the experiences of

Black male or white female discrimination. Black men, white women, and white men cannot understand the experience of Black women, and, when this inability to understand is combined with their relative position of power over Black women, Black women’s experiences are unheard and invalidated. Their struggles and identity are effectively erased. The need for intersectionality when studying any oppressed group is paramount to a full recounting and understanding of that group’s experiences.

Black women experience simultaneous race and sex discrimination in much of

NWA’s music. Addressing race and sex discrimination as a unit in which Black women have specific experiences and struggles allows for intersectional study to take place.

Widening the scope of antidiscrimination analyses and tactics is the only way for real social change to implement itself in feminist and race discrimination analyses methodology. With this approach, the broader implications of misogynistic and racist

NWA lyrics are revealed.

This thesis explores these themes in four chapters and a conclusion. Chapter One,

“No Justice, No Peace,” provides the historical and cultural context in South Central Los

12 Ibid, 167. 13 Ibid, 167.

7 Angeles, leading to the emergence of NWA. By presenting cases of police brutality and

NWA’s response, I hope to address how NWA facilitated revolt against American police.

Chapter Two, “Multidimensional Oppression,” discusses stereotypes of Black women that present themselves in the lyric content of NWA’s music. This chapter delves, in more depth, into the need for intersectional feminist analyses of reality rap music. Chapter

Three, “Despicable Females,” contains a semantic content analysis of select NWA lyrics and highlights how slave stereotypes of Black American women present themselves in

NWA’s music. I present the “despicable female” trope, a semantic device NWA utilizes to validate violence against women. Chapter Four, “The Sound of Protest,” illustrates how the musical characteristics and aesthetics of West Coast G-Funk, a style of music particular to the West Coast (and NWA) creates a sense of musical “hardness” which bolsters NWA’s masculinity and presents them as dangerous to both women and the police force. Music functions as protest in all of these cases: through outright statements in songs such as “Fuck Tha’ Police,” through misogynistic and violent lyrics towards women which granted NWA both false and real power, and through creating the musical aesthetic of “hardness” to reinforce violent lyric content.

Terminology: Black American, Capital “B” in “Black”, and Lowercase “W” in

“White”

This thesis will refer to Americans of African descent or any Black Americans as

“Black American” rather than “African American.” I have chosen to do this for a number of reasons. First, a substantial number of Americans of African descent are more accurately described as being American than African; their ancestors have lived in

America for centuries, just as many white American’s ancestors have lived in America for

8 centuries. Attaching the qualifier of “African” has the potential to create further racial separation between Black and white Americans; it creates a sense of geographical and ethnic “other” when that “other” does not necessarily exist. “Black American” refers to the Black diaspora rather than the African diaspora. In addition, immigrants from Africa to America are given the same identifier as Americans who are Black, which is inaccurate. Second, Black Americans who are not of African descent are often called

African Americans even if they are Americans of Bermudian descent or Americans of

Jamaican descent. Black American is more inclusive and can be more consistently accurate.

There has been considerable debate over whether or not to use the term “African

American” or “Black American.” The editor-in-Chief of the research-based consulting company Gullup Inc., Frank Newport, compiled survey data that asked Black Americans whether they preferred the term African American or Black American. In the years from

1991-2007, the data shows that the overwhelming number (approximately 60%) of Black

Americans asked responded that they “do not care” which term is used.14 No recent data, other than a number of informal blog posts or newspaper article, is available to assert which term Black Americans prefer. There is no definitive answer due to the nature of the question; it can be assumed that each person of African descent or who is Black will answer differently depending on their age, country of origin, place of habitation, etc.

Barrett Holmes Pitner wrote a particularly poignant Opinions article in The

Huffington Post on the debate over whether to use Black or African American in the

Huffington Post. In it, he outlines his journey of deciding how to identify himself. He

14 Frank Newport, “Black or African American?” Gallup, September 28, 2007, accessed December 10, 2015, http://www.gallup.com/poll/28816/black-african-american.aspx.

9 asserts that older Black Americans find the term “Black” painful, as it recalls not-so- distant memories of being called a Negro, or worse, a nigger. Holmes Pitner argues that the “B” in “Black” should be capitalized for a number of reasons.

By placing "African" before "American" we are implying that we have cultural roots predating the formation of the United States, much like white Americans and other American immigrant groups. We are telling everyone - including ourselves - that we have a foreign culture that is a better identifier than our American existence. Despite how badly many Blacks in America may want this to be true, unfortunately it is not the case for many of us, including me. To me this not only proves the inadequacy of "African American" but should implore Black Americans and all Americans to reacquaint themselves with the history of Black people in America… If "African American" is inadequate, then we cannot settle for a lowercased "black." To validate the need for capitalization, we need to prove the uniqueness of the culture of Black people in America, and the most painful part of this journey is acknowledging that for long stretches of American life, Black people were not even legally considered people… This topic is far greater and more complex than a couple of opinion pieces, so I hope the conversation continues.15

Lori L. Tharps argues for capitalizing Black with a simple, to-the-point sentence: “Black with a capital B refers to people of the African diaspora. Lowercase black is simply a color.”16

I have chosen not to capitalize the “w” in “white" when referring to white

Americans. White Americans do not have the same history of institutionalized discrimination that Black Americans have faced throughout their histories. Luke Visconti,

15 Barrett Holmes Pitner, “The Discussion on Capitalizing the ‘B’ in ‘Black’ Continues,” The Huffington Post, December 24, 2014, accessed December 10, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barrett-holmes-pitner/the-discussion-on-capitalizing-the- b-in-black-continues_b_6194626.html. 16 Lori L. Tharps, “The Case for Black with a Capital B,” The New York Times, November 18, 2014, accessed December 10, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/opinion/the-case-for-black-with-a-capital- b.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1.

10 CEO of Diversity Inc., backs up this opinion in an article he wrote about why the

Diversity Inc. has chosen to capitalize the “B” in “Black” but not the “w” in “white”:

[M]any Black people describe themselves simply as being “Black,” and this reality is reflected in a body of literature, music and academic study. I do not believe “white” needs to be capitalized because people in the white majority don’t think of themselves in that way. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this–it’s just how it is. The exception is white supremacists who have a definite vision for what “white” means. Most American white people describe themselves in more defined terms, such as Irish American or Jewish. I will make the point that African Americans (descendants of slaves) cannot define themselves more accurately than an entire continent because their ancestry was obliterated by the practices of enslavers, which included breaking apart tribal and family bonds.17

Black Americans do not have readily available access to their ancestry, thereby making

“African American” sometimes an inaccurate identifier. For these reasons, I will capitalize the “B” in “Black” and not capitalize the “w” in “white.”

Terminology: “Reality” Rap Versus “Gangsta” Rap

Adam Krims, in his book Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity,18 has developed a musicological framework for analyzing rap music. Little academic study has been done to create terminology specific to rap music. Krims’ work is a valuable addition to popular musicological studies of rap music. Because there are few other specific academic resources that have created a language, so to speak, for analyzing rap music in music theory terms, I rely primarily on Krims’ framework to develop an understanding of

NWA’s music.

17 Luke Visconti, “Why the ‘B’ in ‘Black’ is Capitalized at DiversityInc,” DiversityInc., August 10, 2009, accessed December 10, 2015, http://www.diversityinc.com/ask-the- white-guy/why-the-b-in-black-is-capitalized-at-diversityinc/. 18 Adam Krims, Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

11 Krims puts forth an argument for using the term “reality rap” rather than “gangsta rap,” arguing that it is a broader definition than “reality rap.” “Gangsta rap” and “reality rap” are often used interchangeably, but “reality rap” “…designate[s] any rap that undertakes the project of realism, in the classical sense, which in this context would amount to an epistemological/ontological project to map the realities of (usually black) inner-city life.”19 Krims elaborates, explaining how the term “reality rap” coincides with his analysis within musical poetics (theoretical music theory study):

But the concern here is not so much to question the sincerity of some ‘authenticity,’ as if our mission were to find an expression of some internalized characteristic within artists or music. Rather, it is to examine how it is (i.e., via the poetics) that the genre is demarcated for whatever social function it might serve.20

Krims’ approach suits analyses of NWA’s music because it proposes that identifying

“authenticity” is not the primary instinct when researching music. but it is to understand why and how rap music was chosen and is used to serve a social function.

An additional reason for using the term “reality rap” comes from NWA members themselves. Dr. Dre is known for saying of reality rappers that “There’s a lotta brothers out there flakin’ and perpetratin’, but scared to kick reality.”21 Ice Cube reiterates this, saying that they identify their music in the genre of reality rap—the media coined the term “gangsta rap.”22

19 Ibid, 70. 20 Ibid, 71. 21 Dr. Dre, quoted in Eric Harvey, “Who Got the Camera? NWA’s Embrace of ‘Reality’, 1988-1992,” Pitchfork.com, August 14 2015, accessed December 11, 2015, http://pitchfork.com/features/from-the-pitchfork-review/9704-who-got-the-camera-nwas- embrace-of-reality-1988-1992/. 22 Kory Grow, “Ice Cube on N.W.A’s Reality Rap and ‘Straight Outta Compton’ Movie,” Rolling Stone, April 15, 2015, Accessed March 2, 2016, http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/features/ice-cube-on-n-w-as-reality-rap-and-straight- outta-compton-movie-20150415?page=2.

12 A Note on Practicing Solidarity

It is often the case that oppressed groups are the very ones who fight for their own liberation from oppression. By not addressing the topic of my own white privilege I become complicit in reinforcing an unjust hierarchy. As a white woman, I cannot speak for either Black men or Black women. Throughout this thesis I aim to express solidarity.

Privilege inevitably creates blind-spots in approach to analysis and understanding; I personally come from a place of relative privilege, obviously without any experience of the oppression that Black American women and men suffer. Dialogue, education, and openness are some of the ways that I can assess my own privilege while attempting to understand the intense oppression my own ethnic group consciously and subconsciously imposes on non-dominant and historically oppressed groups.

bell hooks, renowned author and race and feminist scholar, writes that solidarity must be practiced through a dialogue that does not speak for those who are oppressed, but that speaks with those who are oppressed.23

23 bell hooks, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (New York: Routeledge, 2004), 5.

13 Chapter One NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE Protest Through NWA’s “Fuck Tha’ Police”

If you are constantly being pushed into a corner where you are afraid, you’re going to get to a point where one day you won’t be. Eventually one day you will fight back. Eventually one day you will push back.24 Twlight Bey

The words of former Los Angeles Cirkle City Piru gang member Twilight Bey encapsulate the mentality of rebellion, resistance, and protest among Black American male youth in South Central Los Angeles throughout the 1970s to 1990s. Throughout history around the globe, there are endless instances of oppressed groups fighting back against their oppressors. For NWA, reality rap became an avenue of such resistance; both

Black American rappers and listeners subverted and challenged dominant and discriminatory white culture through the genre. NWA was highly influential in Los

Angeles. Their lyrics reflected a sense of frustration and protest in South Central LA; additionally, their lyrics were notorious particularly for their controversial violent and misogynistic content.

The 2015 movie Straight Outta Compton, a biopic that follows NWA’s rise and fall, has created somewhat of a NWA renaissance. In a modern context in 2016, in which movements such as #BlackLivesMatter are necessitated as a response to ongoing police brutality towards Black American men, NWA’s most popular song “Fuck Tha Police” is ascribed renewed poignancy. However, their music’s misogynistic content creates an interesting paradox: they are fighting for equity for Black men, yet oppress Black women through their lyrics by perpetuating controlling images and stereotypes of Black women.

24 Twilight Bey, quoted in Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: Picador, 2005), 324-325.

14 Though it would be simpler to say that NWA were just being sexist, it is not quite so straightforward—NWA granted themselves power by oppressing Black women. Perhaps

NWA felt that they had no other means through which to protest their oppression.

Misogyny, in this case, functioned as a form of protest.

In order to understand the impact of NWA’s song “Fuck Tha’ Police” and how it functioned as protest music, this chapter will address the history of police brutality in Los

Angeles. By having a foundational understanding of the social, political, cultural, and economic context in which NWA were creating music, the effects of their music can be more accurately understood and analyzed. Additionally, this chapter will briefly explain the living and working conditions for Black American women in Los Angeles, giving insight to how they were marginalized by the social conditions in Los Angeles.

Historical Context: Watts, South Central Los Angeles

Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop

Generation, describes Watts, California, as a “…desolate, treeless area located in a gully of sand and mud, the flood catchment for all the other neighborhoods springing up around downtown.”25 However, as Chang explains, Watts was the only option available to Black

American residents in the Los Angeles area. Throughout the 1920’s white residents actively prevented Black citizens from moving into their communities; eviction laws were passed that restricted Black Americans from residing in specific places that had white majority population.26 Because of the large population of Black American residents,

Watts became known as Black Los Angeles. Yet even with this large Black population,

25 Ibid, 307. 26 Ibid, 306.

15 racially driven housing and rental practices were rampant. This problem worsened during

World War Two when Los Angeles’ industries were booming with war production. Over half a million new labourers moved to Los Angeles and its surrounding areas, and the

Watts neighbourhood population grew exponentially. As the population of Watts grew, a gradual process of social and political activism also flourished. Twenty years later, Watts was ripe with anger and frustration towards dominant white communities for the subjugation and oppression with which Black Americans were faced. The Civil Rights

Movement of the 1960s created a social climate in which the residents of Watts felt they could finally protest.

Tension between police officers and African American citizens mounted in the

1965-Watts riots, the most devastating urban riots recorded at that time.27 According to

Jeff Chang, the riots were sparked following an incident involving an arrest of two Black men, the Frye brothers, for drunk driving. $40-million in damages were recorded, and over thirty-four people were killed.28

Though the riots resulted in tragic loss of civilian life and significant infrastructure damages, a positive cultural change resulted from the violence. Odie Hawkins, author of

Scars and Memories: The Story of a Life, writes about the sense of creative and artistic liberty that resulted from the 1965 riot:

Watts, post outrage, was in a heavy state of fermentation. Everybody was a poet, a philosopher, an artist or simply something exotic. Even people who weren’t any of those things thought they were.29

27 Ibid, 310. 28 Ibid, 309. Twenty-one year old Marquette Frye, one of the men arrested for drunk driving, resisted the police officers, who then began beating him in front of his mother as well as a crowd that had formed. The crowd began rioting. Riots spread across the Watts district and lasted for seven days. 29 Odie Hawkins, Scars and Memories: The Story of a Life (Los Angeles: Halloway House,1987), 125.

16

Watts evolved from a city devastated by riot into an artistic and creative haven for Black

American artists and musicians over the years immediately following the 1965 riot, facilitating a cultural climate in which NWA could flourish by the late 1980s.

An influential group that formed post-1965 riot was The Watts Prophets, a group of three Black American spoken-word poets, rappers, Jazz musicians, and hip-hop artists, active from 1967 to the present day as of 2016.30 Their recordings inspired Black teenager

Eric Lynn Wright, known popularly as Eazy-E of NWA, who sampled The Watts

Prophets recordings in his own music. The cultural climate in which Eazy-E grew up fostered the importance of providing commentary on the lived experiences of Black

Americans in South Central, as well as encouraging criticisms and protests of racist, institutionalized practices (such as racially-driven housing practices and police brutality).

The Watts Prophets were particularly adept at providing this commentary. The beginning of one of their spoken-word poems, written by Dedeaux, began with the words: “To light up New Orleans, Atlantic, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit New York and most major cities of the world, it takes trillions, and billions and millions and millions of watts. To light up

Los Angeles, it only took one.”31 This type of rhetoric successfully inspired a generation of Black teenagers to protest against oppression, particularly police brutality, through music.

30 The Watts Prophets released recordings of their poems set to avant-garde, free Jazz music reflecting on life in their community. In 1969 they released The Black Voices: On the Streets in Watts, and Rapping Black in a White World, which was recorded and released in 1971; their most recent album is Difficultez Techincal, a solo album released in 2015. The Watts Prophets have also released two films: “Victory Will Be My Moan” in 1970 and “Land of Look Behind” in 1982. 31 David Colker, “Richard Dedeaux dies at 73; member of Watts Prophets spoken-word group,” Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2013, accessed March 14 2016, http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/08/local/la-me-richard-dedeaux-20131209.

17 And there was much to provide critical commentary on. South Central, comprised of twenty-six districts including Watts and Compton, received very little city support. No money was invested into civilian infrastructure. As a result of being institutionally ignored, major dysfunctions arose; for example, crack cocaine was widely disseminated.

Jeff Chang writes that South Central throughout the 1960s was

[t]he epitome of a growing number of inner-city nexuses where deindustrialization, devolution, Cold War adventurism, the drug trade, gang structures and rivalries, arms profiteering, and police brutality were combining to destabilize poor communities and alienate massive numbers of youths.32

Greg Brown, a resident of one of the sixteen districts at the time, remarked that the police station was the most beautiful building in South Central.33 This comment speaks for itself on the priorities of the LA city government.

Police Militarization Prior to NWA’s Formation

A history of racist and bigoted Los Angeles police chiefs bolstered a climate of militarization in the police force (this militarization persists today across the United

States, necessitating such movements as Black Lives Matter). Police Chief Darryl Gates, chief from 1978-1992, was outwardly racist, implementing policies that endangered the lives of Black Americans in Los Angeles.3435 Operation Hammer is a particularly poignant example of senseless, unpredictably devastating police brutality against Black communities.

32 Chang, “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop,” 315. 33 Ibid. 34 Anthony Asadullah Samad, “The New William H. Parker Cwenter Controversy: Revisionist History Cannot Overide Long Racial Legacy,” LA Progressive, April 25, 2009, accessed December 11, 2015, https://www.laprogressive.com/. 35 Keith Schneider, “Daryl F. Gates, L.A.P.D. Chief in Rodney King Era, Dies at 83,” The New York Times, April 16, 2016, accessed December 11 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/.

18 Police Chief Daryl Gates initiated and implemented Operation Hammer in 1987. It was a military-style sweep of South Central Los Angeles that rose out of police fear of

Los Angeles gangs such as the Bloods and the Crips. The police “…swept through crack- devastated neighborhoods with tanks and battering rams, terrifying innocent citizens for the crime of being black in South LA.”36 Operation Hammer was disastrous, resulting in destroyed communities and creating dozens of homeless Black American families by obliterating their homes, under the guise of warding off drug dealing and gang activity in

South Central.37 The police arrested approximately twenty-five thousand Black youths, ninety-percent of whom were released as innocent citizens, even though their information was entered into a gang database.38 Ultimately, Los Angeles lost on Operation Hammer; they had to pay out eleven million dollars annually in brutality sentiments.39 Police

“intervention” (perhaps more aptly described as police “attacks on civilians”) mounted in

August 1988, when they carried out a “D-Day” like raid on two South Central apartments.

