As a form of resistance, music, and more recently, hip-hop, has been used as a creative channel enabling the sharing of experiences. It is a space to express one’s voice against injustices, thus constructing a new form of political and social ideology. Furthermore, it is also used as a means of personal reflection, through which one can empower a personal identity while simultaneously constructing collective solidarity. However, much of hip-hop’s expressions have been boldly centered on a black masculine identity that has subsisted of racial and gender markers. This hyper-masculine style has maintained a distinct exploitation of women, and in particular, black women, thereby reinforcing their subordination of both ‘woman’ and ‘other’ as culturally normative. Recently, however, female rappers have emerged on the scene with conviction, actively contesting this male domination using their attitudes and talent. Among these artists is Lauryn Hill, whose role as a musician has surpassed the cultural sphere and into the space of vernacular intellectual. Reflecting the experiences of black womanhood, Hill empowers men and women alike in deconstructing patriarchal social structures while also embodying traditional black spirituality.
Hill’s first big break onto the music scene came with the Fugees, a group known for their racial and political overtones. It was Hill’s involvement with the Fugees that propelled her to fame status, and gave her the ability to spread her political and social messages to a huge following through vernacular (Grant, 2003). Following this, Hill released her first solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, a title that was seemingly meant to reflect the ways in which society had failed her both socially and intellectually. This debut album not only received critical acclaim, but also won her five Grammy awards. Interestingly, her award for album of the year was the first given to a hip-hop album (Ogbar, 92). She is known for her neo-soul approach to hip-hop, expressing her roots using a religious consciousness. Much of Hill’s music speaks to issues including freedom, creation, choice, relationships, authenticity, and sexual agency. Often, Hill maintains a theme of connectedness of these aspects of life throughout her music, mapping a strong womanist consciousness rooted in black diaspora history and culture. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she recognizes music as a powerful social force, saying, “We’re in this war…. There’s always a spiritual war, but there’s a battle for the souls of the black folk, and just folks in general, and the music has a lot to do with it” (Touré, 1999).
An iconic image of female empowerment, Lauryn Hill subverts the combative style of many MC’s, which has stemmed from an attempt to assert dominance and masculinity. As Ogbar describes, “These MC’s have carefully formulated a fanciful world of self-absorbed conspicuous consumption, profound sexual prowess, fearlessness, pugilistic skills, and an uncanny willingness to kill anyone who attempts to get in their way” (77). A number of early female rappers, such as Foxy Brown and Lil’ Kim, attempted to appropriate the male voice by adopting the dominant misogynist sexual tropes that pervade hip-hop, in which men become the sexual objects to be exploited and used (Ogbbar, 90). However, mirroring the arrogant behavior of male rappers does not present the world with any kind of resistance to the social, political, or economic conditions these women faced before their music careers. Instead, these public images simply strengthen hegemonic constructions of both the female identity and black identity as a whole.
In her song “Adam Lives in Theory” from the album Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Hill speaks to the simultaneous exploitation of women and black people alike. Hill appropriates the biblical story of Adam and Eve, using traditional scripture to describe modern day issues. She writes this song without any discernable chorus; it’s as if she’s telling a story. She writes,
“Caught up in emotion/Burning in her devotion/To the king of exploitation in the field/She handed him her virtue/Cause he told her ‘I won’t hurt you’/So she lay with him to see how good it feels”.
Here, Hill speaks to the ways in which black women have been manipulated at the hands of black men who felt the pressure compensate for their powerlessness by reflecting the very same social structure that has controlled them. Jeffrey Ogbar speaks to Hill’s capacity for exposing these power-laden social structures, “…including exhortations to women to demand respect from men and for men to assume responsibility and maturity in their relations with both women and men (92). However, while gender relations are constant throughout the song, the underlying story remains between “the white man” and a kind of “mother Africa” and the corrupt relationship between the oppressor and oppressed. Hill writes,
“Making pilgrimages, thinking he’s religious/Like he’s got all the light, and no one else/ He takes the unsuspected/Cause he knows they’re not connected/And he shows them how to be just as he is/Virtually real, and commercially appealed”.
In these lines, Hill expresses a post-modern outlook, deconstructing the process of colonization, domination, and capitalism using Christian tradition to present the Afro-American experience.
Central to black feminism, and crucial to the struggles against racism is collective identity politics. Through music, black women experience a kind of consciousness-raising, wherein they learn both to love themselves (feminism) as well as expand their understanding and loyalty towards shared history, culture, religion, and ethnicity. As Patricia Hill Collins writes, “Preoccupied with notions of the ‘self’ at the expense of the ‘social’, many classrooms as a result embrace a impoverished personal identity politics of simple storytelling that mimics the personal politics of wider American society…” (185). Instead, for many young black women, music becomes their classroom, by which they learn not only the intersectionality of their lived experiences, but also begin to carve a space for themselves where collective solidarity meets community action. Lauryn Hill contributes to this, using her music to express an African American woman’s voice as autobiographical in both personal and collective.
In a song entitled “Everything is Everything”, also from the album Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Hill speaks to the masses, encouraging them to recognize the social structures within which they have been living, and furthermore, to envision a positive future for themselves. She writes, “I wrote these words for everyone who struggles in their youth/Who won’t accept deception, instead of what is truth/It seems we lose the game/Before we even start to play/Who made these rules?/We’re so confused/Easily led astray/Let me tell ya that”. In these lines, Hill speaks to those children whose opportunities have been limited by the circumstances in which they have been born. “And the ones on top, won’t make it stop/So convinced that they might fall/Let’s love ourselves and we can’t fail/To make a better situation/Tomorrow, our seeds will grow/All we need is dedication/Let me tell ya that”. Hill promotes the power of solidarity, the power of collective identity as having the potential to cultivate success. “Now hear this mixture, where hip-hop meets scripture/Develop a negative into a positive picture”. These words resonate with the value of music as having the capacity to teach and thus empower African-Americans as a group to realize their potential as active participants in the struggle for equality.
Bibliography
Collin, Patricia Hill, From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), 2006
Farred, Grant. What’s My Name?. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Ogbar, Jeffrey O.G., Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007), 72-104.
Touré, “Lady Soul”. Rolling Stone, 18 February 1999, 46.
Hill, Lauryn. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Sony Records, 1998.
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