Against the Man: Lady Power and Contemporary Hip Hop

"Yankin" by Lady has all the traits of a Top 40 hip hop song: a thundering beat, a repetitive and slightly grating chorus, and lyrics celebrating sexual prowess. The song was even featured in the final episode of the TV show Girls. But why has it been noticeably absent from the commercial music scene?

"Yankin" is, for some, a jarring portrayal of a world of female sexual dominance. It is an articulation of of female power that challenges the commercial music establishment, which for the most part is oriented towards the masculine gaze. And because commercial music is mediated largely by men, it is necessarily cleansed of all elements, even implicit subversion and social critique, deemed offensive by the sinister controllers of cultural hegemony. "Yankin" has been banished to the far reaches of internet obscurity not because of the graphic nature of its content, but because of its subversive nature. 

Next to "Up!" by LoveRance feat. 50 Cent, which has garnered major mainstream radio play for several months, "Yankin" seems tempered and nearly nuanced. LoveRance and 50 Cent's song, which even when censored reads like the script of an NC-17 rated movie, recounts episodes of cunnilingus and intercourse and features a chorus only of the words: "I beat the pussy up up up up up up." The two male rappers detail their sexual conquests, with LoveRance rapping "watch that back, make that ass clap/make the pussy squirt, yeah I gotta stroke" and ending the first verse with the couplet, "put it on my tongue, fill me on up/put it in the gut, tear the pussy up." The two male rappers are allowed to freely describe their sexual encounters, objectifying and subjugating women in the process. Indeed, the commercial music industry has deemed it appropriate for men to air their affinity for tearing and beating women's genitals. 

"Yankin" is an articulation of female power that

challenges the ideology of the commercial music establishment.

In "Yankin," Lady turns the tables. Men rather than women - the traditional sex-objects in hip hop and commercial music - are objectified, sexualized, and subjugated. Lady defies the demand that female rappers acquiesce to male subjugation. Her fluency in the language of sexual domination makes her uniquely "unfeminine," particularly when compared to other female artists like Beyonce and Nicki Minaj. 

Lady's male counterpart is not demanding or controlling; she is. You might say she wears the pants in the paradigmatic relationship. From the first hearing of the song's refrain, Lady makes it clear that she is the dominant sexual power. Her male partner is forced to submit to her, as she declares "my pussy be yankin, got this nigga feelin' hypnotized." In an emulation of typically male sexual bravado, Lady boasts about her sexual stamina, "look like you tired, I suggest you pop a pill or two/you gotta keep up, when I make this thing do what it do." Indeed her power over her partner is so great that she suggests he may be utterly unprepared, "you think you want it but you don't really want none." Like male rappers, Lady is concerned with being pleasured as much as she is concerned with being an adequate pleasure-er. She makes clear her sexual demands, "I see that magnum rapper, nigga that's the perfect size," while at the same time she brags about her ability to deliver maximum pleasure: "I hope you strapped for this incredible ride/look at my hips they got a hell of a grind/I started slow so you can relax your mind/Cause once I finish, you gonna be out of yo mind." Unlike her female counterparts, specifically Nicki Minaj and Beyonce, she does not require male validation, "you ain't gotta tell me, I know this pussy be yankin'." She is acutely aware of her own sexual power. 

Neither Nicki Minaj nor Beyonce, two of hip hop's leading women, challenges commercial music's gendered status quo the way Lady does. Nicki Minaj asserts her dominance not over men but over other women; she is concerned with being the best woman in the service of men and not with being serviced by men. In her song, "Shitted on 'Em," Nicki Minaj proudly announces "All these bitches is my sons." Bitches, being a gendered term, refers to Minaj's female rivals. Like a mother over her children, Minaj claims superiority over other women. Later in the first verse of the song, she raps, "if I had a dick I would pull it out and piss on 'em." She not only claims to be better than other women but also concedes that only if she were a man could she truly claim power over women. This lyrical thread can be seen in Minaj's other works. In her verse on Big Sean's Dance (Ass) Remix, Minaj is again interested solely dominating other women. "Wobbledy, wobble, wo-wo-wobble, wobbin," she begins, "Ass so fat, all these bitches' pussies is throbbin'/bad bitches I'm your leader." There's no ambiguity there; Minaj stakes her claim as leader of women. And yet, conspicuously absent is any attempt to assert some kind of power over men. 