Jeff Chang describes it as follows:

On August 1, in what was supposed to be Operation Hammer’s crowning moment, Gates [LAPD police chief] brought the War on Gangs to South Central. That evening, eighty-eight LAPD police officers, supported by thundering helicopters overhead, trained their firepower on two apartment buildings on the corner of 39th Street and Dalton Avenue in South Central Los Angeles. Cops stormed through the two buildings, taking axes to furniture and walls, overturning washing machines and stoves, smashing mirrors, toilets and stereos, rounding up residents and beating dozens of them. They spray-painted LAPD RULES and ROLLIN 30S DIE on apartment walls. One resident was forced wet and naked out of the shower

36 “The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s,” Pitchfork, August 23, 2015, accessed December 11, 2015, http://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the- 1980s/. 37 The Bloods and the Crips formed out of being forced into positions where they felt no other option but to revolt. Gangs did not form because they felt an innate pull towards violence; their economic and social situation, created by dominant white culture, impelled them to act out in violent ways as a means of asserting a sense of power over their lives. 38 Chang, “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop,” 323. 39 Ibid, 323.

19 and forced to watch her two toddlers taken away while cops destroyed her apartment with sledgehammers. ‘We weren’t just searching for drugs. We were delivering a message that there was a price to pay for selling drugs and being a gang member,’ said one policeman who participated in the raid. ‘I looked at it as something of a Normandy Beach, a D-Day.’40

Though residents of that area had indeed complained about drug dealing, none of the dealers lived in either of the two apartment buildings raided by police. Over a dozen of the residents who had lived in those buildings became effectively homeless, requiring shelter from the Red Cross.41 There are almost no appropriate adjectives to describe this attack on Black lives.

A member of the Los Angeles Gang Circkle City Piru, Twilight Bey, describes what it was like to be a Black teenager in South Central Los Angeles during the 1980s:

One of the things that would always happen is [the police] would stop you and ask you ‘What gang are you from?’… in some cases, if you had a snappy answer and by that I mean, if you were quick and to the point and had one word answers they would get up in your face and grab your collar, push you up against the police car and choke you. Or they would call us over and tell us to put our hands up and place them on the hood of the police car. Now usually the car had been running all day, which meant that the engine was hot. So the car is burning our hands which meant that we would have to remove our hands from the car. When that happened, the police would accuse us of not cooperating… You have to remember most of us at that time were between the ages of twelve and sixteen… In a lot of cases you had kids who had never chosen to be a gang member… If you told them you weren’t in a gang, they would look at whatever graffiti was written on the wall and put you on record as being part of that gang.42

Brutality of this nature gives insight as to why there was gang culture. Police violence toward Black American citizens was not a new event; the Civil Rights

Movement of the 1960s in itself can attest to that. Oppositional culture was formed to oppose the dominant culture, a major part of which was brutal police officers. The

40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid, 324.

20 previous quote from the police officer, saying that he viewed the raid as a sort of WWII battle illustrates the military-like mentality of American police officers.

NWA, “Fuck Tha’ Police,” and the 1992 LA Riots

Eric Lynn Wright, better known as rapper Eazy-E, formed NWA in the spring of

1987. The original NWA members were Andre Young (Dr. Dre), Antoine Carraby (DJ

Yella), Lorenzo Patterson (MC Ren), Kim Nazel (Arabian Prince) and O’Shea Jackson

(Ice Cube).43 Eazy-E also founded Ruthless Records that same year, hiring Jerry Heller as their executive manager (Heller had worked as Eazy-E’s manager prior to the formation of NWA).

NWA’s first album Straight Outta Compton was an immediate success. It was released in the August of 1988. The track “Fuck Tha’ Police” became notorious for its usage of violent imagery and commentary on police brutality and discrimination towards

Black Americans, particularly Black men. In the first verse, Ice Cube raps about police violence but also about how he wishes to retaliate:

Fuck tha police Comin straight from the underground Young nigga got it bad cuz I’m brown And not the other color so police think They have the authority to kill a minority

Fuck that shit, cuz I ain’t tha one For a punk mothafucka with a badge and a gun To be beatin’ on, and throwin in jail We could go toe to toe in the middle of a cell

Fuckin with me cuz I’m a teenager With a little bit of gold and a pager Searchin my car, lookin for the product Thinkin every nigga is sellin narcotics

43 This thesis will refer to the rappers by their rapper names, indicated in brackets.

21

You’d rather see me in the pen Then me and Lorenzo rollin in the Benzo Beat tha police outta shape And when I’m finished bring the yellow tape To tape off the scene of the slaughter Still can’t swallow bread and water

I don’t know if they fags or what Search a nigga down and grabbing his nuts And on the other hand, without a gun they can’t get none But don’t let it be a black and a white one Cuz they slam ya down to the street top Black police showin out for the white cop

Ice Cube will swarm On any muthafucka in a blue uniform Just cuz I’m from the CPT, punk police are afraid of me A young nigga on a warpath And when I’m finished, it’s gonna be a bloodbath Of cops, dyin in LA Yo Dre, I got something to say

Fuck the police (4X)44

Eazy-E is acutely aware that police officers are racist. The lyric “young nigga got it bad

‘cause I’m brown” directly asserts that there was widespread racism in the police department. Eazy-E also raps about how police officers targeted Black men for possession of drugs simply because of their ethnicity. This kind of social commentary was necessary for revolution.

“Fuck Tha’ Police” was also revolutionary due to its organization. The song is, as professor and journalist Eric Harvey explains, “framed as a trial, during which NWA is prosecuting a crooked cop.”45 Part of the way through the song, they reenact a police

44 The full lyrics to “Fuck Tha’ Police” and any other NWA song referenced throughout this thesis can be found in the Lyric Index, along with the citations for those songs. 45 Eric Harvey, “Who Got the Camera? N.W.A’s Embrace of ‘Reality,’ 1988-1992,” Pitchfork Review, August 14, 2015, Accessed November 20, 2015,

22 officer pulling over a Black man, commenting on the irony of police interrogation and discrimination without reason.

[Cop] Pull your god damn ass over right now [NWA] Aww shit, now what the fuck you pullin’ me over for? [Cop] Cause I feel like it! Just sit your ass on the curb and shut the fuck up [NWA] Man, fuck this shit [Cop] Alright smartass, I’m taking your black ass to jail!

Because NWA voice just a hint of criticism towards the police officer, the officer says he is taking them to jail. Through “Fuck Tha’ Police,” however, NWA created a fictitious narrative which reversed the roles of police officer and Black male teenager, a fantasy of revenge that used the same unsound logic for the arrest of the police officers that white police officers used (in “real” life) for the arrests of Black men:

[Dr. Dre] The Jury has found you guilty of being a redneck, white bread, chickenshit motherucker [Cop] But wait, that’s a lie! That’s a god damn lie! [Dre] Get him out of here! [Cop] I want justice! [Dre] Get him the fuck out me face! [COP] I want justice! [Dre] Out, RIGHT NOW! [Cop] FUCK YOU, YOU BLACK MOTHER-FUCKERS!

The lyrics’ violent imagery sparked controversy in Los Angeles and beyond. In August

1988, the FBI sent a letter of warning to NWA due to “Fuck Tha Police” antipolice sentiment, ridicule of the Los Angeles Police Department, and outright statement of murder of police (demonstrated in the verse: “it is going to be a bloodbath/ Of cops dyin in LA”). The letter read:

A song recorded by the rap group N.W.A on their album entitled Straight Outta Compton encourages violence against and disrespect for the law http://pitchfork.com/features/from-the-pitchfork-review/9704-who-got-the-camera-nwas- embrace-of-reality-1988-1992/.

23 enforcement officers and has been brought to my attention. I understand your company recorded and distributed this album and I am writing to share my thoughts and concerns with you. Advocating violence and assault is wrong, and we in the law enforcement community take exception to such action. Violent crime, a major problem in our country, reached an unprecedented high in 1988. Seventy-eight law enforcement officers were feloniously slain in the line of duty during 1988, four more than in 1987. Law enforcement officers dedicate their lives to the protection of our citizens, and recordings such as the one from N.W.A are both discouraging and degrading to these brave, dedicated officers. Music plays a significant role in society, and I wanted you to be aware of the FBI’s position relative to this song and its message. I believe my views reflect the opinion of the entire law enforcement community.46

The letter was sent shortly before the disastrous raid, described above, on South Central as part of Daryl Gates’ Operation Hammer. The attempted censorship of NWA’s “Fuck

Tha’ Police” demonstrates how NWA was perceived as an actual threat towards police officers, despite police officers exercising violence and endangering the lives of Black

Americans.

In 1992, Los Angeles would riot against the police, with “Fuck Tha Police” as a soundtrack to the riots. Preceding the riots was perhaps the most notorious incident of police brutality in America. On March 3, 1991, Black Los Angeles citizen Rodney King was viciously attacked by four white LAPD police officers. A by-stander videotaped the incident, which was then played on national television. The incident was played twenty- seven times on three different network programs alone from March 5 until the end of

March.47 Each of the four officers were acquitted. Black Los Angeles citizens violently retaliated.

46 Dave Marsh and Phyllis Pollack, “Wanted for Attitude,” Village Voice 34.41, (October 10, 1989), 33. 47 Sigelman et al., “Police Brutality and Public Perceptions of Racial Discrimination: A Tale of Two Beatings,” Political Research Quarterly 50.4, (1997), 777.

24 The riots began at the intersection of Florence and Normandie Streets in South

Central. As Chang states, “Anyone not Black and unlucky enough to enter the intersection was attacked.”48 Most victims were Latino/a or Asian. Black men were reported to have attacked Black women, as well.49 They threw rocks at cars, broke into liquor stores, burned tires, and set up blockades. The riot crowd moved North on Normandie, spreading out in South Central. Other fires and break-ins were reported across Los Angeles. At the police headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, crowds gathered to protest the verdicts of the white policemen. There were attempts within the Black community to keep the protests peaceful, but many young Black men and women were too angry about the verdicts to protest peacefully. They marched on the LAPD Foothill Division headquarters, chanting “No justice, no peace.”50

Rioting spread across the entire city. Police chief Darryl Gates was essentially ineffective, issuing no commands while taking an hour and a half helicopter ride above the city. FBI Director William Webster said he “was up there watching Rome burn.”51

“Fuck Tha’ Police” is said to have been heard pouring out the speakers of cars parked on Florence and Normandie, functioning, as Harvey writes, “[b]oth as a protest song and a delayed ‘we told you so’- reality rap had completed its full circle, and was now soundtracking the sort of lived reality it had warned about on wax.”52 Reality rap was functioning quite literally as protest; “Fuck Tha’ Police” acted as a predecessor to, and a prediction of, the violence Rodney King would experience. The song granted power and opportunity to mobilize for young Black Americans who had had enough. To recall

48 Chang, “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop,” 369. 49 Ibid, 369. 50 Ibid, 370-71. 51 Ibid, 371. 52 Harvey, “Who Got the Camera?”

25 Twilight Bey’s sentiment: Black Americans had been oppressed for so long that they no longer feared their oppressors. They were fighting back against what was blatantly unjust and morally wrong. NWA’s song mobilized Black citizens and subverted those who dominated them. Black communities used NWA’s music to protest against a group with a long-standing history of patriarchal domination and what had by 1992 evolved into blind hatred and prejudice against Black American peoples.

Tricia Rose, author of Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in

Contemporary America, writes of the aftermath of the 1992 LA riots:

It was as if the rage that had exploded in South Central had finally validated rappers’ nagging, seemingly exaggerated stories of race and frustration. Overnight, such rappers as Chuck D and Ice Cube, who were once considered social menaces, became prophets and seeing eye dogs for a nation that had just realized it had gone blind.53

Rap music became a venue through which audiences could navigate their oppression.

NWA’s “Fuck Tha’ Police” was a vehicle of opposition against racism.

NWA were able to comment on the realities of their lived experiences through the medium of music, thereby subverting political attempts of the dominant white culture to distill their realities by eliminating them (such as the warning letter NWA received from the FBI). Reality rap was a means of liberation from being oppressed. NWA created a fictive narrative of violently fighting back against the police who would, in reality, violently attack Black Americans for very little reason. As Eric Harvey writes, “[r]eality gave [NWA] a chance to symbolically stand behind the lens of the camera and rifle scope, instead of serving as their targets.”54 NWA, through their music, reversed the established

53 Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1994), 183. 54 Harvey, “Who Got the Camera?”

26 roles of police officers and Black American men. They assumed a level of agency over their lives that they had not been able to enjoy through any other avenue except music.

27 Chapter Two MULTIDIMENSIONAL OPPRESION Intersectional Feminism, Controlling Images of Black American Women, and Black Masculinity

The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those boundaries. Nor do the reservoirs of our ancient power know these boundaries, either. To deal with one without even alluding to the other is to distort our commonality as well as our difference. For then beyond sisterhood is racism.55 Audre Lorde, 1979

Lived experience is shaped by identity. When specific identities have historically been oppressed and a single person simultaneously inhabits a number of those specific identities, their lived experience differs greatly from those whose specific identities have not been historically oppressed. Intersectionality is the concept that various identities intersect, creating a multidimensional lived experience; specific identities cannot be treated as mutually exclusive. Thus, movements to alleviate and resist historical oppression (i.e.: feminism as resistance to patriarchy, sexism) for people who inhabit those specific identities need to account for how those identities function together as one entity. For example: a lesbian, poor, Muslim woman of colour needs a different kind of feminism than a white, able-bodied, Christian, heterosexual, and rich woman. Popular culture feminist journalism describes traditional feminism as a “one-feminism-fits-all” approach that does not take into account multidimensional experiences and intersecting oppressions.56 Intersectional feminism takes into account that Black women experience

55 Audre Lorde, “An Open Letter to Mary Daly,” May 6, 1979, accessed March 10, 2016, http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/lordeopenlettertomarydaly.html. 56 Jarune Uwujaren and Jamie Utt, “Why Our Feminism Must Be Intersectional (And 3 Ways To Practice It),” Everyday Feminism, January 11 2015, accessed March 16 2016, http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/why-our-feminism-must-be-intersectional/.

28 oppression differently than white women do, due to their multidimensional identities that have historically been oppressed.

The concept of intersectionality and intersectional feminism is not new. Black women intellectuals introduced the theory as early as the nineteenth century when feminist scholars and women’s rights pioneers like Anna Julia Cooper (the first Black women in the world to hold a Ph.D) and Maria Stewart (an abolitionist, journalist, former domestic servant, and women’s rights activist) understood and explained the implications of intersecting oppressions without actually naming the term “intersectionality”.57 Their work paved the way for twentieth-century scholars who were able to carry on the continuum of Black women’s intellectual thought.

Kimberlé Crenshaw was the first scholar to make use of the term intersectionality in 1989 with her landmark article “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A

Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist

Politics.”58 In 1991, she expanded upon the concept of intersectionality with a second groundbreaking article, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and

Violence Against Women of Colour.”59 Crenshaw is a professor of law at Columbia Law

School, where she is the director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy

Studies.60

57 Ange-Marie Hancock, Intersectionality: An Intellectual History, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 30. 58 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum, Vol. 1989, Issue 1, Article 8. 59 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Colour,” Stanford Law Review, 43/6, (1991). 60 Kimberlé Crewnshaw’s work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the National Black Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, and the Southern California Law Review. Crenshaw has lectured internationally on race issues, and facilitated workshops for civil

29 In “Demarginalizing the Intersection” Crenshaw asserts that treating race and gender as mutually exclusive categories is problematic, and is perpetuated by a single- axis framework dominant in antidiscrimination law, which is then reflected in feminist theory and antiracist politics. Crenshaw centers Black women in her analyses of various court cases, showing the multidimensionality of their experience that is otherwise (when viewed through a single-axis framework) erased. She argues that “Black women are sometimes excluded from feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse because both are predicated on a discrete set of experiences that often does not accurately reflect the interaction of race and gender.”61 Adding Black women to the pre-existing theoretical framework does not fix the problem; rather, the framework must be recast and reconsidered. One way of recasting the framework would be to redevelop feminist theory and antiracist policies with the input of Black women who can share their experiences— in reality, intersectional feminisim functions as a recasting and reconsidering of the pre- existing framework. Intersectional feminism is a completely different kind of feminism than “white” feminism because it acknowledges that different women face different challenges; Black women also face racism, and including the experience of racism in feminism creates a much more well-rounded, diverse feminism that can help all women.

Crenshaw states that “any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.”62 By embracing intersectionality, feminist theory and antiracist politics can expand to include

rights activists and constitutional court judges. Her work on race and gender was significant in the drafting of the South African Constitution. For more information on Crenshaw’s numerous other accolades, publications, and professional achievements, see www.law.columbia.edu/fac/Kimberlé_Crenshaw. 61 Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection.” 62 Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection,” 140.

30 and understand the multidimensional experiences of Black women, while being critical of the dominant view in order to develop a language that adequately expresses unity.63

In Crenshaw’s 1991 article “Mapping the Margins,” she expands intersectional analyses to Black women’s experience of battery and rape. She begins by asserting that the politicization of women’s issues is the only way for change to be realized. By politicizing issues like battery and rape, they are taken out of private and isolated sphere and can be understood as a larger system of oppression.64 Crenshaw explains how when feminist and antiracist practices fail to acknowledge differences within groups, problems in the context of violence arise because Black women experience violence differently.

