By Dr. Boyce Watkins
9:12 AM on 03/14/2011
A handful of little girls calling themselves Watoto from the Nile did something that almost no grown man could ever do: They walked up to Lil Wayne and punched him right in the face; well, musically that is. By releasing their song, "Letter to Lil Wayne," the girls sparked a riot of conscientiousness that promises to be the start of something big. Within just one week, the song received nearly one million views on YouTube, and the girls have become an instant Internet sensation. Lil Wayne, one of hip-hop's most magnificent lyrical geniuses of our time, is also one of the most disturbing artists on the music scene. He is a tragic E! True Hollywood Story special waiting to happen, as his misguided life mixes the very worst that rock n' roll and hip-hop have to offer.
The worst thing about Lil Wayne's message is that it works and kids gravitate toward it. His songs advocating gun possession make little black boys want to carry weapons to the club in order to protect themselves. His tattoos from head-to-toe are being replicated all over the country. When he raps about wanting to have s*x with every girl in the world, the black community follows suit -- helping to fuel the worst HIV epidemic in the country. Finally, Wayne has a legendary list of vices that relate to alcohol consumption, drug abuse and the "thrill" going to prison. This brainwashing is available to you and your family for as little as 99 cents per song.
As I listened to the girl's brilliant song about the misogyny and negative messages in hip-hop, I wondered why the adults around them have not been more vocal about stopping the onslaught of destructive imagery in music. The NAACP Image Awards, for example, recently nominated artists such as Jay-Z and Nicki Minaj, both of whom are closely affiliated with Lil Wayne (Nicki's brand is owned by Lil Wayne's Young Money label). I also see plenty of black women shaking their booties on a regular basis to musical artists who repeatedly remind them that they consider women to be worthless s*x objects.
What's most interesting is that not only do many black women engage in a very puzzling amount of silence as it pertains to misogyny in hip-hop, they actually reward the artists for their behavior. Women don't just tolerate Lil Wayne, quite a few of them actually consider his thug-like nature to be dangerously attractive. I am not sure if women realize that by rewarding artists for this kind of language and behavior, they are actually sending a direct signal to the men who listen to these artists and telling them that behaving in this way makes a man more desirable. In other words, women who support this music may be inadvertently giving men a license to be disrespectful. While it was once unthinkable to refer to a woman as the "b-word," it's now the kind of thing that gets a chuckle.
In Lil Wayne's defense, his reckless behavior is not entirely his fault. Wayne and many artists like him are a direct product of the massive urban decay that has taken place in the United States over the last 30 years. It was during that time that drugs and weapons were allowed into black communities, creating a crack cocaine epidemic, along with unprecedented levels of violence. Not only were black people the victims of drug infestation, we were also the ones being blamed for it. The mass incarceration that followed President Reagan's failed and dishonest "War on Drugs" program led to the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of black men and the destruction of black families everywhere. Gangsta rap is a reflection of the hopelessness being felt by men like Wayne, with their behavior only serving as an unhealthy coping mechanism for the dysfunction all around them.
Perhaps older women can take a note from the little girls who were courageous enough to do something that the rest of us weren't willing to do. By speaking up against destructive lyrics in hip-hop, we can reshape the direction of our communities. The little girls from Watoto from the Nile have taken the first step toward opening that door for a better black America, so perhaps we should pick up the baton and run with it.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the initiator of the National Conversation on Race. For more information, please visit BoyceWatkins.com.
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Monday, March 14th 2011 at 4:58PM
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