Hustle & Flow: The Pimpology of Hip Hop

 Abstract:  The purpose of many of my blogs is to plead a cause and then summon people to take on projects based on my reasearch.  I beleieve this literature is a lesson in women's empowerment.  Ultimately. 

Casey Johnson

Matthew Beale

11/28/05

Feminist Theory

Long Response

Hustle and Flow: The Pimpology of Hip-Hop

            As hip-hop artist Big Daddy Kane has informed us, "Pimpin' ain't easy."  More than simply the gator boots and suits, effective pimping requires a skillful and multi-dimensional manipulation of language and dialect.  In addition to vernacular, a pimp needs to be able to effectively (ab)use adequate pimp clothes, cars, jewelry, and women to create a stage for material acquisition.  A successful demonstration of these various facets of "pimpdom" results in a believable performance of "pimp."  According to Quinn, "the pimp figure has long been associated with the trickster in African-American vernacular traditions and it is above all the persuasive power, verbal skill, and emphasis on simulation which link the two" (Quinn 118).  Modern day pimps evoke this tradition when they persuade their prostitutes to "ho" for them.  Pimps articulate a particular form of discourse that values the aesthetic of rhythm and flow over sentence content, that is, how something is said rather than what is said.  Quinn echoes this notion when she writes, "these enigmatic figures seem to privilege style over substance, image over reality, word over deed—indeed, the 'post' move, the impulse is towards the stubstantiveness of style, and the performativity of language" (117).

            Similarly, hip-hop artists' vernacular and poetic is symptomatic of these long-standing African-American traditions.  Like the pimp, they assume a particular identity as they recite their lyrics, performing a particular persona to reflect both the delivery and content of their rhymes.  A battle rapper persona is very different from a storytelling persona, which is very different from a gangsta rapper persona.  A single rapper can occupy all three of these personas (and more) on one album, but each one requires a different style of lyrical delivery.  The pimp persona is one that rappers often embody, assuming the "pimp properties, tapping into a long-standing matrix of subcultural, popular-cultural, and folkloric inheritances.  The divergent articulations of the pimp as trope and type point to the versatility of this misogynist, street-heroic figure" (116).  *road map* We argue that mainstream hip-hop production has been reduced to commodified rendition of traditional street pimping, where the corporate music industry is the pimp, the artists are the prostitutes, and the women in these industries are even further objectified as tools for male ego validation.

            The Pimp figure is equivalent to the signifying monkey in African American folkloric traditions.  The signifying monkey is positioned as the toaster as the Lion is coded as the white man, the trick, the john, who believes he is the king of the jungle.  The Monkey uses his trickery to incite the Lion to provoke the physically superior Elephant, who in turn stomps and mangles the Lion.  In reality the pimp or, the Monkey uses his semantics to undercut the white dominate character, "the king of the jungle" and his essentializing notions of black intellectual inferiority, furthermore subverting the dichotomous nature of the prevailing power relationship through the exploitation of the Prostitutes, the Elephant's stature, to deflect the white mans' wealth.  The ambiguity and materiality of language becomes a devise by which the Pimp controls prostitutes and maintains their loyalty.  The objectification of the prostitute's body is relegated by the pimps' smooth talking sassafras.  As when prostitutes are in solicitation they follow boldly scripted interactions with the John's and take any opportunity they get to accumulate more than minimum appropriations.  In African American folklore, the Monkey's signification is a proliferation of national discourse used to maintain control over social relations and commerce, through multi-dimensional interaction.  Pimp culture is in fact a microcosmic reflection of Western capitalism that allows black men a space of agency to control the flow of capital through the exploitation of women.

            As we have briefly hinted at thus far, mainstream, commercialized hip-hop culture shares many traits with the figurative pimp culture that Quinn discusses.  The ideology of style over substance—paramount in pimp culture—is also reflected in the majority of rap music and rap music videos released by major record labels.  This focus on artist image rather than lyrical content is similar to the particular ways that the street pimps in American Pimp must present themselves to their prostitutes.  There is an image of "pimp" that must be upheld in order to maintain their status as a good (WC) pimp.  Likewise, mainstream hip-hop artists such as 50 Cent and Puff Daddy (or is it P Diddy?) must reinforce the perception that they live the life of glamour, excess, and extravagance over and over again through their records as well at their videos in order to sell records.  This reinforces Quinn's critique: "The mythic pimp, like the rapper, is able to convert subcultural capital into economic capital.  A feed-back loop emerges: the pimp logic is in order to get something you need to look like you've already got something" (Quinn 124, italics original).  The subcultural capital of the rapper is the urban tales of drug dealing, gang violence, and sexual escapades (whether they are true or not) that reinforce the stereotypical conceptions of the 60-70% of suburban white kids who are buying up the music.  The record companies package the rapper and their stories in shiny suits and flashy jewelry, surround them with expensive cars and staggeringly curvaceous women, and place them in front of a Windsor-style mansion.  Perhaps we are generalizing here, but a brief gloss of the most popular hip-hop videos from the past year will reveal only a minor deviance (if any) from this paradigm.  The best part about this whole process is that the majority of viewers rarely recognize that the house, cars, jewelry, and women don't belong to the rapper at all, but are simply rented for the video shoot.  Again, the image is essential.

