Recently Russell Simmons called for the elimination or the words bitch ho and nigga in rap music. This is comes after the recent backlash against hip hop partly due to a white radio host saying something I’m sure he has said many times before in the privacy of his own ford pickup

Critics say that hip hop is to misogynistic and glorifies violence, these things are true in some rap music just as they are in a lot of other forms of American entertainment such as movies, a half naked woman getting her neck slashed at the end of a hall way is understood as entertainment. Movies are understood as a way to escape and take a break from the reality I think hip-hop should get this same amount of understanding. If all the killing and drug dealing going on in the cd was really being done by the artist don’t you think they would be in prison and not backed by the biggest recording companies in the world?

What I am worried about is how hip-hop will survive if these words are eliminated? How will Nelly or refer to 50 Cent a woman shaking her behind mid handstand? When Snoop Dogg don’t get his money how will he convey how badly and from whom he needs his money. Worst of all how is any rapper supposed to refer to his (or her) closest friends? Wait, wait, wait…ummm-exotic dancer, lady of the evening, buddy…problem solved.

A lot of this music comes from a place we as Americans try to hide from or be ignorant too. (If I cant see it its not there) Rappers though sometimes not in the best of ways, are showing a side to life everyone might not be familiar or comfortable with but that’s just as valid and has just as much of a right to be heard as anything else. Some may argue that you can’t take these words out of hip-hop because these words are hip-hop. Just as much as the word rebel is hip-hop. Just as much as the word oppression is hip-hop, perseverance, and American dream are all words you can get out of rap music if you just look a little deeper.

Hip-hop was originally a way for inner city youth to express themselves. Hip-hop was and still is a way to tell ones story. In the ghetto words like these are used everyday and have been for generations and generations and you can not tell me a black man was the first man to call a black man a nigger, you cant tell me rap music invented the words bitch and ho. These hateful words were around way before hip-hop, and unfortunately will be around way after.

I am not saying that every rap song is a work of art, a lot of it is well… crap and can makes you mutter to yourself ‘what were they thinking’, but the same could be said about a really bad painting. I personally don’t use any of the three words in my everyday life but I know people who do and understand why they do, a lot of them don’t know any better.

I feel the words and the baggage that comes with them should be weighed and calculated by the individual using them. I feel like everyone should realize that words mean different things to different people. As hateful and powerful as they are to some, to others they are terms of endearment and love. Go figure. Maybe the world would be a better place if worlds like these were eliminated, but I feel like even with the words being gone the emotion behind them good or bad will still be in the people that used them.
—Donny Lumpkins