Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip Hop's Hold on Young Black Women / Edition 1

by T. Denean Denean Sharpley-Whiting

Overview

Untangles the intricately knotted issues around hip-hop culture and its treatment of young black women

Pimps Up, Ho’s Down pulls at the threads of the intricately knotted issues surrounding young black women and hip hop culture. What unravels for Tracy D. Sharpley-Whiting is a new, and problematic, politics of gender. In this fascinating and forceful book, Sharpley-Whiting, a feminist writer who is a member of the hip hop generation, interrogates the complexities of young black women's engagement with a culture that is masculinist, misogynistic, and frequently mystifying.

Beyond their portrayal in rap lyrics, the display of black women in music videos, television, film, fashion, and on the Internet is indispensable to the mass media engineered appeal of hip hop culture, the author argues. And the commercial trafficking in the images and behaviors associated with hip hop has made them appear normal, acceptable, and entertaining - both in the U.S. and around the world.

Sharpley-Whiting questions the impacts of hip hop's increasing alliance with the sex industry, the rise of groupie culture in the hip hop world, the impact of hip hop's compulsory heterosexual culture on young black women, and the permeation of the hip hop ethos into young black women's conceptions of love and romance.

The author knows her subject from the inside. Coming of age in the midst of hip hop's evolution in the late 1980s, she mixed her graduate studies with work as a runway and print model in the 1990s. Her book features interviews with exotic dancers, black hip hop groupies, and hip hop generation members Jacklyn “Diva” Bush, rapper Trina, and filmmaker Aishah Simmons, along with the voices of many “everyday” young women.

Pimps Up, Ho’s Down turns down the volume and amplifies the substance of discussions about hip hop culture and to provide a space for young black women to be heard.

2007 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Emily Toth Award

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814740644
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting is Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies and French at Vanderbilt University, where she also directs the Program in African American and Diaspora Studies and serves as Director of the W. T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies. Author of four books, she was described by cultural critic and scholar Michael Eric Dyson as a rising “superstar” among black intellectuals and “one of the country’s most brilliant and prolific racial theorists” in the Chicago Sun-Times in 2002. She has also co-edited three volumes, including The Black Feminist Reader.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue
Sex, Power, and Punanny

Introduction
Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy, But Somebody’s Got to Do It

1 “I See the Same Ho”: Video Vixens, Beauty Culture, and Diasporic Sex Tourism

2 Too Hot to Be Bothered: Black Women and Sexual Abuse

3 “I’m a Hustla, Baby”: Groupie Love and the Hip Hop Star

4 Strip Tails: Booty Clappin’, P-poppin’, Shake Dancing

5 Coda, or a Few Last Words on Hip Hop and Feminism

Notes

Index

About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

&8220;Sharpley-Whiting’s uncommon perspective is one that deserves to be examined more often.”
-Bitch

,

“For B-girls who embrace both the brashness of Lil' Kim and the pro-feminism of Lauryn Hill, Pimps Up, Ho’s Down is an intellectual look at the intricate, diverse attitudes of young black women within the hip hop community. Sharpley-Whiting combines thought-provoking text with interviews that range from the ‘rich’ (see Trina) to the “regular” (everyday women), giving a voice to today’s complex and contradictory females within hip hop.’
-The Source Magazine

,

“Through provocatively titled chapters such as ‘Sex, Power, and Punanny’ and ‘Strip Tails: Booty Clappin’, P-poppin’, Shake Dancing,’ Sharpley-Whiting provides a sobering analysis of women’s participation in the hyper-sexualized black American, urban youth culture known as hip hop. . . . This book delivers a riveting portrayal of hip hop, from the thumping rap music that serves as a soundtrack for America’s strip clubs to the predatory groupies who relentlessly pursue rap stars.”
-Ms. Magazine

,

“;Probing. . . . A canny study. . . . Sharpley-Whiting brings both street smarts and sophisticated cultural analysis to her subject.”
-Philadelphia Inquirer

,

“Clear and well written. . . . It serves as a decent jumping-off point to discussions of young black women in our current society. . . . Sharpley-Whiting has opened up the dialog, offering a source for research in a burgeoning area of study.”
-Library Journal

Editorial Reviews

"Sharpley-Whitings book does not suffer from the sort of cowardice one too often hears from black academics who genuflect to hip hop in order to stay current with the tastes of the students who provide them with whatever power they have on college campuses. Sharpley-Whiting calls them as she sees them and wisely quotes the offensive material when necessary. Her book is high level in its research and its thought, and those looking for adult ideas about the subject should look it up."

