Frankly, there is a tendency for rap critics to hide behind our liberalism and entry-level sensitivity training when it comes to sexism and misogyny. First, by thinking that it's acceptable to just acknowledge the problem and quickly move on (though very few rap writers do even that), or to entirely defer to female writers on the topic. In other words, playing mindful outsider while making sure not to dominate the discussion because, hey, we get it, and certainly don't wanna be called out for mansplaining. But often, that decision smacks of passing-the-buck cowardice. Men should wrestle with these issues, as well.
To put it in dude terms: Male rap writers like myself should grow a pair and step into the conversation, even if it makes us look like dolts sometimes. For example, a counterpoint that needs to be addressed is what gets muddled when the conversation solely focuses on misogyny. Intentionally or not, songs about murder and poisoning the community end up being less subject to critique. It's a construct that cannot hold when Rick Ross loses his sponsorship for rape raps, yet his rhymes about murdering young black men are given a pass.
Let's stop hiding behind the "this is art" defense because it's not that simple. One way to approach rap, as a fan who cares, is to realize that the rap songs you enjoy, maybe even the ones by your favorite rapping human right now, are products. And like products, they are first and foremost providing a service. Mostly, they are going to promote the lowest-common-denominator values of a population. Accepting this doesn't mean we're condescending to these songs or taking them less seriously, but let's stop this pseudo-high-minded junk where we invoke art every time Kanye West or Gunplay tell a woman to suck his dick. It's lazy and insincere.
Is 'Yeezus' the Tipping Point for Rap Misogyny? | SPIN | No Trivia
Glad that someone with a better handle on hip hop than I have could articulate part of what's been bugging me about the discourse surrounding Yeezus. Like a lot of people who listen to this album, I'm not an authority on rap albums, but I'm pretty familiar with Kanye West's work, and I consider myself a fan.
I've spent the last few weeks (basically, since hearing "New Slaves") trying to figure out if I'm somehow being unfair in not getting past the surface misogyny on Yeezus to appreciate the goals that critics have attributed to it. In various contexts, I've seen the nastier stuff characterized as:
a comically grotesque "bachelor party"
a provocative statement of anti-commercialism or, alternately, as the insecure rantings of a failed playboy
something to be overlooked entirely in the interest of focusing on critiques leveled at West in terms of class issues
a self-effacing critique of men's sexual appetites (see Claire Lobenfeld's comments, specifically; I fully agree with her that there's nothing to suggest the bachelor party/exorcism reading until we hear his next album, which will, according to this narrative, be his ode to domesticity)
no worse than what white indie rock artists regularly write but are seldom called out on (despite the only halfway comparable example I've seen specified being from almost 20 years ago)
something I probably shouldn't be writing about at all, since white dudes have already dominated the conversation about this album (absolutely fair!), and, besides, if all of these female Kanye fans have made peace with "I'm In It," etc., isn't there a chance I'm just being a hand-wringing, "fake-ass feminist dude" (see Anupa Mistry's comments) or stubbornly sex-obsessed to the point of privileging the misogyny over the class consciousness-raising double-entendres in "Black Slaves" (see Katherine St. Asaph's)?
Even as true as some of these narratives and analyses are, I can't get past thinking of them as ways of avoiding the topic or finessing the unsavory bits until they're purely conceptual, thoroughly meta—when Kanye raps about fucking women or getting blowjobs in the context of revenge on a system that perpetuates racism and classism, it's ONLY about revenge on that system; when Kanye makes a racist joke about Asian women, it's because he's exorcising the hedonism from his system, and, besides, he also makes racist jokes about black women. It doesn't help that the sheer number of interpretations make it seem like the music writing community-at-large is flailing to provide context for this album that, yes, sounds great and does have legitimately interesting things to say about certain subjects.
It's natural to want to make art we enjoy on a visceral level cohere to our worldview, even if it means smudging our readings, but I'm surprised at how few critics I've read have been comfortable with just saying: Yeezus is indeed sexist, but Kanye West is not the first man with progressive, complex ideas about race and class who completely misses the boat on gender. Even Abby Johnston, whom I largely agree with, writes that Kanye is "smarter than that," and this doesn't ring true. If sensitivity were about smarts, we wouldn't have to talk about Ezra Pound's or Virginia Woolf's antisemitism; if every class warrior had an eye toward intersectionality, trans folks wouldn't have a legit beef with second-wave feminism, the Black Panther Party wouldn't have kicked off with women relegated to the kitchen, etc.
Anyway, I won't dispute how compelling Yeezus is, but this doesn't get me past the sexist stuff. I'd be equally troubled if a white woman released a great-sounding album about institutional sexism and made a bunch of racist cracks on it that were ostensibly rhetorical devices and metaphors*. Regardless of whether this is tied to my whiteness or (somehow paradoxically) my maleness, I'm sort of stuck there. Still, as Soderberg writes, isn't it better to make mention of this than to brush it aside as "just art" or attempt to make sense of it in a comfortable framework?
* Needless to say I have even less time for indie rock albums with recurring racist/sexist content on the level of Yeezus. But I'm also (perhaps naively?) slightly skeptical that these exist without being critically lambasted or at least taken to task as directly as Yeezus has been. Maybe something like Pinkerton? But the shallow sex and objectified women on that remind me far more of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, where the sex with anonymous women is Kanye's problem, not his ideal means of revenge, metaphorical or not.