Their experience of violence is shaped by their identities; often Black women are poor, uneducated, untrained.65 If they are poor, uneducated, and untrained, it is more difficult to leave a violent domestic partner because they have less monetary resources available to them; without education, they may be unaware that their partner is abusive. Crenshaw states that Black women are marginalized within both feminist and antiracist policies, and that their intersecting oppressions can unfortunately lead to higher instances of battery and rape.66

63 Ibid, 166-167. 64 Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins,” 1241. 65 Ibid, 1242-3. 66 Ibid, 1244. Ange-Marie Hancock, in her 2016 book Intersectionality: An Intellectual History, notes that Crewnshaw’s two seminal articles, from 1989 and 1991, have been cited by scholars (at the point Hancock’s book was published) a total of 9,948 times, giving them, as Hancock says, “rock star” status in academics. Hancock also points out that, despite debate as to its academic legitimacy, Wikipedia and Google provide internet users with relevant, 21st century access to complex topics they may not otherwise seek out in an academic journal. In 2016, intersectionality is enjoying resurgence in both popular and academic feminist, antiracist, and social thought as issues of injustice and inequity are often at the forefront of the media and the news. Using intersectionality to analyze NWA’s reality rap is not a particularly revolutionary idea; however, not much academic work has been done to put NWA’s reality rap in an intersectional framework of analysis.

31 Patricia Hill Collins developed upon Crenshaw’s analysis in her 1990 book Black

Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment.67

Collins is a social theorist whose research on intersectionality has been significantly influential on other scholars’ research. Collins’ research focuses on gender, race, social class, sexuality, and nation. Black Feminist Thought outlines the long history of Black women’s intellectual and feminist thought, which dates back to the early- to mid- nineteenth century.

Collins illustrates how the discipline of Black American women’s intellectual thought has undergone the process of erasure; until the late twentieth- and early twenty- first centuries much of their intellectual work had gone unnoticed or had been intentionally ignored. Black women’s intellectual work is defined as written work created by Black women themselves about the specific types of oppression Black women experience. Their intellectual work appears in academia but is also present in other genres including literature, poetry, and transcribed speeches. A short list of Black women intellectuals includes Soujourner Truth and her transcribed speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” in

185168; Harriet Jacobs, who wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in 1860 69; and

Alice Walker, author of the seminal novel The Colour Purple, published in 1982.70

The erasure of Black American women’s intellectualism is due to its systemized oppression in American society. Collins writes that dominant white patriarchal capitalism exercises its power and maintains its rule over oppressed groups by suppressing oppressed

67 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Hyman, 1990). 68 Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?” (Speech, Akron Ohio, 1851), Feminist.com, http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/sojour.htm. 69 Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Boston: Thayer and Elridge, 1861). 70 Alice Walker, The Colour Purple (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982).

32 groups’ knowledge, creating the illusion that, in the “absence” of dissent, oppressed groups willingly participate in their victimization.71 Though Black women’s intellectual thought has undergone erasure, there is a long history of resistance and dissent that led up to the coining of the term “intersectionality” by Crenshaw.

Black women’s intellectual work in America developed out of the context of

American slavery, which was officially abolished on December 6, 1865. Approximately one hundred years later, the Civil Rights Movement took hold in America, in which Black

Americans fought against the residual effects of slavery: prevalent racism, discrimination, oppression, and exclusion. Intersectional feminist theory is a means of looking back to slavery and understanding the conditions it created for Black American women that continue to this day.

Applying an intersectional feminist perspective to reality rap reveals that the stereotypes used about Black American women are direct references to negative stereotypes and controlling images of Black American woman developed during

American slavery. The lyrics are not simply sexist: they directly recall slave stereotypes, indicating that the women referred to in NWA’s music are Black women.

Analyzing NWA’s music without using an intersectional feminist lens—i.e.: through white/traditional feminism—does not take into account that NWA is being more than “just sexist” through their lyrics. Their lyrics are racist towards Black women, and sexist in ways that affect Black women more intensely. NWA’s lyrics reinforce intersecting oppressions of Black women; while their lyrics may be harmful to white women due to their misogynistic nature, white women experience more systemic privilege than Black women, meaning that the effects of the misogynistic lyrical content

71 Collins, 3.

33 will not be as strongly experienced (or experienced at all) by white women as the effects of the lyrics will be experienced by Black women.

The controlling images and stereotypes utilized in NWA’s lyrics include the mammy, jezebel, sapphire, and others that will be expanded upon in this chapter.

Controlling images of Black women may have developed during slavery, but they continue to function today in ways that are not always obvious. Collins asserts that certain racist and sexist ideologies are so ingrained in the U.S. that they have become normalized:

Within U.S. culture, racist and sexist ideologies permeate the social structure to such a degree that they become hegemonic, namely, seen as natural, normal, and inevitable. In this context, certain assumed qualities that are attached to Black women are used to justify oppression. From the mammies, jezebels, and breeder women of slavery to the smiling Aunt Jemima's on pancake mix boxes, ubiquitous Black prostitutes, and ever-present welfare mothers of contemporary popular culture, negative stereotypes applied to African-American women have been fundamental to Black women’s oppression.72

These stereotypes keep Black women in a place of oppression that benefits, generally, white interests and ideologies.73

A prevalent example of the oppression of Black women is evident in the workplace. Black women (and other women of colour, such as Latina women) are disproportionately represented in the domestic work sphere. This representation of Black women is, again, a direct result of American slavery. Collins elaborates, writing:

U.S. Black women may have migrated out of domestic service in private homes, but as their overrepresentation as nursing home assistants, day-care aides, dry- cleaning workers, and fast food employees suggest, African-American woman engaged in low-paid service work is far from a thing of the past.74

Black women’s career tendencies are exemplary of the lasting effects of slave stereotypes and controlling images. After outlining these controlling images in the next

72 Ibid, 5. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid, 45.

34 section, and the real-life effects of these images, I expand upon their usage in NWA’s lyrical content in Chapter Three.

Controlling Images of Black American Women

Collins outlines controlling images of Black women that contribute to their oppression. By providing a brief explanation of each controlling image and how it is seen in modern occurrences, it will be easier to understand their relevance in NWA’s reality rap. There are multiple controlling images of Black womanhood: the mammy, the Black matriarch, and the welfare queen, the jezebel, the Sapphire, and the “angry Black woman.” Collins first outlined the controlling images of only the mammy and the jezebel; subsequently a number of researchers have built upon the foundation of her research to outline additional controlling images.

35 The Mammy

Example 1: Mammy Brand Citrus Label, Image Accessed from www.etsy.com

Example 2: Maids in 2011 Movie The Help Image Accessed from www.plazanoir.com

36 The first controlling image of Black American women is the mammy. The mammy is a loyal, obedient domestic servant who willingly accepts her servitude.75

Audre Lorde, quoted by Collins in Black Feminist Thought, describes the severe infiltration of the mammy stereotype in the mid-late twentieth century of the United

States: “I wheel my two-year-old daughter in a shopping card through a supermarket in…

1967, and a little white girl riding past in her mother’s cart calls out excitedly, ‘Oh look,

Mommy, a baby maid!’”76

Collins asserts that the mammy image is central to intersecting oppressions of gender, race, class, and sexuality.77 The mammy image is influential in a number of ways: it defines Black maternal behaviour, maintains oppression of gender and sexuality, and functions to oppress Black women economically. Black women who subscribe to the mammy image or who have “mammified” jobs (predominantly domestic childcare careers) pass on to their own children a normalized image of the Black woman as mammy. It is cyclical. Thus, as Collins states, they “become effective conduits for perpetuating racial oppression.”78 “Mammified” careers, in turn, support the perceived racial superiority of white employers.79

The mammy image also controls Black women’s sexuality. When placed in opposition to white women, mammies take on the persona of the asexual. Collins writes:

Juxtaposed against images of White women, the mammy image as the Other symbolizes the oppositional difference of mind/body and culture/nature thought to distinguish Black women from everyone else… ‘Good’ White mothers are expected to deny their female sexuality. In contrast, the mammy image is one of

75Ibid, 72-73. 76 Audre Lorde, quoted in Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (New York: Routeledge, 2000), 73. 77 Collins, 73. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid.

37 an asexual woman, a surrogate mother in blackface whose historical devotion to her White family is now giving way to new expectations. Contemporary mammies should be completely committed to their jobs.80

Economically, mammies (and other images of Black women) are exploited by capitalist white society. Following World War II, Black American women moved from working as servants and maids in private households to working in the service sector and domestic, “mammified-positions”81

The infiltration of the mammy stereotype in a modern contexts can be seen not only in some of NWA’s music but also in popular television. Some popular blogs argue that television host Oprah Winfrey represents a 21st-century mammy; Oprah, for many white Americans, is the only Black women they “allow” into their household through the medium of television.82 Example 3 is illustrative of Oprah embodying the stereotypical mammy: she looks cheerfully at the camera while pouring syrup, situated within a kitchen insinuating that she is serving food.

80 Ibid, 74. 81 Ibid. 82 “Oprah’s Last Show: There Goes Our Mammy!” Stuff Black People Don’t Like, May 24 2011, Accessed March 27 2016, http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.ca/2011/05/oprahs-last-show.html.

38

Example 3: Oprah Winfrey Image Accessed from www.oprah.com

The Black Matriarch

The Black matriarch is somewhat of an “updated” version of the mammy stereotype, with similar domestic characteristics. Black women were racialized in this way to reinforce traditional class and gender roles held for centuries in America. The process of racialization “involves attaching racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group.”83 The image of the matriarch became a racialized stereotype about Black women in the 1960s, appearing in public at the same time that the U.S. feminist movement was forwarding its critique of patriarchy in the

U.S.84 A government report entitled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action argued that Black American woman who did not fulfill their “traditional ‘womanly’

83 Collins, 75. 84 Ibid.

39 duties”85 caused social problems in Black civil society such as their children having behavioural problems in school and emasculating their husbands. The matriarch image

“represented a failed mammy” who refused to submit and conform to the image of the mammy, who in contrast, devoted her entire life to caring for her [white] family.86 The failure of the Black matriarch includes not representing to her children traditional gender roles.87 The Black matriarch is poor, the head of the household (often single), and unable to properly raise her children, creating a cycle of perceived social problems.

Example 4: Vee from“Orange is the New Black” Image Accessed From www.orange-is-the-new-black.wikia.com

A modern example of the Black Matriarch is the character Vee, pictured in Example 4, from popular television show “Orange is the New Black.” Vee is somewhat of an untraditional failed mammy: she acts as matriarch for many of the Black female inmate characters in the television show; however, she is not their biological mother but acts as a motherly figure. She fails her “adoptive” children by pretending to care and love for them,

85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid, 76-77.

40 manipulating them into helping her carry out various criminal activities while incarcerated.

The Welfare Queen

The controlling image of the welfare queen is of a poor, single, unemployed or working-class Black mother, who benefits from the welfare system.88 Collins described this image as “essentially an updated version of the breeder woman image created during slavery,” and acts to control Black women’s fertility.89 This stereotype perpetuates the notion that Black women can reproduce as easily as animals, justifying interference in

Black women’s fertility and reproduction; historically, slave owners wanted Black women to have many children because each child was a valuable unit of property from which slave owners could benefit economically.90 The welfare queen differs from the matriarch because she is not “aggressive enough”; the welfare queen is too accessible to her children whereas the matriarch is unavailable due to her employment. The welfare queen is seen as happy to lazily sit around and collect welfare checks, stigmatizing her as the cause of her own poverty.91 The welfare queen is also characterized as materialistic and domineering.92

88 Ibid, 78. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid, 79. 92 Ibid, 80.

41 A 2015 article in The Atlantic provides a graph showing the discrepancy between the portrayal of poor Black Americans in media and the actual percentage of Black

Americans living in poverty93:

Example 5: The Atlantic Image Accessed From www.theatlantic.com

This graph shows how images like the welfare queen reinforce the popular conception that poor equates Black. 25% of America’s poor population was Black in 2000, however, between 1992-2010, almost 55% of people pictured alongside poverty stories were Black; in stark contrast, neither Black nor Hispanic people made up close to 55% of America’s poor in 2000, and only 35% of people pictured alongside poverty stories were neither

Black nor Hispanic.

93 Joe Pinsker, “To the Media, ‘Black’ is Too Often Shorthand for ‘Poor’”, The Atlantic, April 28, 2015, accessed February 28 2016, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/to-the-media-black-is-too-often- shorthand-for-poor/391544/.

42 The Jezebel

Example 6: Nicki Minaj in her music video for “Anaconda” Image Accessed from www.nydailynews.com

The jezebel image controls Black women by mandating and determining their sexuality. The jezebel image is that of a “slut,” a “whore,” who deviates from traditional

Black female sexuality and is aggressively sexual.94 This stereotype is used to excuse rampant sexual assault of white men against Black women.95 Dr. Carolyn West contributes by explaining the history of the jezebel stereotype, describing how this controlling image was created during the beginning of very slavery:

In 1619, the first ship loaded with enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. Upon arrival, bondwomen were placed on the auction block, stripped naked, and examined to determine their reproductive capacity. Once sold, they were coerced, bribed, induced, seduced, ordered, and, of course, violently forced to have sexual relations with slaveholders, their sons, male relatives, and overseers. Sexual terrorism did not end with slavery. During nighttime raids, vigilante groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, whipped African Americans, destroyed their property, and savagely raped Black women. The Jezebel

94 Collins, 81. 95 Ibid.

43 stereotype, which branded Black women as sexually promiscuous and immoral, was used to rationalize these sexual atrocities. This image gave the impression that Black women could not be real victims because they always desired sex. Consequently, perpetrators faced few legal or social sanctions for raping Black women.96

The lived effects of the jezebel image are arguably evident today in cases of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and sexual harassment, which will be discussed further in this chapter.

West gives examples of how Black women are perceived by their white peers in undergraduate university settings as more promiscuous and “slutty.” She argues that

Black women are “lyrically” raped in reality and hardcore rap, and that overall, the jezebel stereotype is projected onto Black women to justify sexual assault and/or sexualization of their bodies.97 The jezebel image influences how rape survivors are viewed and how seriously their accounts of rape are taken by judges and the general public: racial history makes Black women more likely to experience rape and sexual assault while simultaneously making it more difficult for them to report cases of rape, and when they do report their assaults, they are less likely to be perceived as rape survivors.98

As will be explained in Chapter Three, NWA uses the jezebel stereotype often, describing women in their lyrics as “wanting it”: NWA’s “I’d Rather Fuck You,” “Just Don’t Bite

It,” “To Kill a Hooker,” “One Less Bitch,” and “She Swallowed It,” are only a few of their songs that make use of this stereotype to justify rape and violence.

A poignant example of the jezebel image in popular media is Nicki Minaj’s music video for “Anaconda,” pictured in Example 6. Though the music video has the potential

96 Carolyn M. West, “Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire, and their homegirls: Developing an "oppositional gaze" toward the images of Black women,” in Lectures on the Psychology of Women, 4th edition, ed. J. Chrisler, C. Golden, & P. Rozee, 294. 97 Ibid, 294-5. 98 Ibid, 295.

44 to be read as female celebration of sexuality, the video displays Minaj in highly sexualized ways which reinforce the concept of the Black female body as a commodity, a consumable object for heterosexual men. Though Minaj is directly referencing the music video for “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-a-Lot, not all audiences would perceive this intertextual reference.

Another example of the jezebel stereotype is present in some of Beyoncé’s live performances (see Example 7) and in her music videos. Beyoncé is simultaneously an influential feminist icon while simultaneously perpetuating the jezebel stereotype. She at once reclaims female sexuality and demands sexual pleasure (her song “Blow” from the

2014 self-titled album Beyoncé is a good example), which is unusual for a pop star, but she consistently presents herself in ways that seem as though they are meant to please heterosexual men.

45

Example 7: Beyoncé on Stage, 2014 Image Accessed From: www.pinterest.com

The Sapphire

The final controlling image addressed by Collins is the sapphire. In rap music the sapphire is referred to as “bitch.”99 This stereotype is extremely prevalent in NWA, particularly in their song “A Bitch Iz a Bitch.”100

The sapphire grew out of the image of the mammy. P. Morton, in their article

“Disfigured Images: The Historical Assault on Afro-American Woman,” calls the

99 Terri M. Adams and Douglas B. Fuller, “The Words Have Changed but the Ideology Remains the Same: Misogynistic Lyrics in Rap Music,” Journal of Black Studies, 36.6, Sage Publications Inc, (2006), 945. 100 An in-depth analysis of the sapphire stereotype in “A Bitch Iz a Bitch” can be found in Chapter Three.

46 Sapphire “the post-war Mammy.”101 The sapphire is a “bossy Black bitch” who is loyal to her family, although unlike the mammy, she is sexual.102 The sapphire dominates the entire household, including her male partner, of whom she makes a fool.103 Adams and

Fuller describe the sapphire as manipulative, socially aggressive, has “sassy attitude,” a

“fiery tongue,” and debilitates the aspirations of her male partner and men in general.104

West develops the image of the on sapphire. This hostile, nagging, and bitchy stereotype was personified by the character Sapphire in the 1940-50s television and radio shows Amos and Andy, which was removed due to years of complaints due to the racial/ist depiction of Sapphire.105 Donald Trump’s reality show The Apprentice also perpetuates the image of the sapphire in their portrayal of Omarosa Onee Manigault, pictured in Example 8. Omaraso is portrayed as a controlling, aggressive, bitchy villain.

Example 8: Omaroso on “The Apprentice” Accessed From: www.siouxcityjournal.com

101 Morton, P. “Disfigured Images: The historical assault on Afro-American women,” Gender and Society, 8.1, (1994), 7. 102 Ibid, 7. 103 Ibid. 104 Adams and Fuller, “The Words Have Changed But the Ideology Remains the Same: Mysogynistic Lyrics in Rap Music,” Journal of Black Studies, 36.6, (2006), 945. 105 West, “Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire,” 296.

47

The Angry Black Woman

Celeste Walley-Jean explained a controlling image that Patricia Hill Collins did not: the “angry Black woman.” Walley-Jean gathered empirical evidence that debunks the myth of the angry black woman. The angry Black woman stereotype is pervasive culturally, and can be seen in television shows (such as On the Game), novels, (like The

Angry Black Woman’s Guide to Life), and a plethora of other cultural modes of expression, such as the meme in Example 10.106 The angry Black woman stereotype was developed on the foundation of other controlling images of Black woman: the jezebel, the sapphire, and the mammy. Walley-Jean draws from Collins work to develop an analysis of the stereotype of the angry Black woman. Her findings directly contradict the stereotype: Black American women in fact tend to suppress angry feelings, even when in situations when they are being ridiculed, criticized, or disrespected.107 American women’s oppression in society forces them into a position in which they feel unable to adequately express their anger. She attests that the angry Black woman stereotype does not actually have empirical support, but that it is incredibly pervasive culturally.108 The stereotype is seen in newspapers, memes, TV shows, films, novels, and a number of other popular culture venues.

