Is Rap Music Degrading to Women?

In the 1960’s, Paul McCartney wrote “Close your eyes and I'll kiss you, tomorrow I'll miss you, remember I'll always be true. And then while I'm away, I'll write home every day, and I'll send all my lovin' to you.” in the Beatles’s famous song, “All My Loving” as an ode to his wife, Linda. While women remain a popular song topic, the lyrics of today starkly contrast the sweet sentiments of the 60’s. The 2015 Future song, “March Madness” has quite a different approach when describing women, with the chorus containing lyrics like “I didn’t wanna f*ck the b*tch, The molly made me f*ck her even though she average”. “March Madness” has not only garnered nearly fifty million streams across music-sharing platforms, it has also been publicly awarded the fifth best hip-hop song of the streaming era by Spotify. The shift into lyrics that reduce the women of today to mere sexual objects is both disappointing and astounding.

21 Savage and Metro Boomin’s recent album, Savage Mode II, debuted at #1 on the US Billboard Top 100 and accumulated over 200 million streams in the first week of its release. In just 15 songs, the artists said “pussy” 83 times, “bitch” 33 times, and “hoe” 6 times. While some instances were not directed at women, most were, and considering the misogynistic undertones of these words it’s important that we do not glaze over this glaring issue. All of these slurs, and more, are highly objectifying. Calling a woman a “bitch” likens her to a female dog, characterizes her as aggressive and annoying and casually ridicules her. The term “slut” nonchalantly criticizes what society views as promiscuous behavior or clothing, often a reason society blames women for being victims of rape. The derogatory term, “hoe,” has similar negative connotations. People generally use these terms to label women, not men, and portray them negatively. “Hoe” and “slut” embody society’s double-standards that scrutinize and judge a woman’s sexuality but praise a man’s. With rap music normalizing using these degrading terms towards women, the years of progress made trying to dismantle society’s stereotypes are completely washed away. Society will continue to grow more numb to this issue if we continue to let this persist. As rap’s demographic continues to get younger and younger, we must realize what huge impacts these lyrics have and hold artists accountable to treat women with the bare minimum, human decency. 

“Since we all came from a women, got our name from a woman, and our game from a woman. I wonder why we take from our women, why we rape our women, do we hate our women?

Tupac Shakur, “Keep Ya Head Up”