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Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:
This musical open letter to Lil' Wayne is getting lots of love!
I want to join the chorus and give a big ol' YAY to black girls creating media and saying what's on their minds! Speaking back to Wayne's misogyny is super important!
That said, I wonder about the limits of such a message.
Steve Harvey's views on women are not progressive. He's simply peddling a more respectable sort of black gender relations that still have women in the role of subservient sex goddesses but with a bit more modesty. To set him up as a positive alternative to Wayne misses his own belief in narrow gender roles for men and women. The song disparages Wayne for being single and seems to imply that ideally he should be married or that if he was acting right he would be. Erykah Badu is signaled as a "good" artist despite having worked with Wayne (and she's single too; tweets is watchin').
Wayne gets constructive as wholly negative and Lauryn Hill et. al as wholly positive. That good vs. evil split is a little too easy and doesn't get at the complexity of the issues I have with Wayne's music. For me it's not so much the "calling women out their names" as it is his objectification of women that informs his word choice and the earlier trauma in his life that may impact his behavior.
When we are young and maybe a little influenced by our parents, we can go a little too hard in the virtuous/Queen/good black people paint. In speaking back to Wayne and other rappers with misogynistic lyrics we have to be careful we don't end up creating a new box for women, that is just as limiting if a bit more respectful. The "Madonna" is just as limiting as the "whore", even if she gets more props.
I ain't mad at them though and I definitely am sending them love, particularly since they are getting such hateful comments on the video's Youtube page.
Congratulations, Watoto From The Nile, for rekindling a conversation that needs to be had!
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