106 Celeste Walley-Jean, “Debunking the Myth of the Angry Black Woman: An Exploration of Anger in Young African American Women,” Black Women, Gender & Families, 3.2, (2009), 69. 107 Ibid, 83. 108 Ibid.

48

Example 9: Cover of the New York Post The New York Post,

Example 10: Angry Black Woman Meme Accessed from www.guerillasmith.com

49 Adams and Fuller describe how controlling images of Black women work together to oppress Black women as follows: “… the racist, sexist, and elitist capitalist system is not viewed as the core perpetrator of the living conditions of many Black Americans, but instead Black Americans themselves are blamed for not fitting into the proper structures of society.”109 By blaming Black Americans for their own subordination, the dominant powers can maintain their power because they do not have to face their wrongdoings.

Example 9 shows a cover of the tabloid newspaper the New York Post featuring a photo of Michelle Obama with the caption: “Mad as hell Michelle!” Michelle Obama’s defense is quoted below this statement, reading, “I’m not some angry Black woman.” The stereotype is incredibly pervasive. Another instance can be seen in Example 10, a popular meme that has been circulated on social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, and

Instagram). It depicts a large Black woman with one hand on her hip, pulling off a “sassy” look with one finger raised in the air and pursed lips, presumably about to tell someone off. The caption reads: “Yep… she mad!” These two examples are a small glimpse into how popular media often depicts Black women.

Effects of Controlling Images: Violence, Prejudice, and Racism

In their study “Priming Mammies, Jezebels, and Other Controlling Images: An

Examination of the Influence of Mediated Stereotypes in Perceptions of an African

American Woman,”110 Brown-Givens and Monahan examine how mediated stereotypes of Black American women influence the way in which Black American women are

109 Adams and Fuller, 946. 110 Sonja M. Brown Givens and Jennifer L. Monahan, “Priming Mammies, Jezebels, and Other Controlling Images: An Examination of the Influence of Mediated Stereotypes on Perceptions of an African American Woman,” Media Psychology, 7.1, (2009).

50 perceived in society. In this study, participants viewed a mammy, jezebel, or non- stereotypic image on video prior to watching a mock interview of either a white American woman or Black American woman. Participants associated the Black interviewee with negative terms, and the terms they used (sexual or angry, associated with the jezebel stereotype; negatively maternal stereotypes associated with the mammy), were greatly influenced by the video they watched beforehand. The majority of participants were white

(out of 182 undergraduate students interviewed, 158 were white, thirteen were Black, two were Hispanic, eight were Asian, and one identified as “other”). Additionally, half identified as male, and half identified as female.111 This study gives empirical evidence to suggest that mediated stereotypes of Black American women have a profound effect on how they are perceived in social situations.112

Carolyn West’s book Battered Black and Blue: An Overview of Violence in the Lives of Black Women,113 outlines and defines the types of violence Black women experience throughout their lives, the prevalence of violence towards Black women, and the psychological effects of living with violence. West compiled data from a wide range of research, which she summarized into a review of literature addressing the topic of violence Black women experience. She considers new directions for research on violence towards Black women, as well as means of healing for Black women who live with

111 Ibid, 87. 112 Ibid, 91. However, the study results may be more compelling if the participants were not primed by seeing controlling images of Black women on video, which would have suggested that these controlling images are incredibly pervasive. Regardless, the study shows a direct correlation between controlling images of Black women having negative consequences in social situations. 113 Carolyn West, “Battered, Black, and Blue: An Overview of Violence in the Lives of Black Women,” The Haworth Press Inc. (2002).

51 violence.114 West’s analysis uses research that was compiled from participants in the

United States, specifically in Los Angeles.

The types of violence Black women experience most frequently are childhood sexual assault, dating violence, intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and sexual harassment.

• Childhood sexual assault statistics are as follows: one-third of Black women

report childhood sexual assault, and of those who were sexually assaulted,

two-thirds were violently assaulted, meaning vaginal, anal, or oral

penetration.115

• Dating violence, of which verbal and psychological are the most common

forms of abuse, is experienced or perpetrated by one-third of Black

undergraduate students. Almost half of adolescent high of school students

interviewed were victims or perpetrators of extreme physical dating violence.

An equal number of Black male and female students surveyed inflicted

violence on their partners, however women experienced more injurious

violence.116

• Intimate partner violence (also referred to as domestic partner violence), is

experienced by approximately 17% of Black women, including at least one act

of intimate partner violence per year.117

• Sexual assault is experienced between 7-30% of Black women, depending on

the data source and the means of gathering data (self-reporting surveys rather

than interviews produced higher statistics of sexual assault). 118

114 Ibid, 6. 115 Ibid, 8. 116 Ibid, 9. 117 Ibid, 11.

52 • Sexual harassment is experienced by one third of LA women while at work,

75% of those women experience gender harassment, and more than 60% of

black women are harassed on college campuses.119

• Victims of sexual assault are more likely experience mental health problems,

substance abuse, depression, suicide attempts, and physical health problems.120

West asserts that negative images of Black women that depict them as sexually promiscuous and therefore not legitimate victims (the jezebel stereotype) creates barriers for women who might otherwise seek help. The jezebel stereotype also excuses perpetrators for the same reason: presenting Black women as illegitimate victims due to perceived sexual promiscuity.121

A similar study, “The Influence of Gender Role Stereotypes, the Woman’s Race, and

Level of Provocation and Resistance on Domestic Violence Culpability Attributions”122 by Cynthia Willis Esquada and Lisa A. Harrison researched the influence of traditional and egalitarian gender role stereotypes on the perception of domestic violence.123 Their study concluded that gender role beliefs influence perceptions based on the “women’s race.”124 Their study compared traditional and egalitarian gender beliefs; those with traditional gender role beliefs justified domestic violence, and also had different

118 Ibid, 13. 119 Ibid, 14. 120 Ibid, 15-18. 121 Ibid, 13. 122 Cynthia W. Esqueda and Lisa A. Harrison, “The Influence of Gender Role Stereotypes, the Woman’s Race, and Level of Provocation and Resistance on Domestic Violence Culpability Attributions,” Sex Roles, 53.11/12, (2005). 123 Ibid, 821. 124 Ibid, 830.

53 perceptions of what constitutes violence.125 Esqueda and Harrison suggest that educational programs should target those with traditional gender role beliefs to help expel biases towards victims of domestic violence, particularly police officers and judges with traditional gender role beliefs who are less likely to take Black women victims seriously.126

Tameka L. Gillum, in her research “Exploring the Link Between Stereotypic Images and Intimate Partner Violence in the African American Community,”127 interviewed over two-hundred Black American men to examine the degree to which these men endorsed stereotypic images of Black women, and to discover whether these stereotypic images correlated with justifying the use of violence against an intimate partner.128 Gillum’s results show that a large portion of the men interviewed endorsed these stereotypic images, which they used to positively justify the use of violence towards an intimate partner.129130

As these studies demonstrate, the effects and implications of stereotypes of Black women are very real and seriously dangerous. These images are widely disseminated through various forms of media, as shown in the examples of this chapter. Not only do they reduce Black women to tropes: they validate violence against Black women, creating the perception that Black women deserve punishment, often in the form of sexual

125 Ibid. 126 Ibid, 831. 127 Tameka Gillum, “Exploring the Link Between Stereotypic Images and Intimate Partner Violence in the African American Community,” Violence Against Women, 8.1, (Sage Publications: 2002. 128 Ibid, 64. 129 Ibid. 130 Additional research on the effects of stereotypes of Black woman has been conducted by Amanda M. Durik et al., Walter and Rosenfeld, Tiffany Taylor, Lineberger and Calhoun, Donovan and Williams, Zondra Hughes, and Vanessa Jones, to name a few.

54 terrorism. NWA perpetuates these stereotypes in their music, reinforcing Black women’s very real, historical, and current oppression.

55 Chapter Three DESPICABLE FEMALES Controlling Images of Black American Women in NWA’s Music

In reality, a fool is one who believes that all women are ladies A nigga is one who believes that all ladies are bitches And all bitches are created equal To me, all bitches are the same Money-hungry, scandalous groupie hoes.131 NWA, “One Less Bitch,” 1991

If you’re a bitch, you’re probably not going to like us. If you’re a ho, you probably don’t like us. If you’re not a ho or a bitch, don’t be jumping to the defense of these despicable females. Just like I shouldn’t be jumping to the defense of no punks or no cowards or no slimy son of a bitches that’s men. I never understood why an upstanding lady would even think we’re talking about her.132 Ice Cube, 2015

The Despicable Female Trope

In 1991, Eazy-E rapped that “all ladies are bitches,” using stereotypes of Black women to back up his claim: “money-hungry” (welfare queen), “scandalous” (sapphire),

“groupie-ho’s” (jezebel), all of whom are, in his words, “despicable females.” Twenty- four years later, Ice Cube states in an interview that he “…never understood why an upstanding lady would even think we’re talking about her,” directly contradicting NWA’s assertion in their lyrics that all women are “bitches.” 133 (The person interviewing Ice

Cube could simply have pointed to the lyrics in the song to alleviate Ice Cube’s confusion as to why women do not typically connect with much of NWA’s music.)

131 NWA, “One Less Bitch,” elif4zaggiN, (Los Angeles: Ruthless Records, 1991). 132 Mark Seliger, “N.W.A Tell All: Inside the Original Gangstas’ Rolling Stone Cover Story,” Rolling Stone, August 12, 2015, accessed February 9, 2016, http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/n-w-a-tell-all-inside-the-original-gangstas- rolling-stone-cover-story-20150812. 133 Ibid.

56 Nevertheless, while Ice Cube may assert that they are not referring to all women, it is understandable why female listeners might take offence. The message coursing through much of NWA’s songs is one of hatred, suggestive of pro-violence against women. Within the sonic world created by NWA, women are brutalized, degraded, and raped—and, according to NWA, entirely deserving of such treatment.

NWA, when rapping about women, consistently use stereotypes of Black women both in order to justify violence directed towards Black women and as a means of asserting masculinity and power. Despite the very real threats that arise from perpetuating controlling images of Black women, NWA’s lyrical content does not arise from a natural inclination towards sexualized violence and hatred of women: their music responds to the discrimination they are subject to in the context of violent white masculinity. “Fuck Tha’

Police” is a much more obvious example of a protest song than their songs which degrade women; regardless, “Fuck Tha’ Police” and their songs about women arise from the same place of injustice, however ironic.

Though much changed in the twenty-four years between the release of “One Less

Bitch” and Ice Cube’s defense of their lyrics about women, the effect of NWA’s music is not limited to the time in which it was created. The pervasiveness of NWA in rap and pop culture (especially as they enjoy a resurgence in popularity due to the 2015 biopic film

Straight Outta Compton) has the ability to have a profound effect on the way in which

Black women are perceived. The music perpetuates hateful images of Black women, images that have been proven to be harmful to their livelihood.

Ice Cube, in a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, describes the women that they rap about as “despicable females.” Despicable females, by his definition, are

57 “ho’s” and “bitches.” His descriptor can be particularly useful in lyric analysis when using “despicable female” as a motif.

I argue that the “despicable female” is a trope in NWA’s music that acts to control

Black American women. The despicable female trope can be understood as an umbrella term for the “ho” and the “bitch,” (the jezebel and the sapphire), the “lady,” “money- hungry woman,” and the “mama” (mammy, welfare queen, and black matriarch). The despicable female trope encapsulates any or all aspects of the controlling images of Black

American women identified in Chapter 2. The trope functions to “put women in their place,” so to speak, and to maintain male power. NWA’s songs “I’d Rather Fuck You,”

“Just Don’t Bite It,” “To Kill a Hooker,” “One Less Bitch,” “She Swallowed It,” “Fat

Girl,” and “A Bitch Iz a Bitch,” best exemplify the group’s use of the despicable female trope. By describing women in terms that are directly derived from controlling images of

Black American women, NWA justifies the use of violent sexual punishment towards the despicable female in the lyrics of these seven songs.134

These seven songs fall into three categories: “Controlling the Despicable Female,”

“The Woman Wants It,” and “Punishing the Despicable Female.” Though these categories are helpful organizational tools for understanding the subtleties of the despicable female trope, most of the seven songs have characteristics of all three categories. (All lyrics in this chapter can be found in full in the Lyric Index.)

134 This chapter makes use of the term “central woman” in reference to the “main character” or “female protagonist/antagonist” in the NWA lyrics. The central woman is sometimes named, sometimes unnamed. She is often referred to as “this bitch,” “this ho,” etc. The central woman is typically punished through violence and/or sexualized violence. The central woman is the despicable female who is the subject of the song.

58 Considering the Word “Bitch”

Referring to women as “bitch” coincides with the sapphire stereotype: the sapphire is characterized as a strong, aggressive, angry, pushy woman. She either dominated her husband or boyfriend, or does not have a partner altogether due to her

“bossy” nature.

By calling women “bitches,” NWA are able to claim control. As police brutality and white supremacy pose dangerous threat to Black male livelihood, Black men lose control. They are controlled. Whether or not the narrative of violence in their lyrics translates into their daily lives is another matter. Within the music itself, NWA regain control of their societal situation by exercising power over another oppressed group, one which has even less power than them: Black American women. NWA are able to maintain their status as “less-oppressed,” in part, by calling Black women “bitches.”

Aside from the negative effects controlling images have on the lived experiences of Black American women, the use of the word “bitch” in general presents its own issues.

Kleinman, Ezzell, and Frost, authors of “Reclaiming Critical Analysis: The Social Harms of ‘Bitch’” write that

…words are our tools of thought, reflecting social reality as well as shaping it…words tell us, empirically, about: increases or decreases in inequality, old inequalities in new guises; false power among members of an oppressed group… unconscious sexism, racism, or other forms of inequality; subordinates’ resistance to injustice.135

Kleinmann et al.’s statement that words reflect false power within an oppressed group can quite easily be seen in NWA’s lyrics. Their words function to grant them a perceived sense of power, like elementary school children who bully other children

135 Sherryl Kleinman, Matthew Ezzell, and Corey Frost, “Reclaiming Critical Analysis: The Social Harms of ‘Bitch,’” Sociological Analysis, 3.1, (2009), 48-49. Emphasis added.

59 because of complex hardships in their own lives. Historically, other groups have used the word “bitch” for similar purposes as NWA.

The word “bitch” to describe women pejoratively is linked with the Greek goddess

Artemis-Diana, who is the goddess of the hunt. Artemis-Diana was commonly portrayed in the company of dogs, and as the divine is often linked to nature, she was portrayed as a dog herself. The common expression “son of a bitch” directly links to goddess Artmeis-

Diana; Kleinmann et al. explain how linking the word “bitch” to women equates women with animals:

The etymology of ‘bitch,’ as applied to women, teaches us that the word was linked to suppressing images of women as powerful and divine and equating them with sexually depraved beasts.136

The history of the word “bitch” in application to women reveals that it was used deliberately to suppress sacred femininity. Today, “bitch” is used as a means of subordinating whomever the word is directed to, regardless of gender, by reinforcing patriarchal hierarchies and the equation of women with beasts.137

Controlling the Despicable Female

A number of NWA songs function to “control” the despicable female by enacting fictive scenes in which they assert power and dominance over women. These songs include “A Bitch Iz a Bitch” and “I’d Rather Fuck You.”

NWA’s song “A Bitch Iz a Bitch” is particularly aggressive in its description of women as “bitches.” The central woman, a despicable female, has characteristics of both the sapphire and the welfare queen: she is aggressive and money-hungry. The song says

136 Kleinmen et al., 51. 137 Ibid, 52.

60 that not all women are “bitches,” but all women have at least a few of characteristics of a

“bitch” in their personalities. If all women have “a little bitch in ‘em” then, according to

NWA and the despicable female trope, all women deserve degrading and often violent sex and condemnation. According to NWA, “bitches” are conniving, use men for their money, “dis” (i.e., speak badly about) men, viciously gossip about friends, wear “slutty” and scandalous clothing, and are stuck up. NWA allude to feeling threatened by “bitches” with the lyrics “It makes a girl like that think she better than me… When you say ‘hi’ she won’t say ‘hi’/ Are you the kind that think you’re too damn fly?/ Bitch eat shit and die.”138 The despicable female who ignores men, in this scenario, is subject to degradation and violence.

A woman’s voice is featured on the song. She stands up for herself, saying “I don’t know who the fuck you think you talking to/ Let me tell you one motherfucking thing, I’m not no-” but is interrupted by Ice Cube who says “Bitch, shut the fuck up.” Not only is she interrupted while trying to defend herself, but Ice Cube yells at her “Fuck you!

Suck my dick, bitch! You scandalous-ass, doo-doo dog breath, stinking, ugly…” Ice Cube verbally uses a sexual act as a form of punishment and degradation, when is then heightened by him immediately insulting her physical appearance and reinforcing the canine association by calling her “dog breath.” As the song progresses, the forms of abuse escalate. Ice Cube, when wondering “Now what can I do with a ho like you?” implies that

“bitches” should be raped with the line, “bend your ass over and then I'm through.”

Again, the usage of the word “bitch” and “ho” justifies rape. Addressing women as despicable females often precedes the violence directed towards them.

138 All lyric citations and lyrics can be found in full in the Lyric Index.

61 The final verse and outro of the song addresses the female listeners by giving them guidelines by which to assess whether or not they’re a “bitch”: “Now ask yourself, are they talking about you?/ Are you that funky, dirty, money-hungry, scandalous, stuck-up, hair piece, contact-wearing bitch?/ Yep, you probably are.” The last line harkens back to the first verse of the song, in which NWA say “all women have a little bitch in 'em.” This common theme throughout “A Bitch Iz A Bitch” lyrics reinforces to their listeners the concept that all women are “bitches”; thus, all women deserve to be punished through sexualized violence.

The word “ho” works functions similarly to “bitch.” Dr. Carolyn West writes that the word “ho” subordinates women, but unlike the word “bitch,” it has the effect of justifying sexual assault and rape because they are immoral and promiscuous.139 A promiscuous woman’s “no” is not perceived as legitimate, because she supposedly enjoys sex with any and “all” men. This phenomenon is exemplified in NWA’s song “I’d Rather

Fuck You.”

In the introduction of “I’d Rather Fuck You,” Eazy-E dedicates the song to “all the lovely young ladies out there.”140 This dedication is ironic; he goes on to describe every woman referred to in the song as “bitches” and “ho’s.” The dedication is also manipulative. By presenting the song to ladies, and using degrading terminology, he makes the claim that all women, regardless of their perceived identity, deserve to be viewed in derogatory terms.

