Saturday, April 05, 2008

Hip Hop. One Of The Last Bastions of Heterosexuality

Wearing a stunning white dress with a plunging neckline, Beyoncé Knowles said, "I do" to rap legend Jay-Z in an intimate ceremony - and then the "Crazy in Love" pair partied to the wee hours.
Witnesses told Us magazine that the Grammy-winning singer's hair was done up in a half ponytail with ringlet curls, adorned with a white flower.
The two tied the knot on Jay-Z's Tribeca rooftop Friday night, People.com confirmed, and the first details started leaking out Saturday even as the couple still refused to confirm they had wed.
"It was amazing - very special, very private, very intimate," a source told Us. "Everyone had so much fun. It ended up being a wild party."

16 comments:

Submariner said...

Depends on what you mean by heterosexuality. Getting your hair braided and physical/emotional needs met by another man while in prison are just the surface.

Anonymous said...

huh?

Michael Fisher said...

DV...

"Hip Hop. One Of The Last Bastions of Heterosexuality"

Wishful thinking, DV.

CNu said...

Submariner ruthlessly pops a bubble of giddy dopaminergic delusion.....,

Anonymous said...

Jay Z (and me) are making marriage cool. Makin' young niggas look up and say, "I wanna be like THAT brotha. I wanna have a hot sista on my arm."

Denmark Vesey said...

Au Contraire Mon Merveilleux Freres,

Your grasp of heterosexuality is limited and your decipherment of Hip Hop symbolism is antiquated.

In an era of competing mythology and anti-heterosexual propaganda a pair of Hip Hop icons, play the role of ancient Greek Gods in an Athenian tragedy. Love. Romance. Seduction. Matrimony.

Were it not for the Prophet Barack Obama and his lovely wife Michelle, Beyonce and Jay-Z would be left alone to counterbalance the pop culture iconography of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Submariner said...

Peruse the pages of any major hip hop publication. You'll not quickly find any description of heterosexuality that includes marriage. From his perch on the golf course or the veranda of his island estate, DV uncritically imbibes hip hop's ambrosia of rugged individuality and relentlessly egocentric and dopamine infused passion. Indeed, he has said his rap icons don't embrace social responsibility. That is group think, something for plantation Negroes. Yet he proclaims Barack Obama, a community organizer (i.e. plantation overseer), God's son. He can't have it both ways. Or maybe he can, but that's dishonest.

My view of hip hop is that of a physician aboard an 18th Century slave ship. The stockholders in the Royal Africa Company would discuss the benefits of delivering natives from a savage land but the ship's doctor lived with smell of putrid flesh.

Young black people today are the fastest growing cohort of HIV carriers. When you take care of a young HIV infected man whose ass has decompensated down to the white meat overlying his tailbone, you get an unfiltered sense of hip hop's role as a "bastion of heterosexuality." When is the last time you heard a popular rap song advocating abstinence or marriage? Name a video that features a storyline of young brother being sodomized while in jail and testing positive for HIV six months later. Is there a popular R & B single about a young woman contracting HIV and passing it along to her newborn?

No, ladies and gentlemen, sexuality in hip hop is a caricature. The overwhelming majority of the purveyors of hip hop culture, Jay Z included, are today's version of the tribal middlemen who facilitated the enslavement of their fellows in return for guns and European finery.

Michael Fisher said...

There are plenty of Hip Hop thugs and icons who get dicked up the ass on a regular, DV. Some of your greatest Hip Hop heroes you cited in the past are among them.

Denmark Vesey said...

Ah, come on Mike. Let's skip the Jerry Springer innuendo.

Unless you were there.


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Submariner said...

So, let me get this straight Sub, "Hip Hop" is responsible for the propensity of homosexuality and HIV in the black community?



No, and only the most seriously contorted logic could interpret my comment in that fashion.

You see, Denmark, your style lends itself to hyperbole and overreactions between superegoistic moralizing and id inspired vanity. Life and people aren't discrete categories that can be separated into homo or straight. Male rap and sports figures routinely get their bodies pierced and tattooed, hair braided, eyebrows tweezed and shaved, and nails manicured. Does a rapper and several male comrades engaging in group sex with a single female testify to gay liberation? Does a stylist applying makeup to Jay Z's face before a photo shoot or TV appearance make him suspect?

