“I WANT TO MAKE IT CLEAR: I LOVE HIP-HOP."
These days, it is getting easier and easier to criticize hip-hop for its skewed portrayal of black culture, its hypersexualized images of women, and its rampant homophobia. Easier to criticize the producers and executives who denigrate black culture for commercial gain. Easier to criticize the lyrics, the videos, the concerts. In Beyond Beats and Rhymes, however, filmmaker Byron Hurt forces us to examine our own complicity in the marketing and consumption of hip-hop by showing how mainstream hip-hop constrains men and women, black and white. The documentary avoids the cheap shots and straw men that would be so easy to find with out-of-context sound bites and street corner ambushes.
Hurt opts instead to explore hip-hop from the inside out, through sustained discussions with hip-hop artists—professional and amateur—and producers, and honest interviews with consumers and academics. Tied together with the director’s introspective narration and insightful archival footage—everything from Hurt’s flattop days as a Northwestern football player in the early 1990s to scenes from Birth of a Nation—the film is a nuanced discussion on the challenges and triumphs of hip-hop. It is clear throughout the film that Hurt is looking for constructive change on a personal, painful journey to reclaim the music he loves.
"WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST WALK AROUND AND SMILE AT EACH OTHER?"
Mainstream rap has become synonymous with the commodification of women, exploiting females’ bodies for commercial gain. But rarely do we think of the ways in which the black American entertainment industry works to commercialize black masculinity in order to move records, boost sales, and draw in white male listeners. Men become objects in much the same way that women do, and the music serves to create and reinforce a set of expectations and behaviors that are ultimately destructive for both sexes. Hurt describes black masculinity in rap music as a box, a prison that limits the movement, growth, and creative expression of black males. Aggression and anger play themselves out in the form of sexual assault, abuse, and gang violence, only to be codified in the next new release. People, especially non-blacks first being exposed to “black culture” through hip-hop, come to expect young black men to adhere to a certain set of behaviors, and black men come to expect it of themselves and each other. Hurt’s interviews with aspiring rappers show an artistic environment where homosexuality is a taboo, but rape isn’t.
Many of the interviewees point to the larger culture—the American love affair with guns and burly, heterosexual men, fighting to protect home and country that makes violent hip-hop emotionally and commercially attractive. Rapper Jadakiss, in fact, seems particularly confused by the concern over hypermasculinity: “You watch movies? What kind of movies do you watch?” he asks the interviewer, referencing the violence and masculine posturing that pervades American blockbuster films. Hurt makes it clear, though, that this American archetype has been largely distorted in hip-hop culture, and in black culture in general. It is true that hip-hop arose as a response to systematic urban violence, economic depression, and powerlessness in the face of structural change and racial antagonism, but the film makes it clear that the days of uplifting social commentary are largely gone and increasingly being replaced by anger and antagonism directed inwards—towards women, towards gays, and towards other black men. He brings up the rise of black animosity—where camaraderie among blacks has given way to short tempers, feuds, and murders, only to be exploited in battle performances and hip-hop promotion.
"I KNOW HE'S NOT TALKING TO ME."
The objectification of women does get another look later in the film, but not in the way one might expect. Hurt spares no words when describing the effect of hip-hop on women, particularly black women. He frames it in terms of victimization: rape, physical abuse, and sexual assault. Instead of merely opining on footage from Nelly’s “Tip Drill” video—in which the rapper slides a credit card in a woman’s behind—Hurt turns his cameras on young men and women at Black Entertainment Television’s (BET) Spring Bling spring break concert event to see how the behaviors celebrated in hip-hop have influenced gender relations outside of video sets. As the film reveals, there often seems to be no line between flirtation and assault in interactions between men and women. In one interview, a man justifies his use of words like “bitch” and “ho” to describe the women at the event, saying that they dress and act the part; the women there weren’t “sisters,” but willing sex objects, and they had it coming. While this segment alone might have been enough for many filmmakers, Hurt does not let the women off so easy.
One scene is particularly effective, for it has the makings of a farce: A woman and her friends, in bikinis and shorts that barely hide the matching bottoms, speak into the camera about how they are exempt from the exploitation and denigration of black women in hip-hop videos. “I know he’s not talking to me [when they refer to women as bitches or hos],” one says, continuing, “We are classy women” just trying to enjoy the weather. The camera then pans out to show men—at least three—with video cameras pointed at the woman’s backside and those of her equally scantily clad friends. The men were taping these women’s asses in real time, some on recording equipment that could have rivaled that of the filmmaker. It was serious. And it happened over and over again. While some women were up to modeling for the cameras, others screamed and tried to assault the aspiring filmmakers. It was clear that the behavior of some women was producing expectations for other women, giving rise to a dynamic just as confining and just as commercialized as the branded masculinity offered in hip-hop. This dynamic confirmed that the treatment of only a few video girls can reflect on all black and brown women, whether they want it to or not.
"OUR MICROPHONE TO THE WORLD."
Hurt recognizes the commercial pressures facing contemporary hip-hop artists and urges his audience to raise their expectations and think more critically about the effects of hip-hop lyrics, images, and artist behavior on their own lives. “The real change will come from consumers who demand it, who boycott it,” he said in a Q&A session after the film. In interviews with aspiring artists outside of a hip-hop conference in New York, Hurt took issue with the rappers over their lyrics. In response, the young men explained that they could not find producers or record labels who wanted to hear the truth. As one man noted, record deals aren’t forthcoming to those who “speak righteous.” Another man jokingly suggested that instead of rapping about selling drugs, he could tell the truth, in his songs: “I sold water last summer—holla!” The humor and insight of these men, as captured by Hurt, didn’t match the expletive-laden, angry demos they had in hand, but the men nonetheless felt that they had few other options for distribution or airtime; the overwhelming sentiment was that hip-hop artists had to conform or be marginalized.
It is important to take back hip-hop from the commercial exploitation of black violence, poverty, and death because, apart from the destructive consequences the music has for blacks themselves, this is what the world sees of black culture when we export Top 40 music. Ultimately, Hurt is hopeful that his film and the conversations it inspires will help change the state of hip-hop today. The innovative and genuine approach of the documentary seems to be doing that already, sparking discussion on mailing lists and eliciting an encore showing at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. As Hurt put it at the Q&A session, “We have to raise our voices, expect more from artists, more from fellow consumers, more from corporate structures. We have to do what Frederick Douglass said: “Agitate, agitate, agitate!” [We have to] push, prod, and ask questions; not settle for anything less. Continue to raise awareness. I don’t want hip-hop to die; I want to breathe life into it.”
That’s love.
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