A close reading of the lyrics in “I’d Rather Fuck You” reveals its use of the despicable female trope. The central woman, due to her inherently “bitchy” and “slutty”

139 Carolyn M. West, “Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire, and their Homegirls,” 294. 140 NWA, “I’d Rather Fuck You,” (Los Angeles: Ruthless Records, 1991).

62 nature, is subject to rape and violence by men. In “I’d Rather Fuck You,” the central woman makes both non-sexual and sexual relationship requests but is denied her wishes by Eazy-E. Eazy-E consistently uses violent sex as punishment throughout the song.

The lyric, “Now I'm fucking all your friends/ Cause you ran your mouth like I knew you would” attempts to silence the central woman of the song by punishing her through the act of Eazy-E having sex with “all” her friends. He continues to use sex as punishment (though it is unclear if he is having intercourse with the central woman of the song or one of her friends): “Now I'm riding on this pussy here/ And I'm not gonna stop

(I'm not gonna stop bitch).” Regardless of which woman he is referring to, using the phrase “I’m not gonna stop” implies that the sex is non-consensual, reinforced by repeating the phrase immediately and emphatically adding the word “bitch.” This effectively puts Eazy-E in control. He both physically and verbally dominates her. By calling her a “bitch” he rationalizes presumably non-consensual sex. Because she is a

“bitch” her body is not deserving of respect. It is implied that if she were to ask him to stop, he would not.

Eazy-E presents himself as the only benefiting partner in his encounters with women in “I’d Rather Fuck You.” He wants nothing to do with a relationship that might even suggest romance. Additionally, he wants nothing to do with giving women pleasure:

Cause the other bitches wanna wine and dine (fuck all that)/ I better hurry up and get this nut/ Cause it's check-out time/ She said she wanted me to eat the pussy/ Well I think I'll pass (I don't think so)/ So get your ass up you funky bitch.

The phrase “wine and dine” is culturally synonymous with romance. In this song,

NWA are clear that they do not want romance, they want only sex, and male pleasure is the first priority. In the song, Eazy-E rejects his partner’s intimate requests in favour of

63 his own preferences, which could potentially be understood as non-consensual given his tendency to verbally silence women and physically control them.

The Woman Wants It

A common theme throughout NWA songs, which makes excessive use of the jezebel stereotype, is the sexualization of all despicable females. This is particularly evident in the songs “She Swallowed It” and “Fat Girl.” The reason these two songs have been placed in this category is because they both feature central women who would not typically be sexualized in popular music: a fourteen year-old girl (who is also a preacher’s daughter) and an obese woman.

The song “She Swallowed It” excuses the gang rape of a young teenage girl. “She

Swallowed It” is exemplary of the despicable female trope. Again, the central woman is a

“bitch” and a “ho” and she is consequently punished for this through violent sex. The song frames the central woman as “wanting” to engage in oral sex with various men, but given the context in which these encounters take place, the woman is at the very least being taken advantage of, and at the most explicit, raped. The controlling image of the jezebel pervades the entire song. The song is framed as a tutorial to teach women how to perform oral sex, but immediately digresses into using violence as a means of coercing women into performing various sex acts.

In the first verse, MC Ren raps that “And if you got a gang of niggas/ that bitch would let you rape her.” Because the central woman of the first verse is described as a

“nympho” and a “slut”, rape is justified, and, as NWA state, allowed. This direct

64 contradiction of the definition of rape illustrates the potential danger of the jezebel stereotype in relation to Black women.

The second verse describes MC Ren’s encounter with a car full of five men and one woman while MC Ren is on a date at the drive-in theatre. The men gang-rape the woman in the car before letting MC Ren in to have a “turn”: “Five niggas in the bucket with the neighbourhood ho’/ Now what do you expect they’re gonna dogg her like a doggy.” This lyric equates the girl with an animal, reinforcing the canine association

(similarly to “A Bitch Iz a Bitch”). When MC Ren sees the girl’s face, he realizes it is the preacher’s daughter who is fourteen-years-old. He forces her to give him oral sex.

Whether or not she consented to engaging in group-intercourse, though unlikely, is beside the point: she is legally underage. The song functions as a warning to all women listeners that not even an underage girl who is from a presumably respectable, certainly religious, family can live without being violently punished. Even though she has been raised in a

“pure” family, it is in her nature, not her nurture, to be a “bitch” and a “ho.” The gang rape of this despicable female, then, is warranted.

This explicit gang rape is followed by advice from MC Ren to men on how to sexually assault a woman. In verse three, MC Ren gives advice to men who encounter women who do not want to participate in oral sex: “So fellas, next time they try to tell a lie/ That they never suck a dick, punch a bitch in the eye/ And then the ho’ will fall to the ground/ Then you’ll open up her mouth/ Put your dick in and move the shit around.” A woman’s “no” is seen as a lie which should be punished by physical violence; in this scenario, punished by forced oral sex. The song claims that women who try giving oral sex to men even when they have expressed that they do not want to, “love” to do it and become “addicted.” MC Ren raps, “Ninety percent of the bitches today they love that shit/

65 And those are the main ones who say they don’t do it.” NWA effectively creates a myth that all women can learn to “love” giving men oral sex by being physically and sexually assaulted and violated until they become “addicted.” Additionally, this myth implies that all women can potentially possess characteristics associated with the jezebel stereotype, such as promiscuity and an abnormally high sex-drive.

NWA’s song “Fat Girl” sexualizes a woman who would not typically be sexualized. The “Fat Girl” is a mammy: large, ugly, and maternal. She is punished for her appearance and sexual desire for Eazy-E by death; Eazy-E kills her with a harpoon.

“Fat Girl” tells a story about Eazy-E unexpectedly seeing a woman, Bertha

(voiced by rapper Ron-de-Vu), who he forgot he drunkenly danced with at a party. Bertha is the central woman of the song, the “fat girl.” She is described in derogatory terms consistent with the mammy stereotype, such as “big fat pimple,” “fatty,” “funky fat,” and

“overweight freak.” Some of words used describe her are animalistic, including

“stampede,” “bear hug,” “beast grip,” and “beached whale.” Using these words subordinates Bertha. Her value as a person is non-existent in the song because Eazy-E sees her only as an obese beast. At the end of the song, Eazy-E issues a warning to other

“overweight freaks” to stay away from him and his friends with the lyric “All overweight freaks stay off my block/ Cause it's ill to have a fat girl on your jock.” This warning becomes more sinister when considering he issues it after he describes killing Bertha with a harpoon.

Bertha’s character is derived from the controlling image of the mammy. Bertha uses the phrases “yes you do suga’” and gives Eazy-E a “bear hug,” implying maternal characteristics. However, Bertha strays from the mammy stereotype because she is overtly sexual. The despicable female trope thus functions to encapsulate multiple

66 controlling images in the central woman of each rap song. Bertha is both the mammy and the jezebel; however, because she is has more characteristics of the mammy than the jezebel, Eazy-E is disgusted by her and does not want to engage in intercourse, whether consensual or un-consensual. Differing from the previous songs, the despicable female is punished by being murdered.

Punishing the Despicable Female

Though despicable females are punished in all NWA songs presented in this chapter, the following songs rely heavily on this trope to assert control over women: “Just

Don’t Bite It,” “To Kill a Hooker” and “One Less Bitch.” Because these women are despicable females, they are punished in these songs through rape, sexualized violence, physical and emotional abuse, and murder.

“Just Don’t Bite It” is the prequel to “She Swallowed It.” Both songs feature many of the same musical motifs: the line “Just don’t bite it,” “it’s the world’s biggest dick,” and “she swallowed it,” are featured in both song’s choruses and hooks. Again, the despicable female trope is used in “Just Don’t Bite It” to excuse sexual assault and murder.

In “Just Don’t Bite It,” MC Ren raps about a woman prostitute who is also a failed mother. This represents an image of the Black matriarch: a failed mother who does not uphold traditional family values, even more so because the central woman in this song is described as a prostitute.141 By referring to the central woman’s children as a “gang o' kidz nappy-heads and all dirty,” MC Ren implies that this woman has a large amount of children due to promiscuous behaviour. She fails as a mother because her children are

141 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 75.

67 dirty: both in terms of cleanliness and because they are fatherless, they were born out of a

“dirty” act.

Sex is used in “Just Don’t Bite It” as punishment. After describing another despicable female in verse three, MC Ren forces her to give him oral sex while she is intoxicated. “When she turns sober/ she’ll never admit it” alludes to the sex act as not entirely consensual. MC Ren is fully aware that because she is drunk, he can coerce her into giving him oral sex; if she were sober, she would not be as “easy” to coerce.142

MC Ren clarifies that he plans not on taking her to a bedroom to have sex, but to a bathroom. Relegating potentially nonconsensual sexual acts to a relatively public, typically unclean area reinforces not only disrespect for the woman—it aligns with the despicable female trope. Because she is perceived as a “ho” and a “bitch,” she is punished with a degrading act in a degrading setting.

An example of extreme punishment is seen in NWA’s song “To Kill a Hooker.”

“To Kill a Hooker” has an explicit focus on punishment as a result of being a despicable female. It unfolds as a dramatic, theatrical event in which a hooker is forced into a car with men and then murdered by them.

The ultimate “despicable female” is the hooker, the paradigm “bitch.” In “To Kill a Hooker” she stands up for herself, asking the men how much they will pay her, and asking them to let her go when they force her into the car, with the intention of raping her.

“To Kill a Hooker” is reminiscent of the title of Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a

142 According to www.loveisrespect.org, sexual coercion includes violent coercion, insincere compliments, asking for reciprocation in the form of sex, use of drugs or alcohol, negative reaction if a partner says no to sex, continued pressure to have sex after a partner says no to having sex, making a partner feel threatened if they do say no, and/or normalizing sexual expectations.

68 Mockingbird.” Though both victims in “To Kill a Hooker” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” are helpless and innocent against their perceived crimes, they are met with a brutal end.

In “To Kill a Mockingbird,” African-American man Tom Robinson is wrongly accused of raping a white woman, an accusation that, for Black American men in the

1960s, was akin to the death sentence. In a way, NWA is revolting against an oppression imposed by white women who have the power to wrongly accuse Black men of rape. By attempting to rape and murder a Black woman in “To Kill a Hooker,

NWA are arguably revolting against the potential threat white women pose to them within the larger context of societal white superiority.

In “To Kill a Hooker,” NWA describe the central woman using words connoted with the sapphire image. Because she is assertive by asking how much money they will pay her for engaging in intercourse, NWA define her as a “bitch.” NWA creates a fictitious scene through the platform of reality rap in which they can control the outcome of a situation. The murder of the hooker is illogical: she posed no threat to them, and if any of them theoretically wanted to have sex with her, she was easily outnumbered. Eazy-

E shoots her as soon as the men force her into the car. He says “I ain’t fuckin dis bitch,” followed by three gunshots. It seems that, upon seeing her, he changes his mind, or perhaps he was planning on killing her in any case.

“One Less Bitch” follows a similar narrative as “To Kill a Hooker.” In “One Less

Bitch,” Dr. Dre, MC Ren, and Eazy-E tell a tale of four despicable females who are all met with the same fate: violent, typically sexualized, death. The first verse introduces the central woman as a “bitch” whose name Dr. Dre thinks is Clara; introducing her this way instantly dehumanizes her: according to him, she is most certainly a bitch, but her name is ambiguous and not important. Dr. Dre attests that she is a hooker. He takes her to the

69 Boulevard (most likely referring to Compton Boulevard, locating the song’s narrative in his hometown). Though not explicitly stated, it is presumed he pimps her out to make money for himself: “I told her ‘I'll take care of you, you take care of me/ You've got a P-I-

M-P and all I want is the money’/ She went to work and the niggas were fiendin.” Clara tries to “gank” (steal from or kill) Dr. Dre; as a result, he instructs his friends to gang rape her and then he murders her.

The rest of the song follows a similar pattern. Each verse describes an encounter with a despicable female. Money is always involved; if the woman tries to steal from the men, she is killed. If the men need money and cannot get money, the woman involved is killed. Consequently, they have “one less bitch” to worry about.

Violence to Regain Control

Faced with the threat of police brutality and often dangerous racial profiling,

NWA regained a perceived sense of control in their situation by enacting out scenes of senseless murder of Black women by Black men. While NWA’s music is most definitely damaging and misogynistic towards women, it is not born of a natural inclination towards violence. Their music is a response to their oppression. “Fuck Tha’ Police” functioned very clearly as a protest song. The seven songs presented in this chapter, too, function as a form of protest music: NWA is protesting against their oppression by oppressing another group. These songs granted them a sense of both false and very real power in the face of total loss of their liberty.

70 Chapter Four THE SOUND OF PROTEST Musical Hardness and Black Male Survival in NWA’s Music

Let us imagine these hip hop principles as a blueprint for social resistance and affirmation: create sustaining narratives, accumulate them, layer, embellish, and transform them. However, also be prepared for rupture, find pleasure in it, in fact, plan on social rupture. When these ruptures occur, use them in creative ways that will prepare you for a future in which survival will demand a sudden shift in ground tactics.143 Tricia Rose, Black Noise.

Reality rap functions as protest not just lyrically, but sonically. The inherent musical aesthetics of rap music defy the aural qualities of many genres of music including popular, classical, and even hip-hop, from which reality rap originates. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a quality to reality rap that made it different from other genres of popular music; it sounded aggressive, masculine, and incredibly dangerous.

Musicologist and music theorist Adam Krims defines this particular musical aesthetic in rap as musical “hardness,” a characteristic that has the unusually effective ability of bolstering masculinity through various aural techniques.

Analyses of rap music across academic disciplines tend to understand the genre socially, culturally, and politically. Though all of these areas of study are necessary, actual rap music itself has not been studied extensively. In the early 2000s, Adam Krims broke this trend. Krims was one of the early music scholars to develop a musicological framework for identifying the musical aesthetics of rap music in his 2000 book Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity.144 Little musicological terminology has been developed to

143 Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1994), 39. 144 Adam Krims, Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Krims later expanded upon his ideas in Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity in a chapter of the book Analyzing Popular Music, titled “Marxist music analysis without Adorno: popular music and urban geography.”

71 discuss rap music in academic contexts, and Krims’ work is a valuable addition to the discourse surrounding the musical characteristics of rap.

Freya Jarman-Ivens, senior lecturer of music at the University of Liverpool, expands upon concepts Krims developed in her article “Queer(ing) Masculinities in

Heterosexist Rap Music.”145 Between Krims and Jarman-Ivens frameworks for understanding rap music sonically and in the context of masculinity, I develop the argument that musical “hardness” was another avenue through which NWA both protested oppression while further reinforcing misogyny by constructing an exaggerated, violent masculinity.

A number of scholars have outlined the need for further research on the sonic constituents of rap music. Prior to Krims’ addition to rap literature, there was a major gap in rap music scholarship. Scholars such as Tricia Rose, Paul Gilroy, Tim Brennan,

Richard Shusterman, Robert Walser, and Robin D.G. Kelley are only a few who have called for elaborations on rap’s musical aesthetics. 146

Tricia Rose’s contributions cannot be ignored in any analysis of rap music. Rose’s book Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America provides a comprehensive analysis of how hip-hop and rap developed as cultural and creative expression of Black American youth, as well as providing a plethora of information on the political and cultural context which shaped and influenced the genre. Rose focuses on

145 Freya Jarman-Ivens, “Queer(ing) Masculinities in Heterosexist Rap Music,” Queering the Popular Pitch, ed. Sheila Whitely and Jennifer Rycenga (New York: Routledge, 2006). 146 For more information on rap music scholarship, rap context, and race scholarship, see the following: Paul Gilroy, ‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Richard Shusterman, “The Fine Art of Rap,” New Literary History 22.3 (1991), 613-32; Robert Walser, Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1993).

72 four primary fields of inquiry: 1) rap’s history and relation to postindustrial, urban New

York; 2) rap’s technological and musical activity and influence; 3) racial politics, critiques, and media/institutional reactions to rap; and 4) sexual politics in rap, female rapper’s critiques of men, and feminist debates surrounding female rappers.147 Though

Rose provides insight into the technical aspects of musical creation, particularly vinyl scratching and “rupture,” her analysis of the musical aesthetics is incomplete simply because she is not a music theorist. In every other way, Black Noise provides an essentially complete history of rap music and how it fits into the broader context of

Afrodiasporic cultural practices in modern-day America.148

Tim Brennan, in his article “Off the Gangsta Tip: A Rap Appreciation, Or

Forgetting About Los Angeles,”149 articulates how rap music has been studied primarily for its connection with a perceived social dysfunction (usually of young Black men), rather than being studied as a musical form.150 This stance is useful because it bears the question of whether or not rap music can function simply as a form of pleasure for its listeners, or if there are always social and cultural implications within the genre. Music and its context are difficult to separate; Brennan, however, states that rap must be considered musically, regardless.

Similarly, in the 1997 book Yo Mama’s Dysfunktional!, author and professor

Robin D.G. Kelley argues that “[f]or all the implicit and explicit politics of rap lyrics, Hip

Hop must be understood as a sonic force more than anything else.”151 Though a bold

147 Rose, Black Noise, Introduction / xv. 148 Ibid. 149 Tim Brennan, “Off the Gangsta Tip: A Rap Appreciation, Or Forgetting About Los Angeles,” Critical Inquiry, 20.4, 663-93. 150 Ibid. 151 Robin D.G. Kelley, Yo Mama’s Dysfunktional! (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 38.

73 statement, Kelley is concerned that when sites of pleasure and creativity experienced by audiences and creators in rap music are not taken into consideration, rap music is condensed and understood only through its social functions, thereby erasing the creative, fun, and enjoyable potential of rap.152

Adam Krims responds to this call for an analysis of the musical aesthetics of rap in his book, stating his opinion that “... to discuss rap music without indicating its musical organization is to slight the views of those who create it and those who consume it.”153 I agree with this statement: ignoring rap’s potential as a playful, creative musical outlet with artistic worth dismisses an entire community of rappers, artists, and people who enjoy listening to rap. Though rap’s social and cultural implications are no doubt important to study, as the previous chapters have illustrated, ignoring the musical characteristics does damage to understandings of rap music as just music. However, understanding how the sound is organized inevitably draws on contextual information.