            This commodification of pimp culture by hip-hop artists serves as a sort of meta-commodification.  "Real" pimps, that is, pimps who patrol the streets at night and use women to sell sex to men, have already commodified the perception of the figurative pimp.  At the intersection of gator boots, fur coats, gold-capped teeth, and diamond-encrusted rings lies the production of "pimp," a commodity designed through this particular cast-mold and repeated over and over again.  In order to be a pimp, one must produce a particular image of "pimp" that others recognize.  Quinn notes, "The pimp constitutes an icon of upward mobility for black working-class males, spectacularly refusing, through their heightened style politics, the subservient type-casting that has historically been imposed by the dominant social order" (Quinn 123-124).  Despite their escape from a form of class-based type-casting through their style, pimps reallocate these identity resources to be type-cast as "pimps."  They assume a certain persona that both identifies them with and disassociates them from the "dominant social order."  In the fashion of post-modern identity politics, this "pimp" product is then consumed by many hip-hop artists, who then produce and redistribute a version of "pimp" to the mainstream music audiences that is commercially profitable.  The glorified sexual prowess of the rapper and domination of women in the lyrics mediated by image of conspicuous consumption reified by the music videos relegates women to a harshly marginalized position in mainstream hip-hop. 

            The space for women's resistance seems narrow among the myriad of patriarchal controls in both pimp culture and mainstream hip-hop culture.  However, hip-hop's original design had an emancipatory ideology and emphasized the eradication of gang violence and the cultivation of strong black love, family, and community relationships.  With the sexual revolution of the 1960s women developed their own space of agency through their sexual liberation.  However, once again the American industrial complex sought to repress the freedoms of women by subsuming their freed sexuality into an object of material culture.  These trends are ever-present in mainstream hip-hop culture where dancers, models, and even female rap artists are symbols of objectified sexuality.  As Cole and Guy-Sheftall suggest, "The lyrics, images—and attitudes that undergird them—are potentially harmful to Black girls and women in culture that is already negative about our humanity, our sexuality, and our overall worth.  They are also harmful to Black boys and men because they encourage misogynistic attitudes and behaviors" (Cole and Guy-Sheftall 186-187).  White, middle-class America cares little for a healthy portrayal of Black men and women, whose subjugation in rap music reifies the stereotypes that reinforce white cultural dominance.  Mainstream rap artists' messages, "which may seem to rail against the establishment, are generally controlled by commercial interests and pose no real threat to the white power structure" (193).  Mainstream hip-hop is essentially white, patriarchal value systems in blackface.  This pimping of black artists by hegemonic music corporations can be counteracted with a return to hip-hop's authentic roots and disseminating these values into the community from which it emerged.  However, this brand of conscious hip-hop will need the financial backing that the current form of mainstream hip-hop receives in order for it to be paramount in mass media.  We echo Cole and Guy-Sheftall's sentiments:  "Rap music has the artistic space to accommodate competing and complementary views.  But if the more positive, progressive voices are to be heard and have an impact, rap artists must gain greater control over the production of their work and the dissemination of their messages" (213).

            As we considered the connections between hip-hop culture and pimp culture, we could not help but regard the discussions our class held on Black Nationalism.  We were reminded of how the black female was expected to relegate her gender oppression to discursive margins in order to uplift the race as a whole.  Similarly in hip-hop and pimp culture, women are expected to reinforce the locus of black patriarchal control, which furthermore reinforces the overall socio-cultural structure.  Until the overarching cultural paradigm is challenged and deconstructed, both hip-hop and pimp culture will be spaces for black men to find their autonomy rather than concern themselves with sexual equality.  Feminist and womanist theory and practice mingled with socially conscious hip-hop can be a progressive route to revolution.

Works Cited

American Pimp.  Dir. Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes.  MGM/ United Artists Studios, 1999.  DVD.  2000.

Cole, Johnnetta Betsch and Beverly Guy-Sheftall.  "No Respect: Gender Politics and Hip-Hop."  Gender Talk: The Stufggle for Women's Quality in African American Communities.  Ballantine Books: New York, 2003.  182-215.

Quinn, Eithne.  "'Who's the Mack?': The Perfomativity and Politics of the Pimp Figure in Gangsta Rap."  Journal of American Studies.  34:1.  115-136.