RA#2

Title: From Fly-Girls to bitches and Ho’s

Author: Joan Morgan

Date: 1999

Topic: How Hip Hop music influences African American Citizens

Exigence: To make the degrading and hurtful lyrics of this type of music apparent to everyone.

Intended Audience: People who listen to Hip Hop, to inform the people who don’t listen to it, and the women affected by it.

Purpose: To try to analyze why these rappers choose to use lyrics that degrade innocent women and make it clear that it is a problem in the black community.

Claim: That this music can be set aside and women can heal from the degrading things rappers say.

Morgan uses Pathos regularly throughout this essay to tie you to the topic through emotions. “Yeah, sistas are hurt when we hear brothers calling us bitches and hos”(604). This makes me thinks about the lyrics in all of the rap songs that I have listened to- and they are not so nice. I regularly listen to Eminem, Tech n9ne, 2pac and Jay-Z. All of these artists are even some that Morgan mentioned and they all refer to women calling them bitches, hos and slutts. I do not think that this is ethical because innocent women do not deserve this scrutiny as a matter of fact no women deserve it!

Morgan uses Ethos to show her credibility. She is an artist who writes music and loves the how rap music can display a greater power through lyrics; more than talking ever would. Being a feminist who has listened to all of the rappers spit their rhymes about women using explicit language, she knows personally its affects on women.

Lastly Morgan uses logos to help convince us that rap music is an epidemic in black culture. “When Brothers can talk so cavalierly about killing each other and then reveal that they have no expectation to see their twenty-first birthday…”(603).  This is no way for anyone to live. Firstly people should not worry about being shot for no reason or wearing the wrong color cloths. Secondly, what kind of society is it when young men don’t care about consequences because they don’t think that they will be alive for much longer.  She gives good examples of modern day rappers such as: Dre. Dre, Ice Cube, and the Notorious B.I.G.. All of these Hip Hop artists degrade women and if they continue to do this not only black communities but all societies will be in trouble.

In response to this article, I would say that I enjoyed it and agree with it because with this music I think that it sparks bad ideas for kids. Kids and teens often smoke weed and cigarettes along with drinking all types of alcohol because the rappers they look up to encourage them to through the lyrics. Even though I love rap, this essay made me really think about what I am listening to. Even though I love the genuine rhythm of rappers I must not kill, and do other harmful things to my body or somebody else’s’.