Asking the question of how rap music sounds “hardcore” or “gangsta” relies on a broader context that exists outside of musical creativity and creation.

Musical Poetics

In his book Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity, Krims indicates directions for other scholars to take in further shaping a musical poetics of rap music. He uses the term

“musical poetics” to describe a broader form of music theory (music theory refers to the theoretical study and analysis of the organization and aural qualities of music) taking into consideration not only traditional musicological analyses of music, but societal, historical,

152 Ibid, 38. 153 Krims, 40.

74 ethnic, and other areas of understanding, areas which Krims says that music scholars have traditionally ignored in the study of music.154

Krims acknowledges that his analysis is not comprehensive of all musical aspects of rap music. Though his framework for understanding rap music is incomprehensive, it is an excellent starting point for further discussion and reworking of academic and popular understandings of the musical characteristics and functions of rap music. He examines various genres within rap, including party rap, Mack rap, jazz/bohemian, and reality rap.

For each genre discussed he presents various musical characteristics specific to that genre of rap. Krims describes his methodology as an amalgamation of content analyses of articles, advertisements, interviews with rap artists, conversations with fans, and the rap music itself to generate criteria. These criteria include musical flow, topics, and musical

“hardness,” a compelling quality of reality rap that is consistent throughout the genre.

Musical “Hardness”

Within reality rap there have been numerous musical styles. Despite a diverse range of musical styles, Krims forwards the concept that “there has been at least one relatively stable ethos in reality rap, even in the midst of all the changes: an inherent quality of musical “hardness.” 155 Krims outlines four characteristics to describe musical

“hardness”:

1. A dominating bass with an unfocused pitch. 2. “Radically” dissonant pitch combinations. 3. “Samples that foreground their own deformation and/or degrees of reproduction,” with any or all of the following characteristics: a. Pitch instability. b. Surface noise (particularly surface vinyl noise).

154 Ibid, 29. 155 Ibid, 72.

75 c. Timbral distortions. d. “Distance” in the mix. 4. The “hip-hop sublime”: a. Dense combinations of musical layers that reinforce the downbeat, are sharply dissonant, and are often actively detuned.

Krims writes that musical “hardness” links together “strictly musico-poetic features (specifically, the assemblage of musical tracks) and more general aesthetic attitudes invested with social and representational value.”156 Musical “hardness” combines musical features and social context/implications. Rap is a highly gendered musical process, seen in the predominance of themes like ghettocentricity and masculinity.157 The qualities of musical “hardness” reinforce themes of masculinity and ghettocentricity.

A critical part of the concept of musical “hardness” is what Krims defines as the

“hip-hop sublime”: a dense mixture of musical layers. These musical layers serve to reinforce the downbeat of each measure but their primary quality is one of radical dissonance. They are so dissonant that they can be understood as out of tune, in fact actively detuned, and, as Krims writes, “intervals that can only be measured in terms of fractions of well-tempered semitones.”158 He elaborates, writing that “[t]he result is that no pitch combination may form conventionally representable relationships with the others; musical layers pile up, defying aural representability for Western musical listeners.”159 Detuning musical layers and dissonant harmonic combinations, even when those layers were originally in tune, are common production/performance practices in

156 Ibid, 73. 157 Ibid. 158 Ibid. 159 Ibid.

76 reality rap.160 These layers are defined by “clashing” timbral characteristics, sampled from vinyl surfaces or dubbed from a heavily-produced live source.161 The quality of the sublime arises because both the domains of pitch and timbre transcend conceptual limits.162 Krims expanded on his concept of the hip-hop sublime in his essay in the book

Analyzing Popular Music, in which he describes how the hip-hop sublime for some time functioned to ground reality rap in the reality that the rappers experienced. He writes:

A heady mixture of social knowledge and obscene enjoyment, the hip-hop sublime for some time anchored the ‘reality’ of ‘reality rap’ in sound, a shorthand for urban conditions inseparable from the identities of the underclass and the inner city.163

It is interesting that Krims, whose work aims to discuss rap music in terms of music theory and aesthetics, also writes extensively about the social and cultural aspects of rap music. His essay is indicative of how bound together sound and identity are. One does not, one cannot, exist without the other.

Krims acknowledges that within in his own theory of musical “hardness” there is a peculiarity, a major anomaly that is pertinent to NWA’s music and to my discussion of

NWA’s musical aesthetics and the construction masculinity. West Coast G-Funk, a style of rap that originated on the West Coast of the United States, particularly in Los Angeles, does not possess the same characteristics of musical “hardness” that Krims outlines.

Krims argues that West Coast G-Funk (of which NWA is a part) is defined by:

• Live instrumentation

160 Ibid. 161 Ibid, 74. 162 Ibid. 163 Adam Krims, “Marxist music analysis without Adorno: popular music and urban geography,” in Analyzing Popular Music, ed. Allan F. Moore (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 146.

77 • Heavy usage of bass and keyboards • Less layering of samples • Conventional harmonic progressions and harmonies • “Laid-back” speech-effusive style (pioneered by Ice Cube in the late 1980s)164

While West Coast G-Funk may not be consistent with Krims’ definition of musical

“hardness,” he acknowledges that the genre is appropriately hardcore given its geographical location.165 California is popularly imagined as a “laid-back,” relaxed state; this popular imagining, as well as the reality of the lifestyle, heavily influences the musical characteristics of rap music. Again, the sound of music and identity of those creating it are inextricably linked.

Though this anomaly presents challenges to the concept that musical “hardness” in

NWA songs is linked to the promotion of masculinity in their music, I agree with Krims’ explanation that West Coast G-Funk (abbreviated to “G-Funk” in this chapter) is appropriately hardcore. While his descriptions of the musical aesthetics of G-Funk are not consistent with his definition of musical “hardness,” the characteristics of G-Funk achieve a different kind of musical “hardness,” one that works in tandem with its semantic topics.

Rejecting White Masculinity Through Music

Freya Jarman-Ivens writes about the construct of masculinity and musical detail in her article “Queer(ing) Masculinities in Heterosexist Rap Music.” Jarman-Ivens outlines specific musical details that she argues undermine the construct of masculinity. Drawing from Susan McClary’s well-known musicological description of “musical semiotics” and

“feminine” and “masculine” musical motifs, Jarman-Ivens argues that rap music

164 Krims, Poetics, 50. 165 Ibid, 74-75.

78 unwittingly musically deconstructs masculinity.166 Cyclic motifs (most often looped rhythmic motifs), which are typically associated with the feminine, are extremely prominent in hip-hop, and even more so in rap and reality rap. Jarman-Ivens argues that the prevalence of cyclic, rhythmic motifs in rap music functions to subconsciously undermine the construct of masculinity in rap music because of cyclicity’s traditional association as a feminine musical motif.167 Another musical characteristic of rap that

Jarman-Ivens argues undermines masculinity is rhythmic instability. Regardless of relatively stable cyclic motifs, vocal elision in rap interrupts rhythmic continuity, further dismantling masculinity.168 She then goes on to explain how a large amount of rap music does not subscribe to tonic-dominant harmonic relationships; she interprets rejecting tonic-dominant harmonic musical relationships as a sign of rejecting Western musical traditions and embracing African-American musical traditions.169

Jarman-Ivens’ arguments are compelling; however, I offer an alternate interpretation: by rejecting Western musical traditions and thus Western musical conceptions of “feminine” and “masculine,” reality rappers and rap groups subvert traditional white masculinity (in music) in favour of creating and promoting Black masculinity in and through the musical aesthetics of rap, drawing on the tradition of

Afrodiasporic music. I disagree with what Jarman-Ivens describes as undermining masculinity; I argue that those same characteristics she says deconstruct masculinity actually characterize musical “hardness.”

166 Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); quoted in Freya Jarman-Ivens, “Queer(ing) Masculinities in Heterosexist Rap Music,” Queering the Popular Pitch, ed. Sheila Whitely and Jennifer Rycenga, (New York: Routledge, 2006), 208. 167 Jarman-Ivens, 208. 168 Ibid, 210. 169 Ibid, 209.

79 An important point to consider in rap music analyses is that rappers do not remain rigidly in one musical style; musical style in one album often changes considerably.

Krims notes that genres “operate by sets of contrasts to each other,” not in isolation from each other; additionally, “hardcore” (gangsta) groups like NWA are more likely to draw from a wide range of rap styles, especially on full-length albums.170 Krims’ genre classification cannot be expected to remain consistently applicable to all genres of rap and all rap groups; however, his definitions remain useful, even though rappers and rap groups often depart from making music in one specific genre. One characteristic, however, that is consistent to all styles and genres within G-Funk is semantic topics.

Ghettocentricity is a topic appearing in all genres of reality rap, but it is particularly evident in G-Funk. Ghettocentricity refers to the use of rhetoric around gun violence, poverty, “street” life, and criminal life.

Semantics and musical style both rely on and determine one another.171 Identity cannot be ignored in an analysis of the sound of rap music, particularly in the case of

NWA who subscribed to these tropes, because their identity had such a profound effect on shaping the sound of the music as “hard.” “Ghettocentricity” is a theme that informs musical style—“ghettocentricity” and musical “hardness” are simultaneously produced in

NWA songs. Identity, semantics, musical style, and musical sound are all inextricably linked to one other—they have the effect of both preceding each other and being created by each other in a cyclical fashion.

Sociologist Jennifer C. Lena presents connections between musical diversity, market concentration, and musician reaction to the musical market in her 2006 article

170 Krims, Poetics, 81-87. 171 Ibid, 78.

80 “Social Context and Musical Content of Rap.”172 Lena argues that rap lyrics contain strong similarities across the diverse range of rap musical styles and sub-genres within rap.173 Understanding rap as diverse makes more sense than pinning it down to various categories. Though Krims’ definitions are incredibly helpful and fill a gap in rap music scholarship, I do not think they are the last say, by any means, of a comprehensive understanding of the musical poetics of rap music. Lena’s approach to understanding rap as diverse within an umbrella of similarities (like G-Funk or reality rap) is a conclusive means of understanding how genres function.

Returning to the concept of musical “hardness” then, I argue that the combination of musical characteristics in G-Funk (in this case NWA’s music) with semantic topics creates a musical “hardness” that differs from Krims’ and Jarman-Ivens’ definitions, defined by both the semantic topics and specific musical aesthetics to be described in this chapter.

NWA’s music is undoubtedly “hard.” The semantic topics that revolve around ghettocentricity in tangent with their musical aesthetics create musical “hardness.” Taking both Krims and Jarman-Ivens musical understandings of rap into consideration, as well as my own listening observations, I have developed a set of criteria to explain musical

“hardness” specific to eight NWA songs. These songs each function as protest in their own way, both by sonically subverting more traditional musical qualities (associated with pop, hip-hop, classical music,etc.), and in their semantic topics.

Parameters of Musical “Hardness” in NWA Songs

172 Jennifer C. Lena, “Social Context and Musical Content of Rap,” Social Forces 85.1, (2006). 173 Ibid.

81 The following parameters for musical “hardness” have been developed through interpretations of both Krims’ and Jarman-Ivens’ musical understanding of rap, as well as by listening a selection of NWA songs and noting coinciding musical characteristics and semantic topics.

“Fuck Tha’ Police,” “A Bitch Iz a Bitch,” “Fat Girl,” “Just Don’t Bite It,” “To Kill a

Hooker,” “One Less Bitch,” “She Swallowed It,” and “I’d Rather Fuck You,” embody musical characteristics and semantic topics that, when functioning in tandem, create a quality of musical “hardness.” In this way, NWA assert Black masculinity through their music; the music functions as protest against oppression through the combination of sound and words. (This analysis is not comprehensive of all NWA songs. Further work could be done to create a more complete understanding of how the musical “hardness” and semantics in their songs functions as protest.)

Creating and Reflecting Toughness

“Fat Girl,” “Fuck Tha Police,” “A Bitch Iz a Bitch,” “One Less Bitch,” “She

Swallowed It,” and “I’d Rather Fuck You” all sound similar through various musical techniques that imitate toughness, and thus, create a sense of musical “hardness.” NWA both creates and reflects toughness through three musical techniques: 1) Heavily accented strong beats reinforced by a predominant, often out of tune bass line and a driving, edgy beat in the drums; 2) Sampling gunshot and siren sounds, and 3) Vinyl scratching that unpredictably fractures and disrupts musical continuity. These songs consistently emphasize strong beats through the use of accented, predominant bass lines, layering techniques, accented voice [of the rappers], and accented drum hits. By emphasizing the

82 strong beat, NWA evokes the sound of gunshots or a violent act, such as hitting or punching.

NWA also sample actual gunshot noises and police sirens in “Fuck Tha’ Police” and “To Kill a Hooker.” Gunshots in “Fuck Tha’ Police” are likely used to convince the listener that NWA poses a real threat to the police. (“Fuck Tha’ Police” has been described as a “revenge fantasy.”174

Another means of imitating toughness is through the use of vinyl scratching.

Tricia Rose provides the basis for this claim, writing: “…the flow and motion of the initial bass or drum line in rap music is abruptly ruptured by scratching (a process that highlights as it breaks the flow of the base rhythm.)”175 Flow and layering function to sustain rhythmic continuity and cyclicity; when that flow is ruptured by vinyl scratching, the continuity of the music is momentarily challenged.176 The scratching is also unpredictable, adding to the sense of irrational musical behaviour that enhances irrational lyrical behaviour, creating an overall quality of danger and “hardness.” I quote Rose here again because her explanation seamlessly links together musical production and aesthetics with social conditions and protest:

Let us imagine these hip hop principles as a blueprint for social resistance and affirmation: create sustaining narratives, accumulate them, layer, embellish, and transform them. However, also be prepared for rupture, find pleasure in it, in fact, plan on social rupture. When these ruptures occur, use them in creative ways that will prepare you for a future in which survival will demand a sudden shift in ground tactics.177

174 Lain Ellis, Rebels Wit Attitude: Subversive Rock Humorists (California: Soft Skull Press, 2008), 239. 175 Rose, Black Noise, 39. 176 Ibid. 177 Ibid.

83 Vinyl scratching not only disrupts and ruptures the musical line, but it is an allegory for creative responses to oppression and creative means of protest in a shifting social and cultural climate in which Black men had very little power. Some may disagree with this interpretation, arguing that one characteristic of music could not possibly contain a legitimate allegory to the lived experience of an oppressed group. However, as previously explained, musical characteristics are inextricably linked to the social conditions in which they are created. It is not too far a stretch to claim that rupturing of a musical line reflects social rupture, especially when that music was created partly as a means of opposing and protesting oppression enforced by dominant groups. One method of this opposition was through creating and reflecting the rappers’ toughness.

Rhythmic and Harmonic Unpredictability

Another means through which NWA constructs musical “hardness” is in the quality of unpredictable rhythms and harmonies. They create and bolster unpredictability in two ways: 1) Layered sample combinations that create disjunction between various instrument tracks and vocal rapping, creating a sense of rhythmic and harmonic unease, inconsistency, and unpredictability; and 2) Unpredictability in itself creating a sense of

“hardness” (and perhaps danger) especially when considered alongside violent lyrics.

Throughout these eight songs, rhythm and harmony are treated in ways that create a sense of unpredictability, unease, and inconsistency. For example, in “Fuck Tha’

Police,” the sampled musical layers do not line up perfectly with one another in terms of rhythm. The vocal rapping on top of the musical layers, particularly when Eazy-E raps, creates an even further sense of unease because they do not consistently land on the downbeat. Eazy-E is often ahead of the beat—his voice is the first thing to be heard after

84 a rest before the beat drops. The other rappers fall behind the beat. This phenomenon is consistent throughout NWA songs. “To Kill a Hooker” samples just one song, “Can’t

Stay Away” by Bootsy Colins, which plays in the “background” while MC Ren, Eazy-E, and Dr. Dre speak over the song. They don’t rap- they are having a conversation. Taken in conjunction with the rest of the album, this song heightens the sense of unease and unpredictability.

NWA typically subscribes to clear harmonic progressions. Their layering and rapping techniques, however, juxtapose otherwise clear harmonic progressions: the layers are very often detuned and vocal rapping is “out of tune.” This juxtaposition heightens the unpredictability of their music.

Unpredictability is a quality that creates a feeling of “hardness” and danger, especially when considered in tandem with the violent lyrics.

Men’s Voices in Control; Thus, Women’s Voices Punished

The final way NWA create the quality of musical “hardness” is in the way they present their voices and women’s voices. This is done so in three ways: 1) out-of-tune, slow-speech style rapping that often verges on yelling or plain speech; 2) men interrupt women; and 3) usage of women’s voices in songs heightening the perception that women are victimizing themselves simply through their presence and by being vocal.

In each of these eight songs, men’s voices are in control. This is particularly evident in “A Bitch Iz a Bitch,” when the women’s voices in the song are consistently interrupted and/or spoken over. When the woman begins to defend herself in this song, asking why she has to be referred to as a “bitch,” she is interrupted by NWA who say

“Bitch, shut the fuck up.” The out-of-tune, slow speech style rapping tends to verge on

85 yelling. The angry tone of voice creates an illusion of musical “hardness.” When taken into consideration with the lyrical content, “hardness” is heightened.

Women’s voices are featured in a number of NWA songs: “Fat Girl,” “A Bitch Iz a Bitch,” “Just Don’t Bite It,” “To Kill a Hooker,” “She Swallowed It,” and “I’d Rather

Fuck You,” each feature women’s voices or mimic women’s voices.

By mimicking women’s voices, NWA asserts themselves over women and presents women to their listeners as nagging, annoying, rude, and “bitchy.” When women are given the chance to speak in these songs, they embody the sapphire, jezebel, angry

Black woman, mammy, or welfare queen. In other words, the women’s voices in the songs depict despicable females.

“Just Don’t Bite It” and “She Swallowed It” use women’s voices in the introduction of the song to reenact an oral sex scene. Their voices suggest the sexual act is consensual; however, when the rappers refer to women in the song, the lyrics suggest otherwise. In this way, women’s vocal presence is punished.

“To Kill a Hooker” features a woman speaking to the rappers who are asking her to come towards their car. She embodies both the welfare queen and the jezebel: she is willing to have sex for money. When she resists the rappers, she is murdered in their car.

Her presence as a despicable female leads to her death.

