Snoop Dogg’s opinion on the word ‘ho’. Via Keith Boykin:
In the same week in which rapper Snoop Dogg avoided a potential one-year jail term by pleading no contest to charges of gun possession by a felon and sale or transportation of marijuana, he is defending the use of the word “ho,” at least by rappers.
“It’s a completely different scenario,” said Snoop. “[Rappers] are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We’re talking about ho’s that’s in the ‘hood that ain’t doing shit, that’s trying to get a nigga for his money. These are two separate things. First of all, we ain’t no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC going hard on black girls. We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them muthafuckas say we in the same league as him.”
I’m not really buying it. Do you?
I won’t comment on it, as I’m not very up-to-date with hip-hop culture, unlike the rest of my generation. That being said, it’s still predominantly used as a way of speaking about women as though they are inferior in music, and just because their circumstances may be different doesn’t mean that it’s okay.
In our community, if a woman is entertaining johns at a certain spot of town, or acting in a pretty publicly promiscuous way, we know she’s a ho. Some are proud to call themselves hoes.
Not every black woman is a ho. Unfortunately, most of the white male population and part of the black male population enamored of gangsta hip-hop culture would swear that we are.
At the same time, there’s a middle ground that hardly no one talks about. Black women who discreetly choose to have more than one lover at a time are not necessarily hoes either. The writer Pearl Cleage wrote of a time, just after the end of her marriage, that she chose to be promiscuous with a number of men, “from beautiful bisexuals” to married men. None of the relationships lasted to be the Next Big Thing. She had The Pill, therefore she was not planning to have children, nor did she pick up any funky infections. She was never sorry for this time that she purposesly launched on her “Unmarried Woman” phase.
Truth be told, in New Orleans, my grandmother used to let apartments. She gave a family a home, knowing that the mother was a prostitute. In current parlance, a ho. Her husband was a cab driver. He may or may not have been her pimp. Their children used to play with me, so my mother said; I no longer remember their names. As long as the rent was paid, that the place wasn’t trashed, and no funny business happened upstairs, the family stayed. They looked like any other lower middle-class family in New Orleans in the Fifties.
for the observations and insight.
What I won’t buy is using rap music as an excuse to forget about the racism of Imus and conservative talk radio hosts in general. There are a lot of Misongynists men in the world, many of them in the etertainment industry, but I see the sudden interest in the media targeting male rappers for their misogyny all too convenient a distraction.
I wote this first part yesterday in response to the human rights piece I started the week with. Then the server went down in my general area, so I posting it now.
Mr. Steven D,
Again, you have expressed my frustration with the “What the hell are we doing”, that doesn`t seem to resonate with very many people. I`m at my wit`s end, to try & do something to wake people up to the horrors perpetrated on other humans. An example is the week of “Imusification” which put peoples` mind on something, not so trival on it`s own, but insignificant on the scale of the brutality wrought by the assasins & torturers on multiple sides in this war, & the ones being beaten ,drilled in the head,raped, charred, blown up , orphaned, widowed, homeless, insecure, with no potable water, no electricity, which makes up up the other singular side, who cannot foresee an end to their misery. If they knew of a time table, they might be able to hide & wait it out , but these poor souls, & I do include the young american forces in these poor souls, for the most part, who are waiting for it to stop also. When Stupid says we have to fight them there, he has no idea that we`ll be fighting them here for many,many years, when the vets of this abombination, come back home & start fighting the administration here, in suicide rate upswings, with divorces, with domestic abuse, with the improper care, a la Walter Reed, with drug & alcohol addictions & on & on & on, a direct result of they`re being dipped in Hell for a good, temporary heating up.
Thanks for starting my week on that note. May we never forget.
In reply to your present comment, I was really amazed at, what I perceived to be, more than 50 percent ranting against “Rap” or “Hip Hop”, in equating their lyrics or street talk, although I really don`t like the genre itself, to Imus in a way to divert the blame or maybe share the blame. A week was spent on the crap in the first place & I found it difficult to decipher accountability by the bigot being discussed.
You can only tread on the downtrodden.
I listened in as my daughter and her friend discussed rap in my house one recent afternoon. They were pretty disgusted by the constant talk of “hos” and “bitches”. It was pretty clear that these young women have a problem with being referred to as sex objects.
This doesn’t excuse I-mess, but Snoop sure ain’t helping the young women of the ‘hood with his derogatory bs.
No, he’s not. Nor is anyone else who traffics in misogynistic stereotypes.
I didn’t mention it, but my kid’s friends are black girls from the ‘hood (east oakland) and they have seen a lot. They still have minds and they still have goals and they still have dreams. They don’t let idiots like Snoop tell them how they should be. They are smarter than that. BUt that doesn’t change the fact that Snoop’s lyrics didn’t effect them. They all were made to question why they were being maligned and they were strong enough to say BS.
to this mess.
It used to be that if a husband and father had dirty records–i.e., Redd Foxx, the aforementioned Richard Pryor–he would play them when the kids were outside playing or absent or asleep. It was a private vice and a way to blow off steam. These guys knew it wasn’t real.
