RA #2

“From Fly girls to Bitches and hos” by Joan Morgan is an article about how sexism in rap music effects people who are immersed in hip hop culture and what the root causes of that sexism are. The author is a feminist who finds fault with the sexism present in rap music from one point of view, but from another point of view she sees a need to take a deeper look at the circumstances that lead to that sexism. The intended audience for this article are younger people who listen to rap music and are familiar with popular culture and people who are familiar with feminism and may also experience some divergence of feelings over rap music. The purpose of this article is to explain to the audience the presence of sexism in rap music and the reasons why it is present, to point out women’s complicity in their representation is rap music, and to point out aggressions within communities. The author claims that rap music is sexist because of the circumstances under which it is created, and that people within a community act aggressively towards one another because of outside pressures.

The author uses ethos by being a credible source herself: she is ‘a music writer and a fan of hip hop’ (p 601) as well as a feminist. She uses a lot of firsthand evidence and quotes from rap songs to make her case (she shares a story about a friend who was attacked by a pitbull, a family friend who was brutally murdered, quotes from Biggie  Smalls’ song ‘Everyday Struggle’ and Jeru the Damaja). The author also employs pathos by making appeals to those involved in the hip hop community, addressing readers by employing phrases such as “sista friends” (p 604) and using the pronoun ‘we’.  The author also uses logos extensively, offering real life examples and direct quotes from rap songs and connecting them back to how they affect the individuals and community that they are a representing (a good example of this is the analysis after describing the murder of a family friend “Clearly, we are having a very difficult time loving one another. Any feminism that fails to acknowledge that black folks in nineties America are living and trying to love in a war zone is useless to our struggle against sexism”). As a reader, I did not really connect with this piece because it didn’t feel like it was intended for an audience outside of those within a specific community. It was interesting and compelling to hear the author outline her struggle to reconcile her feminism with her love of rap music. I felt that she made a good case, she seemed credible and she used good evidence, although I feel that more statistics or quotes would have backed up her argument better. The tone made it feel like more of a personal essay or mass media article than an academic piece, and the 90’s hip hop slang made it seem dated.