Jalylah Burrell

Hello, Babar

Seattle-bred, Brooklyn-based cultural critic Jalylah Burrell riffs on anything and everything.

Homies Over Hoes

Posted 02/04/2008 at 11:49 PM | 1 comment/s

UnifiedBitchTheory2

I had never previously seen an episode of "The Boondocks" but last night's season finale was a witty introduction. Featuring the voice of Mos Def as an effete, misogynistic and defensively homophobic closeted rapper called Gangstalicious, it satirized the gender and sexuality prejudices that plague some of hip hop music. The fictitious Gangstalicious hit song, "Homies over Hoes," especially resonated as I had just seen the video for the newish Scarface song, "Girl You Know," or the straw of gratuitous and unprovoked dismissals and degradations of Black women that broke this mule's back. Although isms and schisms predate Scarface and rickety hook man Trey Songz, they and their ilk haven't passed on any opportunities to spread the message. To listen and to watch the video for "Girl You Know" is to be confounded by the manifold ways your MTV rotational rapper has found to masquerade the demeaning as creativity or "poetry" per Blood Diamond Russ'.

In my formative years, New Edition sang a similar song with an entirely different tone. Remember, "You're Not My Kind of Girl?" Ralph Tresvant was my imaginary boyfriend so I do. One memorable and apropos adlib went a little something like this, "I'm not trying to put you down." How much more humane. Yes, break ups are part of life and they aren't always sugary and don't need to be sung as such but when so many songs in these past few years stiff arm and backhand Black women it speaks to deeper seeded issues. Moreover, why are Black women's names coming out of antipathic rapper's mouths. If you don't give a fuck about us, write about someone, something else.

"Homies Over Hoes" is just "G's Up, Hoes Down" (I see you and your chained harem, Snoop) remixed but it doesn't make the pill any easier to swallow. I leave you with the words of a cocky, often ill informed but incisive rapper Ras Kass: