Lyte Queens 01292009

I originally dated this for the end of January but I didn't have the discipline to see it through. So here goes....

I was listening to one of those midday mixes the other day. The ones where they play the old school hip hop, the artistry that was prevalent during my days of early development. The now primitive videos that focused more on the lyrics than the images of conspicuous consumption. During the mix I heard a song that I remember from those days, 'Ruffneck' by MC Lyte. I got so hyped in the photo lab that I started to dance a little when everyone was looking at their prints in the light. Those old school dances that House Party made popular for my generation.

I listened to the song when I got home that night, a couple of times even. It through me back to one of my classes. We were discussing the images in today's music videos and one of the students made a good point. She suggested there was a correlation between the absence/decline of the B-Girls (MC Lyte and Queen Latifah) to the presence/oversaturation of the video vixens. The role of women in hip-hop shifted from women asserting their own idea about sexual prowess, awareness and feminism to the non-speaking part of a large number of provocatively clothed women (is that even the right pronoun?) fawning over one or two men (can I even give them that much respect?). What happened, where did it go wrong, how can we repair it? All questions that I want to answer as I seek to change black representation in media.