Beyonce, who as the respectable female ambassador of hip hop to the rest of the world is tame compared to Minaj and Lady, articulates an idea of female empowerment albeit within the framework of a male-dominated society. Indeed, Beyonce's Run the World (Girls) transmutes the genuinely subversive kernel of female power into a sanitized and benign kind of platitude. Of course, we know girls don't run the world. Women represent only 19.3% of national
legislative seats across the entire world. The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), which maintains a

Beyonce's song is purged of gender politics. The chained men in Lady's
video are replaced by seemingly random animals in Beyonce's.

database of worldwide female representation, ranks the United States 69th worldwide.

By claiming, erroneously, that girls run the world, Beyonce supports and legitimates the unjust and unequal status quo. Despite all her posturing and declarations of female strength, Beyonce is an apologist for male-dominated society. In Girls (Who Run the World), she sings "to other men that respect what I do/please accept my shine." Still desiring male validation and acceptance, Beyonce doesn't truly want a society run by women, nor does she want real gender parity. Instead, Beyonce is satisfied with sexism with a human face, so to speak. Girls (Run the World), like most of Beyonce's ouvre, promotes the nominally empowering, apolitical message. But implicit in the lyrics is an acceptance, and even reinforcement, of the sexist status quo.

Lady is the most daring female rapper in the world because she appropriates the male language of sexual domination and promotes a vision of a female dominated society. But by using the same images and words as male rappers do, she is pushed to the margins of contemporary popular culture. It's time for the mediators of culture - radio hosts, MCs, and even artists themselves - to promote a genuinely powerful female rapper who is willing to confront our misogynistic society on it's own terms. Influential DJs, like Funkmaster Flex, Cipha Sounds, and Peter Rosenberg should take the lead and give Lady the respect and air-time she deserves. 

Quotes of the Day - March 8, 2012

I finished Power and the Idealists last night, but I didn't have time to write about my favorite passages and  quotes. The second half of the book is fantastic (the book itself has become one of recent favorites). I found myself dog-earring nearly every page, so at one point I chose to highlight only the very most noteworthy or important passages, which, of course, turned out to be nearly half the book.

One of things I like so much about Paul Berman is his ability to see across ideological divides and recognize the similarities between ideologies that at first glance seem opposed to each other. In the chapter "The Muslim World and the American Left", Berman points out the similarities between religious social conservatism and tiers-mondiste Marxism.

"But Nafisi's description of classroom debate suggests eomthign else. The diatribe by this one student, holding up his copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald criminal text, is not at all a seventh century speech, nor a speech by a peasant from the hills, herding his goats...This speech enunciates some of the principles established by the extreme right in Europe long ago - the notion of an authentic culture under insidious attack by evil cultural forces from abroad" (pg. 162). 

"Then again, these ideas have sometimes made themselves perfectly at home on the Marxist left, in a different version. Mike Gold was F. Scott Fitzgerald's contemporary and rival, and in the early nineteen thirties Gold used to issue literary interdictions in precisely this condemnatory spirit on behalf of the American Communist Party - to maintain the proletarian purity of the slum-dwellers and factory workers, and to rescue revolutionary ideas from bourgeois contamination. Even the sexual imagery in the Iranian student's classroom speech - 'a rape of our culture' strikes a familiar note" (pgs. 162-3).

In the same vein, Berman points out the ideological parochialism in which the students of the New Left found themselves immersed during their infatuation with Maoism.

"American New Leftists cited Mao Zedong's 'taks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art', a much-thumbed essay in its time. (This is the essay where Mao asks, 'Literature and art for whom?' and ends up by calling for the destruction of 'feudal, bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, liberalistic, individualistic, nihilistic, art-for-art's sake, aristocratic, decadent or pessimistic, and every other creative mood that is alien to the masses of the people and the proletariat.')" (pg. 163).

Maybe this puts me off because of my affinity for "bourgeois" art or because I want so desperately to see a revived version of Socialisme ou Barbarie. But, I really have a hard time getting behind Mao's statement. Without waxing philosophical about the inherent beauty of art, I think it's sufficient to say that a world in which all art is directed towards the singular task of "revolution" would be a very monochromatic world.

Berman again takes a shot at certain segments of the radical Left when he discusses the similarities between the Left's fetishism of insurrection and the Right's fetishism of the glory days of yore. That is, both the far Left and Right have the tendency to become violently infatuated with fantasy.

"Fantasy role-playing, it occurs to me, is the defining quality of all totalitarian movements and systems - role-playing by totalitarian militants who feel entirely justified in liquidating everyone who fails to have a proper role in the grand tableau of the reigning mythology" (pg. 164).

