Can I Love Hip-Hop and Not Hate Women?

(via Huffpost Women)

by Rich Hawkins

I love hip-hop music. I think when done well it can be lyrically the most progressive genre on the planet, and for me it has produced some of the best music of the last 30 years. With albums like The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy sitting among my favourites, I love the complexity of its subject and while I’m perhaps not the most typical fan, I do feel a real connection to the artists and music. But I also have an issue, and that is; can I, as somebody who loves and respects women, really have feminist sensibilities when I listen to the music I do?

This topic is something I’ve thought about for a while, but it was recently brought to the front of my mind while idly listening to music on my way to work. Within a playlist of all kinds of stuff, this lyric from The Weeknd found its way into my ear “I just f*cked two bitches ‘fore I saw you”. It isn’t by any stretch the most extreme lyric in hip-hop, but I actually found myself turning it off and removing the song from my playlist. It felt so aggressively disrespectful, and it made me start to really thinking about what I was listening to as I blindly flip between tracks and half listen to music…

Every Moment Has A Song