Originally Posted by
Surf
This is the point I was going to make. And shit, that video was a lot and I'm still not finished with it. The way a couple of the Panther Party members ended up is wild but anyway.
Hip-Hop has meant a lot to me, overwhelmingly more positive but the older I get I realize some of the perpetuated bs was funky too. I'm not going as far as to say 'the industry' pushed a certain narrative, idk. This was an art form originated by disadvantaged but talented young Black males and the roots of that art came with baggage. When you target audience is droves of hetro males, that body image didn't figure per sea but I understand the point that the content of a lot of the music, was more adult that it had a right to be at times. The early 90's... yo, what can I say. The sexualization among the youth at that time was a lot, pressures were around a lot, biker shorts in the videos was a lot. Girls grew up quick and there have always been pressure from other brothas. Not just to have a girlfriend but to push it as far as you could. Some cats folks warned them of the ills, some didn't or had the blinders on, some parents let them figure it out, some had bad examples at the crib.
I can put only so much on Hip-Hop at the end of the day but amongst peers, you couldn't always tell the bluster from the real. I'm public school. Seemed like a good number of real lol. I feel everybody knew that one dude that was supposedly knockin' it down on the regular in 11th grade, I knew a bunch of them. 'Sex, Lies and Videotape' wasn't just a movie.
As far as the extreme parts of it, to me, that's some 1% shit in a lot of ways in practice.