Masculinity In Hip Hop Culture

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These lyrics from one of the first hip hop women band in United State introduce clearly our subject. Usually when the people think about women in Hip Hop culture, they think about sex, they think about women half nude in music videos, we just have to remember the conteoversial music video of Nelly for his song Tip Drill (2003). Women's studies students protest against misogyny in this video who shows women as sexuel object simulating sexuel acts and men throwing money on women's breats. This case is common in Hip Hop culture, specially in Gangsta Rap in videos of 2pac, Notorious Big, 50 Cents, etc. Patricia Hill Collins, Tricia Rose and bell hooks (Hill Collins Patricia : 1991, Rose Tricia : 1994, hell hooks : 2003) spoke about the perverse effect of women's nudity in Hip Hop culture and compare Hip Hop to pronography. They all agree to say that the Hip Hop culture is a male and machist world, where women are used to reinforce the apparent masculinity of rappers. These authors studie rap music through the gender and the race in United State, because women in video music are always black, almost the same happens in France not really with rap but R&B which is a part of the Hip Hop Culture. All the singers of R&B in France have arabian origins, whereas american R&B is more heterogenic. The quetsion is why all the women are black in american video rap music ? And why all the R&B french singers are arabian ? Can we see a postolonial and esclavagist heritage ? These two image, black female seen as a "bitch" and the arabian woman called the "beurette" in France show two different feminities, but how these "myths" involved in the development of a group identity? And what they reveal about the society ? To answer to this questions, we ... ... middle of paper ... ...n use your body like a “corporal capital” (Waicquant : 2000, p. 125) and make use of body techniques (Mauss : 1934) to be accepted in this world controled by men. Stepahnie Birnet who followed “video girls”, she noticed that the hip hop culture invented a new norm, the norm of the new “black female”, which it's completely different from the manequin world. Women who want to play in music video have to be not too slim, in another words they must have very obvious feminine attributes (Birnet Stéphanie : 2007). Tricia Rose in her book Black Noise. Black music and black culture in contemporary America ask why black men show so often the feminity of black women ? She give several anwsers, first to oppose to the whiteness feminity : slim body, long legs, little lips. And to fight against the stereotype of the sinewy female slave. Rose tells that : “Black man assured the

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