Burrowing deeper into territory covered by Hannah Arendt in the Origins of Totalitarianism, Berman even hints at the problems of vanguardism - it is predicated upon a kind of condescension that implies the ignorance or weakness of the general population. It's a violent kind of elitism, in short.

"That is why the totalitarians always end up slaughtering masses of people - out of frustration at the huma race's stubborn refusal to be anything but the human race, and out of the lust for thrills, and out of a realization that only in death can the mythic universe be fully achieved" (pg. 170).

 Through his discussion of the work and thought of Kanan Makiya, Berman nicely points out the value of the Enlightenment.

"Makiya went on, 'We in the Middle east had taken over certain themes from the West wholesale - Germanic nationalism, Marxism, the imperative toward industrialization - but we'd never experienced the Enlightenment, in which these themes needed to be grounded if they were going to make any real sense" (pg.178).

I always get a big frustrated when certain Leftists attempt to argue that the Enlightenment was just another page in the book of bourgeois, patriarchal domination. Whether or not the title of heirs to the Enlightenment has been taken by opponents of progress and an egalitarian society, it's still necessary to acknowledge the intellectual heritage of today's flavors of Leftism.

Slavoj Zizek often refers to (like in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g) Soviet communism as the greatest moral catastrophe - greater than Nazism, because at least with the fascists you knew things were going to be horrific. With the Soviets you were told there would be utopia, but in reality there was exactly the opposite. Since I feel a kind of personal connection to left-wing history, it always upsets me when atrocities are committed in the name of ideals to which I am sympathetic. Berman, again while discussing Makiya's Republic of Fear, neatly describes this feeling" (pg. 182).

"So here again...was a book by somebody who had enlisted in the left-wing student movements of circa 1968 in order to fight against imperialism and capitalism - only to stumble on the existence of another kind of oppression, which was even worse, and which he knew from his own experience and not merely from his readings."

I typically describe myself as a libertarian leftist - opposed to both the tyranny of the market and the tyranny of the state - so I've always been sympathetic to the work of Socialism ou Barbarie. That Sartre thought it necessary to disparage them is certainly disappointing. There is a tendency on the Left, as there is in most ideological camps, to limit the diversity of thought and criticism. Sartre's behavior is a perfect example.

"Sartre attacked the libertarian left of the nineteen-fifties as 'dirty rats,' referring to the Socialism or Barbarism comrades, who were busily trying to reveal Stalinism for what it was; and Sartre's reading public, which was vast, turned away from the dirty rats" (pg. 183).

It's fairly common for Americans to consider Islamic fundamentalism to be an antiquated notion, one that conjures up images of Saladin and the defeats of the crusades. For those in more Jewish milieus, like the one in which I've been raised, Islamic fundamentalism carries with it a similar old-world connotation. So, I was totally surprised to see Berman, by way of Azar Nafisi (here's the article he quotes: http://www.tnr.com/article/muslim-allies-septmember-11-taliban-islam ) describe Islamic fundamentalism as a modern conception.

"In that same February 2003, Nafisi published an essay in the New Republic making a simple observation: 'What we call Islamic fundamentalism, for lack of a better word, is a modern phenomenon, in the same way fascism and Communism, both products of the West, are modern'" (pg. 190). 

A significant portion of the anti-imperialist Left exploded when Christopher Hitchens used the phrase "fascism with an Islamic face" to describe Islamic fundamentalism, but I think it's a remarkably apt description; it puts Islamic fundamentalism into the proper context and "deorientalizes" it. Islamic fundamentalism, then, no longer appears as a caricature of traditional Islam taken to the extreme. Rather, it is seen as it it truly is - a synthesis of totalitarianism with the theocratic currents of Islam and as an unequivocally modern construction.


The other insight that, when revealed, nearly made me exclaim out loud, was the description of Daniel Cohn-Bendit's comparison between the U.S.'s Bush Doctrine and the grandiosity of the Bolsheviks.

"'You want to change the whole world!' he said. "Like them, you claim that history will show that truth is on your side. You want the world to follow the American dream, and you believe that you know what is best for ... all other countries.' Here was arrogance. 'Because you are Americans, you have the biggest army in the world - you can do anything you want. This is revolutionary hubris'" (pg. 195).

With all the mendacity and veiled imperial aspirations, Bush Doctrine era U.S. rhetoric and the rhetoric of the Bolsheviks do indeed seem remarkably familiar, not to mention the fact that many of the neoconservatives in the Bush administration owed their intellectual foundations to the work of ex-Trotskyites like Irving Kristol.


