Against the backdrop of magnificent hooks and hypnotic beats, tapper 50 Cent, whose "street cred" is cemented by his survival in spite of a reported nine gunshot blasts, boasts that he "is into havin' sex" but "ain't into makin' love."

On entertainment television, Snoop Dogg declares his desire to produce pornographic films and "become a conglomerate."

It was around the same time as Snoop's declaration that some Spelman College women had obviously had enough. When rap artist Nelly was planning a campus visit to promote his bone marrow education program, some students decided it would also be an opportune time to have a word with Nelly about the female imagery in his music videos. He respectfully declined.

The countless negative portrayals of Black women in hip-hop videos and song lyrics could be compiled on a very long list. And yet to some, it's taken a long time to engage the Black community in a serious discourse about the more divisive, derisive aspects of hip-hop music and culture.

CONVERSATIONS CONE TO CAMPUS

The most recent and most public discourse to address hip-hop's portrayal of Black women took place on the campus of Atlanta's Spelman College in February when Essence magazine and the Black women's college teamed up to hold a week-long forum that culminated with a town hall meeting titled "Take Back the Music" (see Black Issues, March 24).

But Columbia University professor Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley says the discourse has always been public and always intense.

"When a big media voice like Essence magazine jumps into the fray, it seems other media outlets are willing to pay attention," Kelley says.

For many, unbridled misogyny is perhaps the most dangerous of the genre's musical messages.

"It's not fair that these male rappers continue to demonize and brutalize women in songs and videos, and the female voices who try to challenge these characterizations are silenced. Producing lyrics and images that counter this misogyny is a step we can all take," said Moya Bailey, president of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance at Spelman, in a press release.

Women have been fighting against offensive lyrics and images for quite some time, says Kelley, pointing out that this conversation has been ongoing for nearly 25 years, "from the pioneering scholarship of Tricia Rose to the internal battles waged by female artists such as Queen Latifah, Yo-Yo, Dee Barnes, to name a few," he says.

Discourse on the complex debates that include issues of gender in hip-hop and Black popular culture generally now appears firmly entrenched into the "mainstream" of the academy's ivory towers. Since the 1990s, academic consideration of Black music and culture seems to have moved front and center, drawn into the fold from more marginalized outlying areas.

Initially, those college courses that considered popular culture focused on either Madonna, "the "Material Girl," or the Beatles. Last fall a Yale University two-day conference convened scholars to examine the life and work of pop star Michael Jackson. And in 2004, Syracuse University unveiled a course dedicated to hip-hop's Lil' Kim.

In the beginning of the 21st century, the study of hip-hop and Black popular culture occupies a vastly more significant space in the academic arena, demonstrating the degree to which Dr. Cornel West's notion of the "African Americanization" of American popular culture has taken hold. The famed Princeton professor has popularized the belief that the dynamics of "crossover appeal" are diminishing and contemporary Black artists don't necessarily have to sell well to Black audiences before being embraced by the White mainstream.

This phenomenon is remarkable in light of a recent spate of ruminations regarding the continued relevance of Black studies programs put in place at many colleges and universities across the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a direct result of the civil rights movement.

FEMINISM AND HIP HOP

The Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture (CSRPC), founded at the University of Chicago in 1994 by Dr. Michael Dawson, developed out of a collective of race studies scholars affiliated with the university who wanted to make their research both accessible and transformative to the surrounding communities. Now a permanent fixture at the university, the center was the recent setting for an unprecedented conference on feminism and hip-hop.

"The tone of the conference was not to bash (hip-hop artists)," says Rosalind Fielder, associate director of CSRPC. "This was a non-hostile setting to discuss the potential for transformation. People from all backgrounds were in attendance," she adds.

Fielder says the response prior to the conference itself was overwhelming, and an indication of the endeavor's pending success. "There was a lot of enthusiasm," she says about the 1,000 people who pre-registered and attended the conference that included presentations by activists, artists, film directors, students, hip-hop magazine editors and scholars, including Dr. Hazel V. Carby, Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Dr. Cheryl Keyes, Dr. Mark Anthony Neal and Dr. Rose.

"We hadn't anticipated the level of interest," Fielder says, adding that people from as far away as Australia expressed their desire to attend. Most importantly, says Fielder, the conference created an opportunity to open a real dialogue on a national scale among academics, artists and others from the entertainment industry.

"When these conversations have taken place (previously), they haven't necessarily included people in the industry," Fielder explains. "Many of the artists might have been surprised at the impact of their work."

Rose, chair and professor in the American studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of the 1994 Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, one of the first comprehensive academic works on rap music and culture, says perhaps the most significant outcome of the conference was its networking component.

"The gathering of amazingly widespread grassroots efforts mounted by Black women--often in concert with Black men--in the interest of creating spaces for the growth of a humanizing and collectively affirming hip-hop," was imperative, Rose says. "We need to create more of these kinds of networks as this will reveal that we are a significant force in hip-hop. (The conference) was an example of how the beauty and true creativity in hip-hop can be nourished even in the face of ubiquitous, destructive, negative corporate endorsed hip-hop," Rose says.

Rufus Barner, a first-year student at the University of Chicago, says he just may change his major from Spanish to sociology after attending the conference. A relative newcomer to hip-hop, Barner, 19, says prior to his senior year in high school, groups like NSYNC and Kom were more his style. He has since been struck by hip-hop's impact on society.

"It affects women and men all over," Barner says. "It was an overwhelming experience. I didn't expect what I got out of it (the conference)."

THE FASCINATION WITH BLACK FEMINITY

The fascination with Black femininity--both nationally and internationally--is hardly a new phenomenon, says Dr. Audrey T. McCluskey, professor of African American and African diaspora studies and director of the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University.

"Black women's bodies, historically, have been sites of sexualized commodification and spectacle for the White mind. During slavery their bodies represented production and reproduction, allowing slave owners to increase their property while satisfying their lust," McCluskey says. "Sara Baartman, the so-called 'Hottentot Venus,' was another manifestation of the commodified spectacle, being taken from her home in southern Africa and put on display, carnival-like, for a European public fascinated by her buttocks, while exciting the craze for padded girdles among French women."

When considering contemporary culture, McCluskey argues that although Black men certainly did not invent the objectification of Black women, the practice is obviously a mainstay in hip-hop culture. But, she notes, not without protest from different camps.

"The growing resistance to others profiting from Black women's bodies comes from two seemingly contradictory spaces," McCluskey says. "Some women are demanding to 'get paid' themselves, self-objectifying for personal gain, and calling it agency. Many 'video girls' see this as a way to become an actor or an entertainer, like Jennifer Lopez. Also, conscious Black women are protesting more, like the Spelman women's response to Nelly's ('Tip Drill') video.