1 Sexuality and ‘Sexual Largess’ Themes, Lyrics and Images in Nigerian Hip- Hop Music Videos: A Content Analysis By Jemisenia John Oluwaseyi 08032070010
[email protected] & Ezenagu Nnedinma Roseline 08054805605
[email protected] Department of Sociology and Anthropology University of Nigeria Nsukka Abstract Sexual contents in the media have received great attention from scholars and researchers since the 1980s till present, regrettably very little has been done in this area of research in Nigeria, where increasing controversies have continued to trail the contents of videos that are shown on such terrestrial channels as Channel ‘O’, Hip-TV, Soundcity, Mtv base, and BET. Issues surrounding the rate of sexuality, sex, sexism, objectification, materialism, and the ‘good life’ (as it is shown on these music channels) have come under intense scrutiny by observers, commentators, scholars and the general public. Consequently, this study analyzed themes, lyrics and images bordering on sexuality and sexual largess in Nigerian Hip-Hop music videos on two popular stations on the terrestrial channels: Soundcity and Hip.Tv music channels between the periods of April to June, 2015. Through a multi-stage sampling technique, 132 videos were selected for analysis. Two independent coders were trained. The Cohen’s kappa (k) symmetric measure of agreement was employed in order to ensure the reliability of items. The Cohen’s kappa (k) for this study was 0.792. Altogether, result revealed that sexual themes, lyrics and images that are derogatory to womanhood are predominant in the analyzed music videos. The study recommends among others, enlightenment on the part of musicians/artistes on the need to promote messages of gender equality.