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Gays Protest Jamaican Raggae, Not American Rap
New America Media, Commentary, Brent Calderwood, Posted: Mar 13, 2010
Middle-aged gay white men tried to stop a Jamaican artist from visiting the United States yesterday, instead of looking at the homophobia in their own backyard.
Jamaican international reggae artist Beenie Man (Anthony Moses Davis), who performed yesterday in Rochester, New York, has earned criticism from gay groups for lyrics like, "I'm dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the gays."
In 2004, protests by British pressure group OutRage! convinced Viacom to pull Beenie Man's scheduled performance from the MTV Video Music Awards.
Beenie Man took the stage at the Water Street Music Hall in Rochester, a city with a strong African-American presence, about 38 percent of its total population. The promoters, understandably, hoped Friday's performance would happen without hoopla--the show wasn’t even listed on Water Street’s online calendar.
A similar fracas at the same Water Street venue last September almost sidelined Buju Banton, the Jamaican superstar whose 1992 song “Boom Bye Bye” described the lethal shooting of a “[censored].
Many Americans first learned of Banton from director Isaac Julien’s 1994 documentary "The Darker Side of Black,” which featured compelling interviews with critics and musicians—many of them black, gay, or both--including Banton himself. The film also featured feminist BritHop icon Monie Love, as well as Ice Cube, who admitted to second thoughts about two lines from his 1992 hit “Horny Little Devil”: “[M]ust be F-A-G… /… [T]rue niggaz ain’t gay.”
"The Darker Side of Black" exposed the deep homophobia in some Caribbean and hip-hop music, but also promoted gay and gay-positive hip-hop artists who are rarely profiled in the gay press. Most fascinating of all, Julien's film explored the feminist, matriarchal impulses that run through Caribbean dancehall music.
But while LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) groups protest the homophobia in Caribbean raggae lyrics, a much more threatening trend is taking place in American hip-hop, where white rapper Eminem has done more to spread homophobia with his lyrics than any raggae artist could ever hope to.
In May 2000, gays began boycotting the white rapper's 2000 sophomore release, "The Marshall Mathers LP," whose title song, "Marshall Mathers," included many lines that made Ice Cube’s words seem almost benign: "My words are a dagger with a jagged edge / That'll stab you in the head whether you're a [censored] or lez," and the pithy "Hate [censored]? The answer's yes.”
The famously petulant and potty-mouthed rapper is probably more blameworthy than any pop-culture figure of the last 25 years for repopularizing the term "[censored]" in white America. “[censored]” is far more hurtful in the West than a pidgin word like “[censored] back after snubbing him in 2004, perennially feature Eminem--most recently as the “unwitting” recipient of some bare-bottomed flirtation from “Bruno,” the effeminate gay alter-ego of straight comic Sacha Baron Cohen. Apparently, some activists, music fans, and even television producers are operating under the same assumption held by Pascoe’s suburban schoolteachers, who punish their black students but let the white ones go unscathed: Boys will be boys—as long as they’re white.
New America Media, Commentary, Brent Calderwood, Posted: Mar 13, 2010
Middle-aged gay white men tried to stop a Jamaican artist from visiting the United States yesterday, instead of looking at the homophobia in their own backyard.
Jamaican international reggae artist Beenie Man (Anthony Moses Davis), who performed yesterday in Rochester, New York, has earned criticism from gay groups for lyrics like, "I'm dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the gays."
In 2004, protests by British pressure group OutRage! convinced Viacom to pull Beenie Man's scheduled performance from the MTV Video Music Awards.
Beenie Man took the stage at the Water Street Music Hall in Rochester, a city with a strong African-American presence, about 38 percent of its total population. The promoters, understandably, hoped Friday's performance would happen without hoopla--the show wasn’t even listed on Water Street’s online calendar.
A similar fracas at the same Water Street venue last September almost sidelined Buju Banton, the Jamaican superstar whose 1992 song “Boom Bye Bye” described the lethal shooting of a “[censored].
Many Americans first learned of Banton from director Isaac Julien’s 1994 documentary "The Darker Side of Black,” which featured compelling interviews with critics and musicians—many of them black, gay, or both--including Banton himself. The film also featured feminist BritHop icon Monie Love, as well as Ice Cube, who admitted to second thoughts about two lines from his 1992 hit “Horny Little Devil”: “[M]ust be F-A-G… /… [T]rue niggaz ain’t gay.”
"The Darker Side of Black" exposed the deep homophobia in some Caribbean and hip-hop music, but also promoted gay and gay-positive hip-hop artists who are rarely profiled in the gay press. Most fascinating of all, Julien's film explored the feminist, matriarchal impulses that run through Caribbean dancehall music.
But while LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) groups protest the homophobia in Caribbean raggae lyrics, a much more threatening trend is taking place in American hip-hop, where white rapper Eminem has done more to spread homophobia with his lyrics than any raggae artist could ever hope to.
In May 2000, gays began boycotting the white rapper's 2000 sophomore release, "The Marshall Mathers LP," whose title song, "Marshall Mathers," included many lines that made Ice Cube’s words seem almost benign: "My words are a dagger with a jagged edge / That'll stab you in the head whether you're a [censored] or lez," and the pithy "Hate [censored]? The answer's yes.”
The famously petulant and potty-mouthed rapper is probably more blameworthy than any pop-culture figure of the last 25 years for repopularizing the term "[censored]" in white America. “[censored]” is far more hurtful in the West than a pidgin word like “[censored] back after snubbing him in 2004, perennially feature Eminem--most recently as the “unwitting” recipient of some bare-bottomed flirtation from “Bruno,” the effeminate gay alter-ego of straight comic Sacha Baron Cohen. Apparently, some activists, music fans, and even television producers are operating under the same assumption held by Pascoe’s suburban schoolteachers, who punish their black students but let the white ones go unscathed: Boys will be boys—as long as they’re white.