New York Daily News - Stanley Crouch

"Pimps Up, Ho's Downis an ambitious project that engages, rather than skirts, the complicated domain of sex, gender, power and hip hop. The book is extremely readable and suitiable for a variety of audiences."

Cultural Sociology - Valerie Chepp

"Offers damning evidence about hip hops underlying racial and social prejudices, examining the politics of gender and providing a feminists perspective and insights into black musics underlying message."

The Midwest Book Review

"Sharpley-Whiting unmasks thought provoking socio-political commentaries concerning sexual obsession in rap music and its effects on the black female sense of self."

Allhiphop.com

"Sharpley-Whitings uncommon perspective is one that deserves to be examined more often."

Bitch

"Offers an insightful look into the strip clubs, groupie culture, and other aspects of hip hop that have given a voice to the disenfranchised while raising troubling questions about what those voices are saying and doing."

Vanderbilt Magazine

"Sharpley-Whiting gets at the heart of the paradox . . . and puts the discussion on the turntable."

Washington Post

"Sharpley-Whiting gets at the heart of the paradox . . . and puts the discussion on the turntable."

Washington Post

"Sharpley-Whiting’s uncommon perspective is one that deserves to be examined more often."

- Bitch

“Sharpley-Whiting’s book does not suffer from the sort of cowardice one too often hears from black academics who genuflect to hip hop in order to stay current with the tastes of the students who provide them with whatever power they have on college campuses. Sharpley-Whiting calls them as she sees them and wisely quotes the offensive material when necessary. Her book is high level in its research and its thought, and those looking for adult ideas about the subject should look it up.”
-Stanley Crouch, New York Daily News

" Pimps Up, Ho's Down is an ambitious project that engages, rather than skirts, the complicated domain of sex, gender, power and hip hop. The book is extremely readable and suitiable for a variety of audiences."-Valerie Chepp, Cultural Sociology

“Sharpley-Whiting gets at the heart of the paradox . . . and puts the discussion on the turntable.”
• Washington Post

“Offers damning evidence about hip hop’s underlying racial and social prejudices, examining the politics of gender and providing a feminist’s perspective and insights into black music’s underlying message.”
• The Midwest Book Review

“Offers an insightful look into the strip clubs, groupie culture, and other aspects of hip hop that have given a voice to the disenfranchised while raising troubling questions about what those voices are saying and doing.”
• Vanderbilt Magazine

“Sharpley-Whiting unmasks thought provoking socio-political commentaries concerning sexual obsession in rap music and its effects on the black female sense of self.”
• Allhiphop.com

From the Publisher

So how do black female hip-hop consumers reconcile their love of the genre? And what can be done to bring these girls to a healthier place, in terms of their own self-image and to erase their vulnerability to hip-hop's less savory side? Sharpley-Whiting doesn't have the answers, and maybe no one does, but at least she's put the discussion on the turntable.
— The Washington Post

Amy Alexander

This work by Sharpley-Whiting (African American & diaspora studies, French, Vanderbilt Univ.; Negritude Women) isn't a discussion of hip-hop and women but a look at women of the hip-hop generation (black people born between about 1965 and 1984). Topics range from strip clubs, groupie culture, and sex as a commodity to the ongoing idealization of white beauty and a cultural preference for, in the author's words, Ascriptive Mulattas (women of mixed race or lighter-skinned black or Latina women). Although clear and well written, the book suffers from superficial treatments of hip-hop, engaging only briefly with, e.g., controversial women rappers and women's role in the success of hip-hop music, especially on the dance floor. It serves as a decent jumping-off point to discussions of young black women in our current society, but a longer, more nuanced, and in-depth look at particulars would have been more useful. Nevertheless, Sharpley-Whiting has opened up the dialog, offering a source for research in a burgeoning area of study. Recommended for academic libraries catering to popular music or feminist studies programs.
—Anna Katterjohn

Library Journal