Hip-Hop, Agency, and Appropriation

I basically feel like it’s a shame and a crime that white people and/or hip-hop critics (maybe not all critics, or fans! But I don’t hear about it very often at all, and I live with a dude who made it a project, to educate me about hip-hop, and when I mentioned this song, he didn’t know what it was) and/or feminists don’t recognize the centrality and awesomeness of this song. Which addresses street harassment, sexual assault, domestic violence, and girl-v-girl violence, in that order, and is really just super fun to listen to, particularly after your first beer. -- Sady Doyle on Queen Latifah's "U.N.I.T.Y." (source)

If I had to list a singular, stealthily feminist song from my teenage years, Queen Latifah's "U.N.I.T.Y" would be it. This, along "Ladies First," Salt-n-Pepa's "None Of Your Business," and TLC's "No Scrubs," "Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg" and "Unpretty" are everything I wish riot grrrl was. And they were all over the radio in the early-though-mid 90s.

I said on someone else's blog about a year ago that while riot grrrl was great at addressing sexism and misogyny, and Liz Phair made a lot of young women unashamed of their sexuality, somehow listening to those artists made me feel less than empowered. Maybe it was my own naivete at having the problems of being a young women in society presented to me plainly and unfailingly, but I felt more like a victim than I ever had before. But hearing Queen Latifah sing about punching her aggressors "dead in the eye," and Salt-n-Pepa urging me to sleep with whomever I wanted without apology gave me a greater sense of agency than the feminist punk rock I was supposed to be listening to.

I hate pitting one against the other, rap and punk, because issues of class and race become too impossible to ignore (I'm a working-class white girl who grew up with hip hop), but anything thing less than admitting those songs were an integral part of my feminist upbringing would require rewriting my own history, and I'm not willing to do that.

So, then a couple weeks ago, this  blew up all over the internet:

Meet Kreayshawn, a self-described editor, cinematographer, and "rap beast" from Oakland, California. It's highly unlikely that you'll be able to get her infectious song out of her your head upon listening, and you just might end up adding some of her fab phrasing like "swag pumping out my ovaries" into your everyday vocabulary.

And you know what? I couldn't. "Gucci Gucci" is adroit, addictive as hell, and self-aware enough for my aging hipster sensibilities. So why does it make me feel so icky? Oh yeah, this:

And this is partly why Kreayshawn makes me mad. The White Girl Mob media darling blowing up the interwebs whose potential deal with Sony is making waves makes me angry in a way I haven’t been in a long time. Her appropriative swag is yet another reminder (not that we needed any more this month) of how little black women are valued in our society, even in genres we co-create. In a moment where cool is synonymous with swag, a particular manifestation of black masculinity, Kreayshawn’s dismissiveness and denigration of black women animate her success. (The Crunk Feminist Collective )

I thought this was important to note, since I found little criticism of "Gucci Gucci" coming from within the feminist blogosphere.

Addendum: According to Jezebel Kreayshawn (whose name I discovered via the comment section is pronounced "Creation." Seriously?) has been signed to Columbia Records. Said commenter Top Level Executive:

I'm not one who believes that a white artist/White group shouldn't do Black music, as most of my favorite white artists/groups are those who perform Black music. However, there's a huge and distinct difference between paying homage to Black music/Black culture and straight ripping it off...