More Power to You

One of the most famous rappers, Jay-Z vowed to remove the word “bitch” to describe woman after the birth of daughter Blue Ivy Carter. He has probably realized that he was being somewhat sexist during his rapping career only after the birth of his daughter. Rappers do not realize that they should have been respecting women from the start, which possibly shows how he was actually not raised to be a man and respect women. Although he used the terms and shared the thoughts in his music to express extortion of woman, after the realization that he would not want a man to disrespect his daughter, he changed his whole views. He then goes on openly telling NY Daily News, "Before I got in the game, made a change, and got rich/ I didn't think hard about using the word bitch/I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it/Now with my daughter in this world I curse those that give it. No man will degrade her, or call her name/I'm so focused on your future, the degradation has passed." http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-01-16/news/30633543_1_jay-z-beyonc-poem

 Taking into consideration, Society has now become a custom to use sex as acceptance. Sometimes rappers mention "bitches" and sex because rap has evolved into just being about that. They can disrespect every single woman and the audience can be perfectly fine when done so. Society does mold rap to certain communities to bring up woman and sex to disrespect. Not all rappers are the same. Rapper Common, propels the cultural downfalls and raps about the issues, and problems that his community are exploited to. Every rapper comes from the "bottom" and have now rised to success, yet common is one of the only rappers that focuses about his people rather than "hoes" and sex.

Common focuses on the hardships of people's lives and can rap about the things African Americans go though, and not focus on how he gets girls. For example, in his song Testify, it is noticeable that he used a woman in the video, but this time he uses her to tell the story of something so severe and is realistic to show what actually happens to people in actual life.

-Stephanie.