![]() She said the feud unfairly made Nelly an example to fire up urban radio stations and music writers across the country. A spokeswoman for Universal Records, Wendy Washington, complained that the charity event fell apart just because women at Spelman were looking for a scapegoat. "Bottom line, a woman let him do that," he said. "I do think sometimes the total blame is put on artists themselves." ![]() I'm putting the blame on the women," said Kenneth Lavergne, a senior who was loudly booed by the 300 or so women at the meeting.Īnother student, Bradley Walker from Clark Atlanta University, talked about the credit-card swiping. The issue especially incensed some men studying at Morehouse, a black men's college closely affiliated with Spelman. At a recent meeting at Spelman to decide what should be done to protest rap music, some pointed out that women in the videos know what they're doing and are paid to do it. Not all students agreed that rappers are to blame, or that the images were harmful to society. "Nelly just didn't want to come here and face the criticism for the choices he's made." This is something we have to see and listen to on a daily basis," said senior Shanequa Yates. Never before, students say, have the portrayals of black women been so hypersexual and explicit. What's new, students say, is an explosion of almost-X-rated videos passed around on the Internet or shown late at night on cable channels like Black Entertainment Television, also known as BET. Misogyny in pop music, especially hip-hop, has been around for years. Shows men throwing money between women's legs and women simulating sex acts with each other. ![]() But the rapper canceled the appearance after hearing that a protest was in the works because of his videos - especially "Tip Drill," the one with the credit card, which also Nelly planned to visit Spelman earlier this month for a charity event enlisting students for a bone marrow registry. Here at Spelman, the most famous black women's college in the country, a feud has erupted over images of women in rap videos, sparking a petition drive and phone campaigns. ![]() While BET may have the final say on the final edit of The Message, this cover of Tha Liberator, from 2004, is a reminder that even Black Entertainment Television can't whitewash HipHop history!ĪTLANTA (AP) - Maybe it was the credit card that rap superstar Nelly swiped through a woman's backside in a recent video. And whether the network wants to take credit or not, Uncut provided a nationwide platform for similarly ridiculous, poorly produced, equally offensive videos by long forgotten local rappers and whatever low-rent strippers they could entice out of the local booty bars. So it's good to know that the powers that BET have better sense than their predecessors, but the fact is Tip Drill would never have gained the notoriety it did had it not been for Uncut. So back to last week's episode - the Tweet from someone associated with the production read, "We had to get permission from the top of the totem pole to show clips from the Tip Drill video which is banned from BET air." Nevertheless, whomever was responsible for such decisions at BET took Uncut off the air in 2006. But then one would be totally mistaken, because Tip Drill was the video that made BET's uncensored late-night video show Uncut famous. In theory Tip Drill was the antithesis of everything one would assume the Black Entertainment Network stands for. During one of the segments a clip was shown of Nelly's infamously explicit Tip Drill, a video that took HipHop sexploitation to another level by setting the bar so low that even Paul Wall, creepin' like a caterpillar (cuz he's low to the Earth), couldn't pass beneath.Įverything that has ever been wrong with HipHop is on full display in the video, which is the perfect storm of God-awful lyrics, buffoonery, and female degradation. Part three of The Message dealt with, among other things, misogyny in HipHop and featured various video montages to illustrate the point. Last week, while watching part three of BET's amazing four-part HipHop documentary The Message, I stumbled across an interesting Tweet that sent me back to Tha Liberator archive.
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