The article that I chose to read for my analysis was “Nicki Minaj and the Changing Politics of Hip-Hop: Real Blackness, Real Bodies, Real Feminism?” by Margaret Hunter and Alhelí Cuenca. This article discusses Nicki Minaj a very famous female African American rapper and how she rose to fame. Nicki is known for her unreal looking body and her feminist attitude that is displayed in her music. Although this may be what the media portrays Nicki Minaj to be like there is much controversy about her and what she as an artist signifies. Many women emcees crossed all of these boundaries. An author mentioned in the article argues that Nicki is also applies to culture. “Clearly Minaj is not a sex worker in the traditional sense of the term. However, she produces sexual images of her own black body for consumption by a larger base of customers.” This is very interesting since the image of artists seemed to have grow substantially in the past few years. The African American community may have taken offense to the extraordinary appearance that Nicki was illustrating in her videos and her persona. It is now part of a “culture” that women are allowed to show off their bodies as a way of art however many artists do sexualize themselves and go over the top for attention. In my opinion it was a shock to the culture seeing Nicki Minaj be so bold since it was never seen before. It could have been tough to comprehend at the time however now in this generation it is much more common to “seek attention” especially with social media. Overall Nicki Minaj was a very bold artist who began a trend however she was looked at differently because she was an African American women who was quite controversial at the time when people viewed her actions. After reading this article it opened my eyes to how far the music industry has gone and how in today’s generation Hip Hop and Rap in particular went from being a culture of male African Americans and now it is shared with many races and genders. I think this is amazing especially since we were talking about how music can be influenced by culture and I think it is great that women and other cultures can be powerful to make such a large impact on the music world.
Emma DaCosta
No comments:
Post a Comment