Hip-Hop, Black Femininity, and the Rewriting of Misogyny

Introduction: Hip-Hop's Complicated Legacy for Black Women

Hip-hop and rap have often been criticized for perpetuating stereotypical depictions of women, particularly Black women, even while striving to offer a cultural counter-narrative of powerful Black masculinity. Kanye West's song "Gold Digger" famously criticizes women for being interested only in a man's money, and the video crassly shows women in skimpy clothing gyrating in front of West, even using them as credit card dispensers. Although rap's narrative may question a white world in which the police are trustworthy and criminality is viewed as evil rather than as a natural response to one's environment, it often embraces a very negative view of women — at its worst depicting them as morally bankrupt, and at its best treating them as sexualized objects rather than fully dimensional human beings. On the other hand, as noted by Patricia Hill Collins in her essay "Get Your Freak On: Sex, Babies, and Images of Black Femininity," many female artists such as Missy Elliott have appropriated the image of the highly sexualized Black woman of rap videos and reclaimed it with pride.

But this is changing. Today, even male artists such as Drake in songs like "Nice for What" are offering alternative views of women while still working within the discourse of hip-hop. Songs like "Nice for What" — in both images and words — show women demonstrating class, self-respect, and genuine hard work, rather than depicting women solely as money-hungry objects of male desire. Drake shows that a woman's ability to seek an education, mother a child, run a company, and dress elegantly rather than provocatively can be attractive rather than antithetical to Black male empowerment. The legacy of artists like Missy Elliott demonstrates that hip-hop as a method of cultural subversion — for Black women as well as Black men — can be the new reality. Old scripts can be reconfigured and rewritten.

Getting Your Freak On: Missy Elliott's Challenge

One of the most notable concepts in hip-hop, dating back to the 1970s, is that of "freakiness." In Elliott's songs and videos, this idea is addressed directly. Elliott seeks to appropriate the concept of "working it" and freakiness as a method of empowerment for women rather than oppression, as it has traditionally been constructed. Of course, the hip-hop narrative of progress is never linear, and many artists continue to use misogyny and freakiness to question Black female autonomy in their work. But the works of Elliott and more recent artists such as Drake highlight that hip-hop's mode of expression can be feminist and empowering in the work of both women and men.

When Elliott created her seminal "Work It" and "Get Your Freak On," Collins argues that Elliott was drawing upon a tradition that had associated African-American women and men with so-called freakiness or unnaturalness, contrasted against the supposed ordinary neutrality of whiteness. Even when African-American artists had embraced the term "freakiness," it was usually to suggest the extremity of Black female sexuality in particular. Rick James's "Super Freak" is perhaps the best example of this — a song about a Black woman who is, James counsels, not the type you could bring home to your mother. Freakiness implies a sexual appetite out of the ordinary. This panders to many pre-existing stereotypes of Black femininity, even though the song's catchy beat and seemingly innocent dance rhythms can easily cause listeners to forget its real meaning.

Collins notes that the slang word "freak" is highly pliable in meaning, however, and it can refer to being strange, sexual, or simply to dance. Sometimes it can mean all three simultaneously. While some artists like James accepted the dominant cultural discourse's view of what Black female freakiness might mean, others such as Elliott have blurred these lines. "To be labeled a freak, to be a freak, and to freak," suggests Collins, can be entirely different things, and much like other reclaimed slurs, the term is often used to simultaneously replicate and resist oppression (Collins 121). Elliott's "Get Your Freak On" shows women and men enjoying dancing and getting their groove on rather than pandering to specific images of Black sexuality. Rewriting freakiness as something positive can also be seen as rewriting the dominant cultural script of what it means to be Black — since Blackness was often viewed as deviant and freaky in the sense of strange, Elliott suggests that freakiness as a mode of individuality is positive and empowering for both men and women.

Freakiness as Empowerment and Cultural Reclamation

Collins further notes that the image of Black hyper-masculinity as oppressing women — in other words, taking advantage of women's freakiness — has often been used to denigrate African-American culture and Black men in general. The act of Black women reclaiming their right to be sexual in a positive way thus likewise becomes a rehabilitation of African-American culture as a whole, since people "getting their freak on" does not necessarily mean they are showing disrespect for one another. Far from it, they can be celebrating one another, as Elliott demonstrates in her video.

Elliott's video for "Get Your Freak On" begins with martial artists dancing to rap music in a nonsexual fashion. It then features the singer dressed in black and denim — not objectifying herself but celebrating herself as a positive and beautiful image of Black womanhood. During the video, Elliott appears in different frames clothed in white and gold (an image of wealth and power) and in camouflage in other segments (an image of strength). Although the term "freak" often suggests rampant sexuality, Elliott offers alternative personas for the female viewer — and perhaps even the male viewer — that are fierce and sexy without being objectified.

Elliott also shows people dancing and having fun in the video, including women who are clearly not dancing for men or to incite male desire. Another striking aspect of Elliott's video is its sense of fun. No one is mocked or demeaned, and getting your freak on clearly means expressing your personal style in an inventive way that does not diminish other people. This is contrary to another stereotype discussed by Collins: that of the "Black bitch," or the emasculating woman who is the opposite of, but just as stereotypically damaging as, the freak (Collins 122). There is nothing mean-spirited about Elliott's characterization, and no men are shown to be denigrated by a woman joyfully getting her freak on in a manner that does not pander to male sexual needs.

Elliott's equally famous video "Work It" shows an unconventional-looking young girl working it through dance as a form of self-expression, without any self-consciousness or attempt to look beautiful and provocative for the male gaze. Elliott's idea of working it is also notably free of any criminal resonances, which — according to the cultural critic Russell-Brown — has often been a common theme in male rap, as criminality has frequently been portrayed as the only way for many poorer Black males to survive in a racist society. Elliott's videos present strangeness and transgression as a way of questioning the norms of dominant society, but in an arguably more feminine mode that relies on fashion and dance rather than violence.

Works Cited

Collins, Patricia. "Get Your Freak On: Sex, Babies, and Images of Black Femininity." In Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, pp. 119–148.

Rebollo-Gil, G. and Moras, A. "Black Women and Black Men in Hip-Hop Music: Misogyny, Violence, and the Negotiation of (White-Owned) Space." The Journal of Popular Culture, 45.1 (2012): 118–131.

Russell-Brown, K. Underground Codes: Race, Crime and Related Fires. New York: New York UP, 2004.

Story, Kaila. "Racing Sex – Sexing Race: The Invention of the Black Feminine Body." In Imagining the Black Female Body: Reconciling Image in Print and Visual Culture. New York: Palgrave, 2010, pp. 23–42.