Perhaps it is just the exalting tone in which Berman discusses Kouchner, but I found myself genuinely admiring the former French foreign minister. I'm certainly not a fan of Kouchner's preference for hierarchy, but I somehow associate with his former self a kind of pragmatic leftism that is sorely needed right now.

"But Kouchner remained a little skeptical on some other outcomes of the uprisings and the countercultural spirit. Maybe his own leftism always retained a few habits and assumptions of a slightly earlier age, pre-'68 - a leftism that insisted on being practical, more concerned with measurable consequences, less interested in mere attitudes and styles" (pg. 226).

I also chose to highlight the above quotation because it seems to me to be a subtle criticism of the "lifestylism" that resulted as the revolutionary momentum from '68 waned. Though maybe not the what Berman means by describing Kouchner's leftism as practical, I see it as the reasonable but still radical counterweight to the old maxim of "turn on, tune in, drop out" - which brought nothing constructive to the campaigns for socioeconomic justice during that time.


Lenin famously slandered Left-communism as "an infantile disorder." I think the same can be said for left-wing tribalism and left-wing sympathies for Arab nationalism in particular; it completely defies the corner stone of the Left - internationalism.

"The ancient left-wing principle that used to go under the name of internationalism showed no concern at all for the integrity of duly constituted states. 'Workers of the world' meant workers without borders" (pg. 244).

Internationalism desperately needs to be reemphasized. Leftists marching alongside Islamic fundamentalists or locking arms with totalitarian nationalists is, if anything, a sign of a very "infantile disorder." In recounting the debate between Cohn-Bendit and Kouchner, Berman puts this pointedly.

"The mass marches against the war, the placards, the slogans, the chanting crowds - every last aspect of this movement reminded him of the grossest errors of the left-wing past. 'In our generation,' [Kouchner] told Cohn - Bendit, 'antiwar marches used to offer protection to the worst Stalinist regimes, the most frightening massacres, and because of this, I wouldn't let myself take part anymore - nor would you, Danny. God knows how often we heard people shout, "Down with Bush!" But I didn't hear even the tiniest cry, "Down with Saddam!" And let's not even mention - or rather, we had better mention - the anti-semitic incidents" (pg. 265).

From now on, every mention of ANSWER will remind of the above passage.

I shall close this post with the words of Joschka Fischer, who so eloquently explained the necessity for alter-globalization, rather than anti-globalization. Anti-globalization carries with it a sense of opposition to progress and a rejection of the need to expand civil liberties for all people. And, after all, we cannot halt globalization, we can only attempt to change it; anti-globalization promises us nothing, while alter-globalization promises the co-option of the very mechanisms that seek to co-opt expressions of liberty.

'"It depends,' he said at Princeton, 'even more on the globalization of fundamental values, such as human rights, respect for life, religious and cultural tolerance, the equality of all human beings, of men and women, the rule of law and democracy and a share of the blessings of education, progress and social security...positive globalization is the real strategic response to the deadly challenge of a new totalitarianism" (pg. 285).

Millennials, Obama, and the Status Quo

In his essays, such as "Generation Sell" and "Generational Conflict", William Deresiewicz seems focused on understanding the social and political ramifications of what he calls "the commercial personality" - the mannerisms and ethos adopted enthusiastically by the Millennials in their attempts to fix "the world by making things and selling them." Yet, in his exegesis of contemporary consumer and youth culture, Deresiewicz actually explains how and why Barack Obama was elected, and why the Left shouldn't have expected anything from him in the first place.

Indeed, for a while now, Deresiewicz has been complaining about kids these days. The Millennials, he gripes in a recent essay, are "motivated more by narcissism than anything else." At a time when the country is in crisis, young people have withdrawn from politics in favor of social entrepreneurship. They see politics and activism as destructive and would rather work outside the system than change it from within, take it over, or even destroy it. Taught from a young age to play nice with others in the sandbox, the Millennials favor consensus, and shirk from confrontation. Thus, any dissent or disruption of everyday life to draw attention to a problem is thought by Millennials to be "uncool" and unproductive; agitating for a cause doesn't change the world, but creating some sort of socially beneficial entrepreneurial venture does. To illustrate this, Deresiewicz writes:

"A Stanford professor told me about two internships that were open to students at his college last year. One, for a small East Bay nonprofit, drew several hundred applications. The other, for the office of the Speaker of the California State Assembly—the second-most-powerful person in the eighth-largest economy on the planet—drew three."

