This last week BET premiered a town hall-styled talk show designed to explore Hip Hop Culture through dialogues between artists, activists, journalists, and various authors including: MC Lyte, T.I., Stanley Crouch, Reverend Al Sharpton, Michael Eric Dyson, Nelson George, Diane Weathers, Farai Chideya, and too many others to list here.  As a part of the promotional effort I spoke at advanced screenings of the first of three episodes (only two of which have been airing on the network – the third, including clips featuring yours true is available at BET.com).  At the Howard University screening (on September 20th 2007), a panel consisting of myself, and executive producer Selwyn Hinds, fielded questions from an audience of college students, faculty, administrators and the CEO of BET, Debra Lee.  The exchange was engaging and intense as a Spelman graduate challenged the gender balance of the panels on the program for being indicative of the silencing of women within the culture.  Her question gets at the heart of an internal and internecine struggle amongst people of the Hip Hop generations over gender roles, representations and interactions. The first episode of “Hip Hop vs. America” addresses the misogyny in Hip Hop.  In some of the most riveting segments Nelly makes several ineffective attempts to defend his salacious music video for “Tip Drill.”  The video features crass hyper-strip club scenes that generally degrade women by emphasizing body parts on display for dollar bills.  But in the penultimate scene Nelly swipes a credit card down a young woman’s buttocks.  I won’t rehearse the flack that Nelly has gotten in the media (Essence Magazine) and from women’s groups at Spelman, but he would not concede that making the video was a mistake.   Despite intense questioning and accusation from various panelists including Dyson, Kim Osorio, Diane Weathers, and the host, Jeff Johnson, Nelly persisted in defending his role in the making of the video which features several other notable rappers, including Jermaine Dupree.  This conversation about the portrayal of women in rap music and videos spans across too many media narratives to list here (2 Live Crew, Bill O’Reilly, Don Imus, and C. Delores Tucker/Bill Bennett to name just a few), but suffice it to say that there is (and has been) an engaging discourse within Hip Hop Culture that challenges, critiques and pushes back against the exploitation and hatred of women in the music as well as in the videos and magazines.  For the best of this conversation (and the most innovative scholarship on Hip Hop culture) please see the work of any or all of the following: Tricia Rose, Joan Morgan, Cheryl Keyes, Gwen Pough, Imani Perry, and Tracy Sharply Whiting.
      In Byron Hurt’s award winning documentary, “Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” a candid exploration of black masculine images and standards in mainstream rap music unveil rampant violence and misogyny in the lyrics.  Nelly’s “Tip Drill” is the poster-example here as well  (amongst many many others).  Hurt embarks on a sincere journey to evaluate his own sense of black masculinity in the context of paradigmatic content shifts in the music and culture of the Hip Hop generation.  He was a star football player in HS and College, and a member of an historically Black greek-letter organization. He admits his own chauvinistic development and rejects it on film by sharing his story and clearly depicting the misogynistic tendencies in some of the most popular rap music and American culture .  The film also deals with violence and other negative reflections in Hip Hop.  However the dialogues that ensue from screenings of the film seem to center on gender questions.  As a community, members of the Hip Hop generation (many born between 1965 and 1984, as well as some older and younger) are challenging the negativity in Hip Hop music with an expressed emphasis on the portrayal of women.  Clearly this is a vital discussion for members within the Hip Hop Nation (see Toure) to have.  Misogynistic music can unduly influence the minds of some people, especially those who don’t have proactive and/or constructive counter-influences.  Since violence against women, corporate/economic inequality, and sexual exploitation plague the communities out of which Hip Hop emerges, we must begin to dialogue and deconstruct certain femiphobic and oppressive ideologies in the media and the culture.  This documentary film and the program on BET contribute to a discourse in the Black public sphere specifically aimed at enlightening listeners about the music they are consuming.  
    Please be clear though, the music of which I am speaking about in this piece does not in ANYWAY account for the entire body of Hip Hop music.  There is plenty of music out there – you must be proactive about listening to it.  If BET/MTV, Clear Channel/Radio One, or The Source/XXL are the only ways that you encounter Hip Hop culture than you may have no clue what the culture is or even a good idea about what rap/ Hip Hop music is.  But the public dialogue, especially as it is generated by and through “Beyond Beats and Rhymes” and “Hip Hop vs. America” points toward Hip Hop’s unheralded ability of intense self-critique.  I don’t think we can see too many panels on R&B, Rock Music, or even Jazz or Blues during primetime on cable TV; however Hip Hop continues to pop up in the public sphere, showing signs of an upheaval in the audience’s tolerance levels for the misogyny and violence promoted in some of the most popular music.  Initially I did not like the title “Hip Hop vs. America” because I think it re-inscribes an unhealthy opposition between the Hip Hop generation and America, particularly the Boomers.  After dialogues in my own classrooms (The Literature of Hip Hop Culture and Hip Hop Culture and Composition) and the various discussions that followed the public/university screenings it has become clear to me that Hip Hop culture’s ideological struggles are those of America itself.  This is why it has become so automatic now to scapegoat rap music and Hip Hop culture in the media for any and all of what ails America: the hatred and exploitation of women, rampant consumerism, and political apathy are the trinity of social challenges facing the Hip Hop generations.  Since, I would argue, these are several of the challenges with which all Americans must contend, Hip Hop’s struggle is a microcosmic reflection of the discourse that should be present throughout America.  It’s not really Hip Hop vs. America or even Hip Hop vs. itself that becomes the most accurate moniker for this discourse.  More accurately stated, Hip Hop is America.