For a fleeting moment, these words seem unnecessary. Of course Hurt loves hip-hop. A New York native, he grew up listening to Big Daddy Kane, A Tribe Called Quest and Kwame and cared enough to spend six years on a 60-minute film dedicated to the genre’s future well being.
That said, the impetus behind his declaimer becomes painfully obvious as soon as a montage of buzzwords begins to scroll across the screen, outlining the hypermasculine box into which today’s hip-hop artists have been pigeonholed. “You gotta have MONEY. You gotta be a PLAYER or a PIMP. You gotta be in CONTROL,” explains an anonymous rapper. “If you’re not any of those things, then people call you SOFT or WEAK or a PUSSY or a CHUMP or a FAGGOT, and nobody wants to be any of those things.”
What follows this monologue is an appalling look at the violence, misogyny and homophobia that now emanates from certain sectors of modern day hip-hop culture. Although Hurt talks with some of the industry’s biggest stars, including Mos Def, Russell Simmons, Clipse and Fat Joe, the most revealing interviews occur not in swank hotels or state-of-the-art studios, but on the streets of Daytona Beach during BET’s infamous Spring Bling Weekend. Dozens of aspiring rappers gather on the sidewalks desperate for the chance to spout their rhymes to anyone who will listen. Meanwhile, scantily clad females are assaulted by men with handheld cameras who’ve seized the opportunity to film their own music videos, complete with skin, sleaze and sexual objectification.
With the horror show on display at Spring Bling and in videos like Nelly’s “Tip Drill” and 50 Cent’s “Many Men,” Hurt depicts how hypermasculinity has manifested itself in intra-group violence and the reinforcement of pre-existing stereotypes. In other words, today’s rappers are fighting each other instead of the powers that be in a vicious cycle that destroys families, denigrates women and sells millions of records. “The dominant image of black masculinity in hip-hop is the fact that somebody can be confrontational,” says the always-insightful Chuck D. “But confrontational with the wrong cat.”
Hurt ultimately provides far more questions than answers in his quest for a broader definition of manhood within hip-hop culture, but the conversation he starts is alarming, intriguing and utterly essential to the genre’s future. Your move, hip-hop.
Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes will have its television premiere on the PBS series Independent Lens on Tuesday, February 20 at 10 p.m.
