In the early nineties this same issue came up when Snoop first came onto the scene (BTW, I’ve been a HUGE fan of Snoop) and was chastised by C. Delores Tucker and others for calling women Bitches and Ho’s. Their response was that they were only speaking on their environment and all women weren’t bitches and hos…only the ones they knew! Okay, so we bought that and actually accepted their reason because we all knew somebody who was a bitch or ho. But back then, they also talked about a community infiltrated with police brutality, drug-addicted mothers, gangs, the death of their homeboys and so on. They expressed their pain, anger, narcisism, sometime ignorance and downright rage through the music. THEY WERE EXPRESSING SOME SORT OF HUMAN EMOTION THAT WE ALL COULD RELATE TO OR HAVE EXPERIENCED. It’s sad to say but now that these same artists have “made it”, they are no longer angry. They now flaunt their success and basically say I’m better than you because I can have whatever I want when I want it and you can’t! They actually tell us to “Bend over and back that ass up” or “Shake it like a salt shaker”. And we accept that too because we’re so hesitant to stand up and knock our brothers down. We’ve been told for so long that Black men have it so hard and we,as black women, aren’t supportive enough that we’ve become accustomed to accepting whatever wrong doing is happening for fear of being unsupportive and tearing our brothers down.

We’ll I’ve personally had enough! WRONG IS WRONG! I’ve put up with these so-called artists for too long! It’s like the abusive husband that beats up his wife because he loves her so much. We act like abusive wives who are afraid to leave them because we still love them but at our own detriment. If we allow them to, they will beat us with their words until we have absolutely no self-esteem, self-confidence or even the ability to look at ourselves in the mirror (and you wonder why so many of us have body image issues!). I’ve made a commitment to myself and my fellow sistahs that if these so-called “black men” take it upon themselves to disrespect my loved ones then I will no longer associate myself with them. I will not sing along with their songs, attend their concerts, buy/download their songs (not even the 99 cent songs!), turn the radio dial whenever their music is played. Maybe we all need to take a page out of Spelman’s book and express not only our disapproval but disgust by these “artists” by not just talking about it but affecting the only thing they seem to care about besides themselves…their pocketbooks.