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 Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women
Click to order via Amazon
by
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting
NYU Press
Hardcover, $22.95
206 pages
ISBN: 0814740149
Book Review by Kam Williams
“I believe we have reached a fascinating, and predictably
retrogressive, moment in American pop culture regarding class, gender, and
race. As a member of the Hip-Hop Generation, I am continually intrigued by
the ways in which hip-hop sets the tone for how women, myself included,
think and act...
This is not a book that chronicles rap lyrics and sexism. That line of
inquiry has been vigorously pursued and will continue to be a touchstone for
dialogue about hip-hop generation men and misogyny… Rather Pimps Up, Ho's
Down aims to cast the net wider and deeper…
The book addresses the male-dominated culture of hip-hop and the
various ways in which young black women connect with that culture… I
recognize that the madness visited upon Hip-Hop Generation black women comes
as much from their own communities as from without.
Sexual violence, sexism, beat-downs, sexual dishonesty,
anti-lesbianism, and the legacy of color prejudice all hammer away at self
esteem… This book attempts to explicate where hip-hop culture contributes to
these distinctly female difficulties.”
—Excerpted from the Prologue (pg. xviii)
In the wake of Don Imus being fired for his insensitive comments about black
women, there have been renewed complaints in certain African-American circles
about gangsta rap for its similar demeaning depictions of females. Therefore,
you probably couldn’t ask for a more timely release of a book than Pimps Up,
Ho's Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting.
Its author, a model-turned-professor and director of the African-American and
Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University, not only has her finger on the pulse,
but shares a cornucopia of novel insights here. Most folks are already familiar
with the well-aired complaints about hip-hop by such monitors of American
culture as Stanley Crouch and Bill O’Reilly. What makes Ms. Sharpley-Whiting
unique is not only that she’s a black female but that she admits to being
conflicted as a fan of the controversial genre.
Capable of dissecting the subject from the inside out and from a variety of
angles, she serves up a string of salient insights in the process, such as when
echoing Imus’ self-defense that gansta’ rap is merely a reflection of
generally-accepted values. “Hip-hop culture is no more or less violent and
sexist than other American cultural products,” she argues. “However, it is more
dubiously highlighted by the media as the source of violent misogyny in American
youth culture.”
Highly recommended as a seminal tome likely to usher in a promising new era
of honest intellectual debate about the imminent head-on collision between
hip-hop and emerging, black feminist thinking.
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