Deresiewicz's actual gripe with the Millennials is not just that they are narcissistic and consciously apathetic, but that they have eschewed the most logical avenue to effectuate change - politics. But the problem lurking beneath the surface is not the self-aggrandizement and narcissism implicit in the Millennials' belief that entrepreneurial activity rather than politics can result in meaningful societal change. The problem is the word "change" itself. 

Barack Obama was elected as the candidate of change, supported ardently by the vast majority of Millennials. Young, multi-racial, fresh - Barack Obama was one of them. He had stylish posters with the hipster stamp of approval thanks to Shepard Fairey, a presence on social media, and a slogan behind which anyone raised in the era scheduled play-dates could rally: CHANGE. Obama's candidacy made it acceptable for Millennials to engage, albeit cautiously, in the political process.  But why?

The rallying cry of change carried with it none of the baggage that had made politics so untenable for Millennials. It was vague but generally inspiring, and suggested action without specifying direction. Obama's candidacy embodied the characteristics Deresiewicz sees as lamentable in the Millennials: "no anger, no edge, no ego." It was as if the Obama campaign team had lifted the slogan from some California start-up, which naturally made Obama the favorite candidate of those most enamored with the cult of entrepreneurship that has become the social creed of the Millennials. The way Obama appealed to these young voters - with the incessant repetition of  CHANGE to the point that it became a sort of mantra - should have been a warning that Obama's presidency was destined to be as bland, effete, and inoffensive as any Millennial who thinks his or her newfangled water filtration gadget will save the world.

When Barack Obama campaigned with his platform of CHANGE, his candidacy did not suggest a paradigmatic shift or systemic reform.  Instead, his candidacy represented merely an aesthetic change and, for the Millennials, a change from leadership by the older generation to leadership by the newer generation. Equipped with saccharine and banally optimistic rhetoric, as well as savvy marketing, Obama presented a packaged promise of a somehow nondescript political future. This remarkable power the Obama campaign had over young voters (read: Millennials) was primarily due to the lack of direction suggested by the word "change."

By virtue of its lack of direction, change implies neither revolutionary nor reactionary movement. And, due to its lack of specificity, a call for change is essentially a call for the maintenance of the status quo, albeit with a superficial alteration.  This is because a call for change in the language of today's politicians is actually a call for exchange - of issues, compromises, constituents, and anything to maintain the status quo. Change does not herald the arrival of something new; it simply notes the exchange of an idea or policy from one hand to another. The healthcare plan put forward by the Obama administration is the best example of this. Initially a Heritage Foundation counter-plan to Hillarycare, the idea of an individual mandate first belonged to those on the right. Current presidential candidate Mitt Romney instituted this plan in his homestate of Massachusetts. But then change happened. Lo and behold, the individual mandate had switched hands and the best deal for private insurance companies in the history of mankind was championed by the president many assumed would be the most progressive in a century. 

Many on Left have been disappointed with the way President Obama's first term has played out. In 2008, CHANGE appeared as a form of salvation from the nightmare of the Bush years, but it has been translated by Pres. Obama into few if any political gains.  Liberals projected onto Obama their desires for progressive change, most of which have not been realized. With Deresiewicz's analysis of the Millennials in mind, Pres. Obama's inaction should come as no surprise. 

As much as liberals would like to believe otherwise, Obama's "change" promised nothing in the first place. He did not advocate for progress, which would suggest an alteration of the status quo. And he certainly did not advocate for reaction, which would constitute an attempt to undo reforms that had previously been made. Obama offered essentially no direction; the change he promised was solely aesthetic, designed to put a human face on a status quo that was becoming increasingly unpalatable for many Americans.  For Millennials, this was all they wanted - politics without the contention, debate without anger, and politicians without ego. 

The birth of the Tea Party movement and the recent conflagrations at Occupy Wall Street protests show that the American public has grown tired with the status quo - tired of the exchange of old ideas dressed up in the language of change.  The partisans on the Left and the Right, much to the chagrin of many Millennials, want direction; they want to be participants in the grand clash of ideology, as old as the state itself, between reaction and revolution. Naturally, the Millennials are opposed even the very recognition of this clash, and not just because it violates their general rule of non-confrontation. 

The Millennials have become remarkably successful because of their docility, eagerness to conform, and nearly unthinking respect for authority. Reaction and revolution alike would threaten the Millennials' acquired privilege. Reaction, with its accompanying austerity, would strip them of their privilege by increasing indebtedness and inequality. Revolution, or more pragmatically progress, would negate their relative privilege through redistributive policy. The Millennials want none of this, so they vote for change because they know that it will not alter the status quo, but for a few aesthetic shakeups here and there.