“I’d Rather Fuck You” presents an interesting use of women’s voices. Women actually sing in the chorus. In an ironic twist of words, the rappers sing “I’d rather fuck you” and the backup female voices chime in, singing “I’d rather fuck with you.” This slight subversion results in the women in the song being punished with violence and often rape.

86 Masculinity (and Healing from its Effects)

Though studying rap music as an aesthetic art form is necessary, music rarely exists as “only music.” Meaning is attached to music, whether implicitly or explicitly. In the case of NWA and reality rap, the characteristic of musical “hardness” particularly relates to masculinity. The construct of masculinity in NWA is both created and reinforced through musical “hardness.”

The academic history of Black masculinity studies is extensive. Themes of Black masculinity have appeared in works by Black American writers beginning in the eighteenth century: Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and

W.E.B. Du Bois are a few of these writers who provided insight to the specific struggles and sacrifices made by Black American men.178

bell hooks is a revolutionary in the field of Black masculinity studies because she suggests ways that Black men can move on from the damaging construct of masculinity.

Her 2003 book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, presents solutions to the problems created by Black masculinity, and her 2004 book We Real Cool: Black Men and

Masculinity, discusses the history and construct of Black masculinity in America, as well as its use in reality rap.

bell hooks writes that prior to American slavery, Black men had many models to look to for what we would now perceive as an alternative to white patriarchal masculinity.

Prior to European colonization of the Americas, African explorers travelled what are now known as the Americas. bell hooks writes “That they did not seek to dominate and/or destroy the indigenous native people who were living on these shores reveals that their

178 Gilman W. Whiting and Tabithi Lewis, “On Manliness: Black Masculinity Revisited,” AmeriQuests, 6.1, (2008), 1-2.

87 sense of masculinity was not defined by the will to dominate and colonize folks who were not like them.”179 This model of African masculinity was effectively destroyed during slavery; African men were taught that using violence to dominate women was acceptable and “right” by American (and European) gender role standards.180

Black men began to blame Black women for issues they lived with that resulted from trying to adopt patriarchal masculinity, an impossible quality to embody because patriarchal masculinity serves only white men and works to reinforce white masculinity.

By blaming Black women for their struggles, a gender war between Black men and women revealed itself in the fabric of Black communities and cultures in America. hook writes that the gender war

[H]as practically destroyed beyond recognition the representation of an alternative black man seeking freedom for self and loved ones, a rebel black man eager to create and make his own destiny. This is the image of the black male that must be recovered, restored, so that it can stand as the example of revolutionary manhood.181

Embodying revolutionary manhood can help Black men heal from the damaging effects of white, patriarchal masculinity. Rap music might have been a way for NWA to do so; to create a revolutionary manhood that disposes of white, patriarchal masculinity.

Unfortunately, they relied heavily on racist and sexist stereotypes of Black American women; by subordinating Black American women, NWA embodied a type of power.

NWA’s music functions to protest an oppression that has a long-standing history in America. Racism is deeply entrenched in the social fabric of the United States. Their entire country is founded on the institution of slavery. Moving on from this tradition of

179 bell hooks, We Real Cool, Black Men and Masculinity (New York: Routeledge, 2004), 1. 180 Ibid, 2. 181 Ibid, 14.

88 hatred was, in a way, realized through NWA’s music. “Fuck Tha’ Police” functioned as protest, and the quality of musical “hardness” in their songs heightened the perception of their music as protest.

89 Conclusion CONTINUUM OF PROTEST The Perpetual Relevancy of NWA

Music was our only weapon.182 Ice Cube, 2015.

Popular culture is powerful. It has the potential to shape and even change perceptions of certain groups of people, to influence the way that pop culture consumers behave, and to give cultural meaning to people of all ages. NWA were a powerful rap group, and they continue to perpetuate a message of protest against white supremacist

America. Popular music can function to bear witness to problems within communities, and reality rap, an emerging genre that NWA played a massive part in shaping, was a genre that had the potential to take on this responsibility.

“Fuck Tha’ Police” is as relevant today in 2016 as it was in 1988. America’s

Black communities still suffer in very real, tangible, and overt ways. The Black Lives

Matter movement was recently born in 2014 in response to American police officers murdering young Black men without any legitimate reasons. Movements such as Occupy

Wall Street drew attention to the militarization of American police. NWA’s “Fuck Tha’

Police” heralded a generation and future generations of protest against oppression through art.

NWA are not the only voice of protest in America. A significant number of Black

American hip hop, rap, and pop music artists used and are currently using their platforms to voice protest against the discrimination that Black people face daily. Beyoncé Knowles

182 Kory Grow, “Ice Cube on N.W.A’s Reality Rap and ‘Straight Outta Compton’ Movie,” Rolling Stone, April 15, 2015, accessed March 2, 2016, http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/features/ice-cube-on-n-w-as-reality-rap-and-straight- outta-compton-movie-20150415?page=2.

90 is an excellent example of such a voice. At the 2016 Super Bowl, Beyoncé performed her newly-released single “Formation” with a group of Black female backup dancers dressed in outfits reminiscent of Black Panthers garb. The music video for “Formation” is filled with Black cultural references and #BlackLivesMatter protests: one shot of the video shows a scene with the words “Stop shooting us” spray-painted in black against a white brick wall. There is a scene of a young boy standing with his arms raised in surrender, faced with a line of police. The end of the video shows Beyoncé sinking into flooded New

Orleans on the top of a police car. For one of the most well-established pop stars to step out of her comfort zone and provide such powerful social commentary is absolutely huge and critical to the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Beyoncé has an established following of admirers; she has been a famous performer for over twenty years. As perhaps one of the most, if not the most, famous pop stars in popular media, Beyoncé has a power to influence perceptions of Blackness through her platform. Her followers sympathize with her because they already like her music, so they are more likely to agree with her stance on police brutality, Black power, and #BlackLivesMatter. Beyoncé, and other artists, are carrying on a continuum of protest against police brutality that NWA played a huge part in shaping. These artists include: Yo-Yo, Salt-N-Pepa, Missy Elliott, Nicki Minaj,

Kendrick Lamar, Ciara, J. Cole, Janelle Monae, Tef Poe, TINK, Run the Jewels, FKA

Twigs, Lil Herb, Ceebo Tha Rapper, D’Angelo, Big K.R.I.T, Saigon, Cormega, Wu-Tang

Clan, M.I.A, Immortal Technique, Marina and the Diamonds, Killer Mike, Talib Kweli,

David Banner, Macklemore, are among the musicians who have used and who are currently using their platforms to provide social commentary on racial inequity and social injustice in America, and to be broad, on a global scale.183

183 Rob Markman, “If You Think Rappers are Silent About #BlackLivesMatter, Maybe

91 One of the most publicized instances of racial inequity and social injustice that these musicians protest is police brutality. NWA were revolutionary for the scale at which they protested police brutality. Pop stars and other hip-hop artists and rappers, like

Beyoncé, are carrying out the work that NWA started—they are providing critical commentary on police brutality in the United States.

Even though NWA necessarily protested, it is difficult to reconcile how misogynistic, sexist, and discriminating NWA were towards Black American women. The effects of their music are pervasive. As of March 8, 2016, the YouTube comments on their song “A Bitch Iz a Bitch” included: “‘Not all women are bitches, But all women got a little bitch in em’ So true, So true!”; “This will be Hillary Clinton’s theme song if she becomes president.”; “Nowadays, all bitches are extreme bitches.”; and “You know what would be hella funny, if this song was played during a feminist stike XD.”184 The comment section of YouTube, however non-academic it may be, gives valuable insight into what people think of/how they are influenced by popular media. NWA songs have real effects in society. Today, with platforms like YouTube to disseminate these songs to the general global public, misogynistic content is hugely pervasive.

Misogynistic rhetoric has the potential to translate outside of a musical context and into lived experiences. In 1991, Dr. Dre was charged with brutally assaulting Dee

Barnes, a Fox-TV host. The 1991 LA Times article provides Barnes’ description of her attack:

He picked me up by my hair and my ear and smashed my face and body into the wall. Next thing I know, I’m down on the ground and he’s kicking me in the ribs

You Aren’t Listening,” MTV, December 22, 2014, accessed March 2, 2016, http://www.mtv.com/news/2033438/the-atlantic-black-lives-matter-rap-rebuttal/. 184 “N.W.A - A Bitch Iz A Bitch (The Explicit),” YouTube video, March 5, 2011, accessed March 8, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5TsjmaycsQ.

92 and stamping on my fingers. I ran into the women’s bathroom to hide, but he burst through the door and started bashing me in the back of the head.185

Barnes, at the time, connected the misogynistic lyrics with promoting violence against women: “…NWA rages violence against women in general. Millions of little boys listen to this crap—and they’re growing to grow up thinking it’s all right to abuse women.”186 Dr. Dre, in a comment following the incident, brushes it off: “I just did it, you know. Ain’t nothing you can do now by talking about it. Besides, it ain’t no big thing—I just threw her through a door.”187 Eazy-E defended Dre at the time, saying that Barnes deserved the attack. (Barnes had covered a story on Ice Cube in her “Pump It Up” television segment. Ice Cube had left NWA in 1989, creating significant tension between

Ice Cube, the remaining members of NWA, and a number of producers, including

Ruthless Records and The Bomb Squad. Barnes featuring Ice Cube was, thus, Dre’s

“reasoning” for attacking her.)

There are even more recent examples of hip-hop and rap’s violent rhetoric transferred to lived experiences. In 2009, Chris Brown, a famous American hip-hop artist, physically assaulted his then-girlfriend, the famous pop star Rihanna, causing injury to her that required hospitalization. This incident is one of a number of [reported] examples of hip-hop and rap artists who promote violence against women in their music but who also act out this violence in real life.

185 Chuck Phillips, “N.W.A’s Dr. Dre Target of Suit by Host of Rap Show : Pop music: $22.7-million lawsuit over an alleged assault dramatizes te debate over the possible relationship between pop lyrics and violent crimes against women,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2991, accessed March 4, 2016, http://articles.latimes.com/1991-07- 23/entertainment/ca-55_1_pop-lyrics. 186 Ibid. 187 Ibid.

93 “Music was our only weapon,” Ice Cube said reflectively in a 2015 interview.188

Music granted NWA power that actually did translate into real life. Accessing this empowerment after experiencing violence directed towards them by police officers was perhaps such a novelty that they did not want to let it go. To create and maintain an image of danger, they had to successfully enact violence. I am by no means condoning acts of violence against Black women or acts of violence in general; rather, by understanding their actions of violence and misogyny, I try to understand why and how NWA performed violence both on the stage, and for some members, in their “real” lives.

NWA felt they were presenting their reality to everybody. Ice Cube, in a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, says,

We was just talking about shit that we was going through. Me and Dre started off making the first mixtapes: He would do the mixes, and I would rap at the beginning of them. We’d talk about shit you couldn’t talk about on a record, that we didn’t think you could until Eazy-E came into the picture and said, ‘No these are the kinds of records I want to make, not just mixtapes, not just for the ‘hood. Let’s do these kinds of records for everybody.’189

They call their music reality rap because it reflects their reality, and truthfully it did. The reality is that Black American women have been so oppressed for so long that NWA were not aware they were perpetuating stereotypes of Black women created during slavery, an irony which may not have existed if NWA knew they were perpetuating racism created in a system that also functioned to oppress their own livelihood. NWA were reflecting a sad reality, one which also functioned to oppress them: the cultural, social, and economic climate of America.

NWA were teenagers and young men when they made this music. They were legitimately scared of the police, who posed a massive threat to their lives. They were

188 Grow, “Ice Cube,” Rolling Stone. 189 Ibid.

94 targeted for their existence as Black males. Reality rap was a venue through which NWA were able to successfully protest against police brutality, and music was their weapon of protest. Ironically, their music also became a weapon against women. In order to assert themselves, to gain power, they had to discriminate against, subjugate, and oppress Black

American women, both through lyric content and outside of music in everyday life. They participated in social activism while being sexist and racist towards Black women, an already intensely vulnerable group in America. NWA were not just naturally, inherently sexist or violent. Misogyny was, however twisted, ironic, and damaging to women, a form of protest against a system that had long oppressed, and still oppresses today, all Black

Americans.

95 Lyric Index

Fuck Tha’ Police

[MC Ren as Court Officer] Right about now, N.W.A. court is in full effect Judge Dre presiding In the case of N.W.A. vs. the Police Department; prosecuting attorney's are: MC Ren, Ice Cube, and Eazy-motherfucking-E

[Dr. Dre as The Judge] Order, order, order Ice Cube, take the motherfucking stand Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help your black ass?

[Ice Cube as Witness] You god damn right!

[Dr. Dre] Well won't you tell everybody what the fuck you gotta say?

[Ice Cube] Fuck the police coming straight from the underground A young nigga got it bad cause I'm brown And not the other color so police think they have the authority to kill a minority Fuck that shit, cause I ain't the one for a punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun to be beating on, and thrown in jail We can go toe to toe in the middle of a cell Fucking with me cause I'm a teenager with a little bit of gold and a pager Searching my car, looking for the product Thinking every nigga is selling narcotics You'd rather see, me in the pen than me and Lorenzo rolling in a Benz-o Beat a police out of shape and when I'm finished, bring the yellow tape To tape off the scene of the slaughter Still getting swoll off bread and water I don't know if they fags or what Search a nigga down, and grabbing his nuts And on the other hand, without a gun they can't get none But don't let it be a black and a white one

96 Cause they'll slam ya down to the street top Black police showing out for the white cop Ice Cube will swarm on ANY motherfucker in a blue uniform Just cause I'm from, the CPT Punk police are afraid of me! HUH, a young nigga on the warpath And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath of cops, dying in L.A. Yo Dre, I got something to say

[cut and scratched 4x] "Fuck the police"

Example of scene one

[Cop] Pull your god damn ass over right now [NWA] Aww shit, now what the fuck you pulling me over for? [Cop] Cause I feel like it! Just sit your ass on the curb and shut the fuck up [NWA] Man, fuck this shit [Cop] Aight smartass, I'm taking your black ass to jail!

[Dr. Dre] MC Ren, will you please give your testimony to the jury about this fucked up incident?

[MC Ren] Fuck the police and Ren said it with authority because the niggas on the street is a majority A gang, is with whoever I'm stepping and the motherfucking weapon is kept in a stash box, for the so-called law Wishing Ren was a nigga that they never saw Lights start flashing behind me But they're scared of a nigga so they mace me to blind me But that shit don't work, I just laugh because it gives em a hint, not to step in my path For police, I'm saying, "Fuck you punk!" Reading my rights and shit, it's all junk Pulling out a silly club, so you stand with a fake-assed badge and a gun in your hand But take off the gun so you can see what's up And we'll go at it punk, and I'ma fuck you up! Make you think I'ma kick your ass but drop your gat, and Ren's gonna blast I'm sneaky as fuck when it comes to crime But I'ma smoke 'em now and not next time

97 Smoke any motherfucker that sweats me or any asshole, that threatens me I'm a sniper with a hell of a scope Taking out a cop or two, they can't cope with me The motherfucking villain that's mad With potential, to get bad as fuck So I'ma turn it around Put in my clip, yo, and this is the sound [BOOM, BOOM] Yeah, something like that but it all depends on the size of the gat Taking out a police, would make my day But a nigga like Ren don't give a fuck to say

[cut and scratched 4x] "Fuck the police"

[Cop] [knocking on the door] [NWA] Yeah man, what you need? [Cop] Police, open now [NWA] Aww shit [Cop] We have a warrant for Eazy-E's arrest [Cop] Get down and put your hands up where I can see 'em (Move motherfucker, move now!) [NWA] What the fuck did I do, man what did I do? [Cop] Just shut the fuck up and get your motherfucking ass on the floor (You heard the man, shut the fuck up!) [NWA] But I didn't do shit [Cop] Man just shut the fuck up!

[Dr. Dre] Eazy-E, won't you step up to the stand and tell the jury how you feel about this bullshit?

[Eazy-E] I'm tired of the motherfucking jacking Sweating my gang, while I'm chilling in the shack, and shining the light in my face, and for what? Maybe it's because I kick so much butt I kick ass - or maybe cause I blast on a stupid-assed nigga when I'm playing with the trigger of any Uzi or an AK Cause the police always got something stupid to say They put out my picture with silence Cause my identity by itself causes violence The E with the criminal behavior Yeah, I'm a gangsta, but still I got flavor Without a gun and a badge, what do ya got?

98 A sucker in a uniform waiting to get shot by me, or another nigga And with a gat it don't matter if he's smaller or bigger ([MC Ren:] Size ain't shit, he's from the old school fool) And as you all know, E's here to rule Whenever I'm rolling, keep looking in the mirror And ears on cue, yo, so I can hear a dumb motherfucker with a gun And if I'm rolling off the 8, he'll be the one that I take out, and then get away While I'm driving off laughing this is what I'll say

[cut and scratched 4x] "Fuck the police"

The verdict

[Dre] The jury has found you guilty of being a redneck, white bread, chickenshit motherfucker [Cop] But wait, that's a lie! That's a god damn lie! [Dre] Get him out of here! [Cop] I want justice! [Dre] Get him the fuck out my face! [Cop] I want justice! [Dre] Out, RIGHT NOW! [Cop] FUCK YOU, YOU BLACK MOTHER-FUCKERS!

Fuck the police! [3x]190

A Bitch Iz a Bitch

[Narrator] Let's describe a certain female A female with a disease of character and attitude If you will a snob However in the view of NWA...

[Ice Cube] A bitch is a bitch So if I'm poor or rich I talk in the exact same pitch Now the title bitch don't apply to all women But all women have a little bitch in 'em

190 NWA, “Fuck Tha’ Police,” Straight Outta Compton (Los Angeles: Ruthless Records, 1988).

99 It's like a disease that plagues their character Taking the women of America And it starts with the letter B It makes a girl like that think she better than me See, some get mad and some just bear it But, yo, if the shoe fits wear it It makes 'em go deaf in the ear that's why When you say 'hi' she won't say 'hi' Are you the kind that think you're too damn fly? Bitch eat shit and die Ice Cube coming at you at a crazy pitch (Why?) I think a bitch is a bitch

[Girl] Who the fuck you think you calling a bitch you little sorry motherfucker I don't know who the fuck you think you talking to Let me tell you one motherfucking thing, I'm not no-

[Ice Cube] "Bitch, shut the fuck up"

[Ice Cube] Yo, you can tell a girl that's out for the money She look good and the bitch walk funny She ain't no dummy, she's rather conniving Yo bitch, fuck what I'm driving See a young nigga that's striving You're through without a BMW That's why a bitch is a bitch I guess Or either P-M-S Here, test the girl that's kinda snobby And I bet you dissing niggas is her hobby And after she finished the test Grade today of B-I-T-C-H And watch her get mad cause she know it's true (she know it) But a nigga like me'll say "fuck you" Do like Ice Cube, slam her ass in a ditch (word) Cause a bitch is a bitch

[Girl/Ice Cube] "Why I gotta be a bitch?" I ain't call you no bitch, if you listen to the goddamn song it'd tell you what a bitch is... "Fuck the song cause I'm not no motherfucking bitch" I didn't say you was a bitch, if you stop acting like a goddamn bitch "Fuck you, little punk-ass little nigga" Fuck you, bitch! You sloppy-ass, scandalous-ass ho! "Fuck you! Who the fuck you think you are?"