Now this fantasyland shyt is all over town.
There is a big difference between hip-hop and gangsta hip-hop, which has been allowed to predominate and nearly destroy the original premises of the art form.
Has anyone listened to the first few years of hip-hop music?
What was it about?
Parties, shout-outs (House of Pain, Kool Moe Dee, Beastie Boys, Sugar Hill Gang, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five), and political activism (Public Enemy, KRS One and Boogie Down Productions).
Now it’s gotten way worse. Why?
The over-valorization and over-promotion of pimp, crime and prison culture within hip-hop to the point that only this expression makes ‘good’ money while all other expressions aren’t deemed bankable any more.
It’s time to stop on the floor and really listen to what you’re dancing to.
Keep encouraging those young sistas not to submit to the bullsh*t.
Hmmm…what to say. Snoop seems to be saying if she’s a successful black girl she isn’t a ho….if she’s just another black girl she’s a ho. Who does he think he’s kidding? Just another fucking excuse for treating females as subhuman and bolstering his own superiority.
Snoop would dog (?!) any woman trying to take his money…and that would include college-educated black women as well.
Snoop is in a different part of the same jungle Imus lives in…with Michael Savage and Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter et al.
Another thing: Snoop also advises the comedian (if you can call him that) Katt Williams. I saw the Williams special some months ago and was taken aback by the meanness as well as the foul language. The second coming of Richard Pryor he is NOT.
The difference between Rich (may he finally rest in peace) and Katt Williams is light-years.
Richard Pryor knew he was fucked up, but used his adventures in misbehavior as meat for his comedy. For that, he will always been loved and respected, even by some feminists, who even now are parsing his significance.
Katt Williams, on the other hand, says the world is fucked up and he’s the only one who could make sense out of it for us.
Excuse me? Like who appointed him god?
I picked up Time and Newsweek talking about this mess.
I also suggest yall visit Oprah’s website or get a late night edition of her show for the past couple of days because of the special episodes about Imus and the controversy over gangsta hip-hop lyrics and culture.
I am sick as hell at listening to everyone from Imus to Snoop Dog. If we gave a shit in this country about racism and sexism, we’d be listening to young women like this:
How did he ever become a rap star, anyway?
Oh. Yeah. The Music Industry.
You know he is putting out the message they want put out.
–speakin’ of ho s!
I’m not going to defend Snoop or any other person who uses the term ho, but this discussion about some popular rap music in regards to Imus is all smoke. On the one hand we have a nationally sydicated talk-show host who has guests on his show ranging from presidential candidates to “important” journalists. On the other hand we have a rapper who’s audience mainly consists of teenage white-boys who want to feel like they’re tough. Sorry. The two don’t compare. At all. When Snoop Dogg or someone like him gets invited to host the press correspondents dinner, then we can talk about how the two relate.
On a similar note, some of this discussion is veering dangerously close to territory that lumps all hip hop together with what some popular rappers espouse. Snoop Dogg is to a lot of very good hip hop artists as N’Sync is to the Beatles.
Yeh, Snoop’s also livin in the grimier end of high-dollar Hollywood, where the standards of decency are low by any measure, and where a sense of perspective that relates to most paycheck-and-taxes citizens is almost impossible to come by.
In order to understand Snoop’s comment, one should understand him in terms of marketing demographics and celebrity culture. There is no need for him to make sense of what his music might mean to someone growing up in the world other than if it gives voice to enough people’s experiences (and illusions) well enough to sell records. And it does. Very well. The understanding of moving units as a basis for morality is a false equivalency, but one that is widely practiced, and Snoop Dogg is just another man on Hollywood Boulevard plying his trade.
The arguments about gangsta rap are old. If you’re in the hood you can figure out what makes sense and what doesn’t. If you’re middle class and trying to figure out the way the world works it can be confusing to try to make sense of entertainment culture’s avagaries, but what else is new?
If you want to have this conversation go buy some Common or some Roots and then give some long hard thought to the ambiguities and challenges of establishing self esteem and wisdom on the streets of America’s cities.
And my two bits, while we’re at it: this is not just Chicago, LA and the Boston-D.C. metroplex. This is East St. Louis, Orlando, Cinncinnatti, Houston, etc.. This is America. And if you want to get a swig of where it’s going you’re better off watching MTV Tr3s than listening to classic rock.
To try and bring it back, Imus was a clown. Like all clowns he served at the pleasure of the court. In this case he got canned because he told the truth of racism and bigotry too well. The attitudes and insensitivities he put on display are at the root of civic policies that lead to the inter-generational poverty that is common at the urban and rural fringes of our society.
Snoop Dogg tells the same mottled truths, albeit warped by “ghetto priveledge” and a lifestyle that has more contact with ho’s than probably any one of us here. But they are uncomfortable truths well presented, and we should be made uncomfortable, at the same time we give the artist some respect. After all, he made it against worse odds and obstacles than Don Imus or his guests would ever have overcome.