30 Search results for "feminism hip hop"

I wasn’t going to get into the bell hooks versus Beyoncé fray over Lemonade and its myriad implications. I resisted the echo chamber hoping the frenzy would die down sooner rather than later. I told myself that there really was no point of debating the merits of either side since most of the dialogue has been […]

Rutgers University will now offer a course on Beyoncé in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies.  The class, “Feminist Perspectives: Politicizing Beyoncé,” is being offered during the Spring semester at the college. 

It’s New Year’s Eve, and tomorrow many of us will start making resolutions we will inevitably break. I don’t make resolutions; I’m also not into composing “Best of…” and “Worst of…” lists mostly because I don’t choose to dedicate my memory to cataloging such things. Since my blogging day has coincided with the event, however, […]

Last night I had the honor of watching President Obama’s State of the Union Address at a barbershop. No, I wasn’t get my haircut or my beard trimmed; I was gathering with local community members to fellowship, laugh, and converse as we watched the President lay out his vision for the country. As the organizer […]

Last week my friend, and fellow BYP blogger, wrote a gripping piece about the omnipresence of homophobic lyrics in hip-hop through the lens of Tyler, the Creator. Jonathan’s post made me think again about what role I as a listener, and other hip-hop fans have in combating homophobia and sexism within this space. I began […]

by Donnie Moreland  “I get harassment as a woman and I get the extra harassment because of race and being a black woman. They will call white women a ‘c*nt’ and they’ll call me a ‘n*gger c*nt’.” – Imani Gandy, Rewire.News “You’re a fucking fat ass nigger. Hang yourself bitch.” – Anonymous

As grating as “Old Town Road” and its endless stream of remixes has become, there was always something about Lil Nas X that I just couldn’t help rooting for. That thing was substantiated when he posted a series of tweets confirming his queerness, although he didn’t use the term. He did, however, claim to be […]

This essay contains spoilers for Set It Off, and discusses sexual exploitation and state violence   “Women respond to racism. My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I […]

This essay discusses sexual coercion and manipulation   I used to feel bad for getting “90% vanilla” whenever I took one of those online BDSM or kink tests (and answered the questions honestly), or whenever I tried to talk to a potential sex partner about my boundaries and they called me some variation of “boring.” […]

When Beyoncé’s Lemonade dropped in 2016, I became the target of ire from many of her fans. The album, its imagery, and subject matter did not move me in the way that it moved most of them, and my apathy towards it and critiques of the artist have always been easily dismissed as hateration. But […]

by Denarii Grace “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” These words, uttered by legendary Black civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, have become as much a part of Black languages and cultural understandings, both past and present, as “lit,” “bumboclaat,” and “the bomb.” Her expression of the ongoing oppression of Black […]

By Denarii Grace Some days I wonder if the work that I do is worth it. On the surface, Black artists/cultural workers, healers, teachers and activists who live most on the margins have the least to gain in their lines of work. And in a society based on the allure of social and financial capital, […]