A while back the president of Iran told a group of Columbia students that there were no gays in his country. People laughed, but he was right. Like race, sexual activity or preference as the defining feature of a human being is a Western construct that arrived late in history. Designations like gay and straight aren't assigned by neutral application of objective criteria. It's very much a product of when and where you are born.

Is a young adolescent experimenting with sex gay? Does a man who enjoys anal sex with a woman or having a female on top gay? Whatever your answer to these questions they are subjective and prone to disagreement.

You called Hip Hop a bastion of heterosexuality. Some people feel that way about the Catholic church. I said when you peer beneath the surface that 'heterosexuality' is a lot more variegated than what you and others acknowledge. I also said there are deadly consequences of heterosexual behavior among young blacks that go unmentioned but are very real. And nowhere in mainstream hip hop is marriage a lauded goal like having your clothing line or record company.

A flat earth advocate who says that heterosexual transmission of HIV is overestimated leaves me unmoved. India and Africa certainly may have a cohort of down low brothers who exacerbate the problem, but Michael Fumento belongs to a class of manipulable pseudointellectuals with a hidden agenda. It's very, very disheartening to see a remarkable guy like yourself include a weakling like that in your intellectual armor.

Last year I saw a quite striking, sexually active sixteen year old girl who was born with HIV. If I was in high school I would have stepped to her and who knows? Maybe I'd be the next man laid up in a nursing home with bed sores. I'm not blaming hip hop for the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections. I am saying that the artists function as a conduit for corporate predation in much the same way that way African compradors cooperated and profited from trafficking in slaves. They should know better.

If the slave is the most radically individual commodity ever produced, then your rap icon is its apogee.

Michael Fisher said...

"Unless you were there."

Unfortunately.

Getting high and drunk in a studio or back-stage setting makes a lot a undercover homos throw caution to the wind, DV.

Denmark Vesey said...

Mike,

Are you aint trying to tell us you let Flavor Flav hit it when ya'll was recording 911 Is A Joke are you?

Michael Fisher said...

As far as I know Flavor ain't a homo. And I've known him for almost 20 years.

And no, I'm thoroughly heterosexual. But I did have the unfortunate experience of walking in on a number of homo thugs in suction action. Rappers who've you declared your personal heroes.

Anonymous said...

My fiance has two relatives in the music business. We've talked about the industry before, and he told me without a blink, 'An unbelievable number of these thug rappers are hopelessly gay and practice in the underground to keep from getting noticed.'

Not once did I suspect that this "information" was based on jealousy over their success... just a grim reality of The State of America and Music today.

PS: Denmark - I'm a die hard reader, but I want to ask this...

Since you weren't there either, why do you argue so vehemently against the possibility that some of your rap favorites may be in the closet??

Denmark Vesey said...

Hey Anonymous. I like your style. You should post more often.

It's not that I doubt there is the occasional "rapper" that has performed a homosexual act.

However, I do object to vague categorical accusations of sodomy and oral copulation placed against entire groups of people, by cowards who couldn't know either way.

I mean, someone should ask Brother Mike, if rappers are any more prone to homosexual tendencies than concert promoters or currency traders.

You know .... "uhhh ... I once walked in on a concert promoter who was blowin' the Johnson of a booking agent. Therefor Concert Promoters and booking agents tend to be homo blah blah blahs ..."

As Bill Cosby would say "Come On People!".

Also Anonymous, between me and you.

I hate Playa Haters. Even educated articulate haters who are experts at coming up with grandiose conspiracy theories validating their hatred of men - who just simply got more game than them. (Casper vs Jay-Z. Casper vs Fiddy. Casper vs DV)

Jealousy and evil are cousins.

Let me know if I've shed some light on the method to my madness. I respect your objectivity.

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Anonymous said...

D.V. said: "Hey Anonymous. I like your style. You should post more often."

Actually, I do. I wanted to remain anony this time since I'm referring to somebody else's personal knowledge of homosexuality in hip hop. Alarming. I'll implicate myself and sign my posts all day long, but not by breeching the trust of another.. LOL

And between you and me, D.V., I also have little patience for "playa haters." I never subscribed to the "crabs in a barrel" school of clawing at the successful. My only complaint about individual success is any gain acquired by stealing from others.

And to agree with you, jealousy and evil are kissing cousins. hehe