100 Fuck you! Suck my dick, bitch! You scandalous-ass, doo-doo dog breath, stinking, ugly...

[Ice Cube] I once knew a bitch who got slapped Cause she played me like she was all that A bitch can be your best friend talking behind your back About who's fucking who and who's getting fat Look at yourself for me Now do you fall in this category? Or you the kind that won't blink Cause you don't think your shit stink Lucky I haven't had a drink Cause I'd down your ass Then I'd clown your ass Cause the niggas I hang with ain't rich We'll all say "Fuck you bitch!" Now what can I do with a ho like you? Bend your ass over and then I'm through Cause you see Ice Cube ain't taking no shit (Why?) Cause I think a bitch is a bitch

[Narrator] There you have it, the description of a bitch Now ask yourself are they talking about you? Are you that funky, dirty, money-hungry, scandalous, stuck-up, hair piece contact wearing bitch? Yep, you probably are. Laughter. Bitch!191

I’d Rather Fuck You192

[Eazy-E] Aaaah, this is one of them songs You can kick back and smoke a joint to And get real fucked up I like to dedicate this one to all the lovely young ladies out there Oh me? I'm Eazy E, alias A Whole Taming Motherfucker And I want all you ladies to know something...

I'd rather fuck with you all goddamn night Cause your pussy's good

191 NWA, “A Bitch Iz a Bitch,” (Los Angeles: Ruthless Records, 1988). 192 NWA, “I’d Rather Fuck You,” (Los Angeles: Ruthless Records, 1991).

101 Now I'm fucking all your friends Cause you ran your mouth like I knew you would You were bragging to your friends Saying "Eazy E knows how to fuck" So bring your ass in here and give me some So I can bust a nut (go on and sing that shit)

[Chorus] I'd rather fuck you, yeah [said I'd rather fuck with you] (repeated 2x)

I'd rather fuck with you Cause I like the way you scream my name I know you like this dick Cause you enjoy the pleasure and pain Now I'm riding on this pussy here And I'm not gonna stop [I'm not gonna stop bitch] We can do it doggy style And you can get on top [sing this motherfucker]

[Chorus] Whoo boy, I'd rather fuck with you, yeah (sing that song bitch) I need you baby, whoo, I'd rather fuck you, I'd rather fuck with you

I'd rather fuck with you Cause the other bitches wanna wine and dine [fuck all that] I better hurry up and get this nut Cause it's check-out time She said she wanted me to eat the pussy Well I think I'll pass [I don't think so] So get your ass up you funky bitch And wash your ass [sing this motherfucking shit]

She Swallowed It

[Intro: Woman] Lesson 2 : Gently place the balls into the mouth and .. Hmmmmmmmmm..

[Hook] Get it all baby Get it all baby Get it all baby (What you want me to do with it?) Don't matter just don't bite it (She swallowed it) Suck this dick for daddy (She swallowed it)

102 Juicin' at the lips (She swallowed it) It's the world's biggest dick (What do you want me to do with it?) Don't matter just don't bite it

[Verse 1: MC Ren] Slow is the tempo I'm talkin' but a nympho So peep it out here goes the info This is a bitch that did the whole crew She get it so much we make bets on who the ho would love to go through And for the shit that she does, give her a drum roll Because the dumb bitch licks out the asshole And she'll let you videotape her And if you got a gang of niggas, the bitch would let you rape her She likes suckin' on dicks, and lickin' up nut And they even take the broomstick up the butt Just to say that she did it with a rapper But the pussy was more fishy than red snapper "But how many licks would it take," she asks "To make MC Ren start gooshin' up vanilla shakes?" She took her tongue out her mouth, put it on top Like a cherry, started movin' it like a snake and it was very irresistable I couldn't pay the bitch to quit Cuz the ho' was doin' some ol' crazy shit That made me start havin' a fit' Cuz the bitch sucked a hellified dick [suck this dick]

[Hook]

[Verse 2: MC Ren] Now one night night I was at a drive-in And a car full of niggas straight drove in I thought they wuz commin' to start trouble but no Five niggas in the bucket with the neighborhood ho' Now what do you expect they're gonna dogg her like a doggy Thirty minutes later and the windowz all were foggy And I'm off in my car havin' a fit cuz the bitch that I'm with Said no fuckin' on the first date, shit And I'm like Damn! I wish I was in the bucket To be the sixth nigga with the ho' and I can fuck it So I told the bitch I was with that I'm goin' to the snack bar And got the fuck out the car Went to the bucket and I looked through the window It was some niggas that I knew they let me in yo And my turn was like next

103 I couldn't see her face, all I saw was her pussy and her chest I wanted to see the face, I felt I oughtta Peep over the seat, Oh shit! It's the preacher's daughter! And she's only 14 and a ho' But the bitch sucks dick like a specialized pro She looked at me, I was surprised But wasn't passin' up the chance of my dick gettin' baptized I told the bitch to do it quick You little ho' hurry up and suck my dick!

[Hook]

[Verse 3: MC Ren] Now I'm a break it down with a fact Since the last "Just don't bite it" girls don't know how to act Sayin' that they never would suck a dick But when they've tried it they couldn't quit Cuz ninety percent of the bitches today they love that shit And those are the main ones that say they don't do it But MC Ren knows the bitches are used to it So fellas, next time they try to tell a lie That they never suck a dick, punch a bitch in the eye And then the ho' will fall to the ground Then you'll open up her mouth Put your dick in and move the shit around And she'll catch on and start doin' it on her own Actin' like she's tryin' to suck the meat off a chicken bone And then she won't let go Because bitches suck nut out of a dick just like Drano Get the last drop, unclogging the pipe Then the stupid bitch is out doing that same shit the next night Because she just can't quit Cuz she's addicted, addicted, she's addicted, addicted She's addicted to suck a good dick

[Hook]193

Just Don’t Bite It

[Eazy-E] God damn, now lick my balls, oh shit [Bitch] You like that? Put 'em off

193 NWA, “She Swallowed It.”

104

[Girl] It's good?

[Eazy-E] Ouch, shit, godamn bitch you bit' my damn Shit I said suck the mothafucka, you're bitin' it, shit!

[Narrator] Has this ever happened to you? Does her teeth get in the way while she's sucking your dick? Does she know how to suck a dick? Well, I had that same problem until my bitch went out and bought N.W.A's new book entitled "The Art of Sucking Dick"

[Girl] Lesson 1 - First you grab the dick Next you gently lick it up and down, then insert it into the mouth Take it slow, don't rush it, and before you know it… SPLASH!

[Eazy-E] It goes one for the treble, two for the bass She got nut all over her face Kick kick it ...

[MC Ren] Slow is the tempo, and Ren is gonna flow As I produce and illustrate you to a ho Caught on the late night, stamping on the base-pipe She's a hype to get you on the late flight But back in school she was a cutie, yo Then after graduation started giving up the booty In school, stuck her head in a feather Every time I asked her what's the time It was never ever what she would talk to the Ren I'm sayin' I wanted a date, she wouldn't even be my friend But now in the 1990's, I'd be praying that the bitch don't find me Cause she's got a gang o' kidz nappy-heads and all dirty And she's getting pimped by a nigga that's thirty I saw her hanging in an alley Raggin to her friends how she's ho'in' in the valley All by herself, doin' on the ho stroll Comin back home late night with the bankroll You know a bitch like that makes me sick But I've heard that she sucks a good dick!

105 [Hook] It's the world's biggest dick Don't matter just don't bite it It's the world's biggest dick Don't matter just don't bite it "What do you want me to do with it?" Don't matter just don't bite it She swallowed it (yeah)

[MC Ren] At a high school dance, me and the niggas bailed in I saw her sittin' with her friends, with the clan So sexy, thought she was all that She wouldn't even look at us because we wore the black hat She was a stuck-up bitch on the public floor But an instant prostitute behind closed doors On the streets she's a late night feature Walking home from school, I saw her sucking a nigga's dick under the bleachers She saw me and she ran and tried to hide her face But a bitch full of nut couldn't escape in the chase A disgrace, If I ever ever saw one There wasn't a nigga on the block late at night not getting done So she begged me not to tell a soul Then I said of course, cause my dick, yo, it's harder than a totem pole Then again it don't concern me Cause there's a slight chance if I fuck she might burn me And then I might have to shoot the ho I mean checking with the quickness just to let her know But to prevent from getting sick - I would just prefer to let her come and suck my dick

[Hook] It's the world's biggest dick Don't matter just don't bite it It's the world's biggest dick Don't matter just don't bite it "What do you want me to do with it?" Don't matter just don't bite it She swallowed it (yeah)

[MC Ren] Now I was at a club on a late late Sunday Peeping at the bitches 'till the next day Monday Had a couple of drinks, so I was feeling good And suddenly I saw this bitch that lives in my neighborhood She went to church every week so now I lucked up She was at the end of the bar gettin' fucked up

106 Back at the house she was bitch n' be ignoring And when she start to talk the ho' was kinda boring Yo, but now I got to dawn, see Now she's dancing on the floor with a skirt and no panties on Shaking that ass like a salt shaker I already got my plans - Just while I'm a take her to a room But yo I mean a rest room And stick my dick in her mouth like a wet broom So I grabbed her hand and she's wit(h) it So when she turns sober, she'll never admit it So while she's dropped I'd better get it quick And see for myself if she sucks a good dick!

[Hook] It's the world's biggest dick Don't matter just don't bite it It's the world's biggest dick Don't matter just don't bite it "What do you want me to do with it?" Don't matter just don't bite it She swallowed it (yeah)

[Outro] "So there you have it - a job well done (She swallowed it) But for now let me get back to what I was doing" (She swallowed it) Get it What the fuck suck this dick bitch Yeah, here comes Ooh shit, goddamn Goddamn Get it all baby, get it all Suck this dick, suck this dick, suck this dick for daddy baby Suck this dick You know you like it Suck it Oh she swallowed it She swallowed, oh shit, get it all, get it all, suck this dick, suck this dick, suck this dick for daddy .. Wait till I tell the fellas how you sucked this dick Hey matter of fact, I want you to suck Dre's dick Then I want you to suck Yella dick You already sucked Ren's dick YOU BOYS ARE DISGUSTING! Just suck my dick bitch... cause I'm a nigga wit an attitude!194

194 NWA, “Just Don’t Bite It,” (Los Angeles: Ruthless Records, 1990).

107

Fat Girl

Fat girl! You're a fat girl Fat...fat...fat fat fat fat girl (repeated 2x)

[Eazy-E] (It's funky fresh Eazy E) new kid on tha block And already got a fat girl on my jock Now my story's kinda simple, so please change the tempo As I tell you a tale bout this big fat pimple I was chillin' on the ave, drinkin' some brew Saw a fatty comin' my way, so what was I to do? I busted a U, went tha other way again But forgot that tha avenue was a dead end I turned around, here she came, stride for stride Funky fat like that, bout two thirty-five Stampede was rushin, I double looked And she had more chins than a Chinese phonebook Five four three ugly as can be, she said

[Ron-de-Vu] Hello Eazy E! Do you remember me? (I said no) Huhu yes you do suga My name is Bertha but you can call me booga Remember the time when you were drunk at a party We was slow dancin, give ya all this body

[Eazy-E] When she said that she loved it, I was in shock Oh my God got a fat girl on my jock

[Hook:] I got a fat girl on my jock Fat girl Got a fat girl on my jock

[Eazy-E] She gave tha grin, I showed tha frown And with a bear hug picked me off tha ground Squeezin' me tight, attempted to bug me Grabbed me by tha rear, said “Love me, hug me!” I was hell, victim of a scandal Coz this big girl's too much for E to handle Broke tha beast grip, started to run Back to tha crib, grabbed tha elephant gun

108 She's grubbin', thighs rubbin' in a hot pursuit I loaded up tha gun bout ready to shoot She kept on comin' because of addiction Legs on fire because of friction My gun broke I was doomed Dropped tha double barrel, grabbed tha harpoon As I swung, tha fat girl fell Lyin' on tha ave just like a beached whale That's tha story, it's quite ill And all fat girls y'all besta chill All overweight freaks stay off my block Cause it's ill to have a fat girl on your jock.195

To Kill a Hooker

Dr. Dre: Man I need sum’ muthafuckin pussy.

MC Ren: Hell yea get sum’ bitches around ‘dis muthafucka

Eazy-E: I don't need shit

Dr. Dre: Bust a left up here on sunset [street]

MC Ren: ‘iight. Check it out there go sum’ bitches right there.

Dr. Dre: Just pull over just pull over

Dr. Dre: Yo bitch cum here let me talk to you fo’ a minute.

Hooker: Huh? What? You talkin tah me?

Eazy-E: Nah ya mama bitch, you know who da fuck we talkin’ bout.

Dr. Dre: Get yo muthafuckin ass ova here.

Hooker: Watchu want big boy

MC Ren: Wassup wassup

Hooker: Watchu mean wassup what kinda money you talkin’ bout?

MC Ren: Money? Bitch you betta open up yo mouth and suck my dick.

195 NWA, “Fat Girl,” (Los Angeles: Ruthless Records, 1987).

109 Hooker: Yo dick ill-----

MC Ren: Brab dat bitch grab her grab dat bitch

Dr. Dre: Get yo muthafuckin ass in the car fuck dat muthafucka.

Hooker: Let me go let me go!

Eazy-E: I ain't fuckin dis bitch (3x gunshots) fuck ‘dis bitch man.

MC Ren: Fuck wrong wit’ you man shootin ‘dis bitch in my shit

Eazy-E: You shoulda neva’ put da’ bitch in the goddamn car anyway.

MC Ren: Shit all ova da’ seats man.

Dr. Dre: Man fuck dat’ bitch man there go sum’ mo’ bitches ova’ there blow tha’ muthafuckin horn.196

One Less Bitch

[Intro: MC Ren] (The world's most dangerous group...) Once again beatin' on your mothafuckin' eardrums Doin' much damage for all you slutty ass ho's

[Verse 1: Dr. Dre] Yo, there was a bitch I knew on the avenue She was good to G-O for a nut or two yo I think her name was Clara And she was guaranteed to give a motherfucka whatever he needs To be perfectly honest, she was a hooker So I took her a hundred yards, to the boulevard I told her "I'll take care of you, you take care of me You've got a P-I-M-P and all I want is the money" She went to work and the niggas were fiendin' Yo, she had the biggest ass that you ever seen In fact she was like Medusa, with titties full grown One look and your dick turns to stone, yeah Keepin' in mind that she was the kind that would find the time to get mine Because she knows I'm not to be fucked with She ain't crazy

196 NWA, “To Kill a Hooker,”

110 Fuckin' with Dre, she'll be pushin' up daisies She was the perfect ho, but wouldn't you know The bitch tried to gank197 me, so I had to kill her Yeah, straight hittin' Now listen up and lemme tell you how I did it Yo, I tied her to the bed, I was thinking the worst But yo, I had to let my niggas fuck her first yeah Loaded up the forty-fo', yo Then I straight smoked the ho Cause I'm a real nigga, but I guess you figure I was soft and she thank me Coughed to the boss and got tossed One less bitch you gotta worry about She's outta here and that's how it turns out

[Verse 2: Dr. Dre] Yo Everything was cool but Vicky concerned me Her husband was the District Attorney So, before he found out he was crossed up By his bitch I was fuckin' I had her tossed up And put to sleep, so a nigga never forgets A dead bitch can't tell a nigga shit One less bitch you gotta worry about She's outta here and that's how it turned out

[Hook: MC Ren] One less One less One less bitch you gotta worry about!

[Verse 3: Dr. Dre] Thinkin' about money, and lookin' at a prostitute The bitch was cute, so now I had to execute And shoot game like a real nigga With a steel trigga Convince her to move up to somethin' bigga I think I had a flashback though Cause I said "fuck it" Loped and choked and smoked to the ho' like this: "Bitch, it's all about Dre The money, money, money and this all I gotta say" Of course she came with me and remained with me 'Till the bitch felt lamed and ashamed to be

197 “Gank”, to steal from, gang up on, or kill [unclear in “One Less Bitch” which use of the word is meant].

111 Workin' that trick shit Cause niggas knew that she was short one A little later though she caught one In the chest and I knew that it was commin' By who and how the all act would be done? So what? One less bitch I gotta worry about But that ain't how it turned out…

[Verse 4: MC Ren] Yo, there was a bitch named her out and shot her Straight to the muthafuckin' trigger and said "I got her!" But I had better plans to give her the blues Like dumpin' her in the river with cement shoes I knew my money was comin' up short And the thought that the stupid bitch thought she'd never get caught Came home early and straight bust her ass On the couch with her other nigga countin' my cash I should've known she was like them other hoes I told the two motherfuckaz to take off their clothes Butt naked, nothin' left but the shoes I had up a nine so they couldn't refuse I shot the nigga, he was outta there And tied up the bitch to the motherfuckin' chair Now there's one less bitch I gotta worry about Everybody out, that's how it turns out

[Outro: Eazy-E] In reality, a fool is one who believes that all women are ladies A nigga is one who believes that all ladies are bitches And all bitches are created equal To me, all bitches are the same Money-hungry, scandalous groupie hoes That's always ridin' on a nigga's dick, always in a nigga's pocket And when the nigga runs out of money the bitch is gone in the wind To me, ALL BITCHES AIN'T SHIT!

[Hook]198

198 NWA, “One Less Bitch,” (Los Angeles: Ruthless Records, 1991), http://genius.com/Nwa-one-less-bitch-lyrics.

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