'Taking Back the Music': Spelman Students Combat Hip-Hop's Negative Portrayals of Black Women

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ATLANTA

Music, by its nature, is a great unifier, able to turn a room into a rocking, bouncing good time. But in a stimulating evening of discussion on the Spelman College campus, music became something different: a veritable battleground of sorts. The debate, which has been swirling through the air of the leafy campus for a year, was hip-hop music. More specifically, the abhorrent effect of some raw forms of hip-hop on the images of African-American women.

Women--and men--for some time, have raised concerns about the treatment of Black women in words and videos. Black women are all too often referred to as "bitches" and "ho's" by swaggering, crotch-clutching performers, or presented as barely-dressed, butt-shaking sex pots. The issue reached the tipping point on the Atlanta campus last spring, when a group of Spelman students decided to challenge St. Louis rapper Nelly days before a scheduled campus appearance. A focal point of their anger was Nelly's "Tip Drill" video, which drew …