Ladies and The Hip-Hop that Loves to Hate Us

He stormed off.  Now, I won’t discount that the loud music and setting added to the heightened energy, but it was his actions when he then came back on stage and thereafter that transgressed beyond the lines of acceptability.  Five minutes later, in a rage, he approached me head on, nose to nose, his hand in the well known “two fingered gun” formation pointing threateningly as he demanded, “YOU NEED TO WATCH WHAT YOU SAY.”

I was just about to remove his hand from my face, so to speak, when my significant other stepped in and along with Wale’s bodyguard who was standing by, ushered him off the stage.  After informing them that I’d “Never get away with that in DC” he took to twitter calling me a #bumjoint and diminishing my career saying, “You’re irrelevant…you’re broke…a charity case. You couldn’t buy relevancy.”

After hearing of the incident, several people told me things like “Don’t sweat it,” “It is what it is,” or “Just brush it off it ain’t worth starting nothing.”

In the past I would have taken their advice and another instance and out of pocket behavior by a man in hip-hop to a woman in hip-hop would have gone down without any accountability being taken.  But this time I chose to speak about it.  Not because, as some suggest, I “want press,” or as others suggest, I “like drama” but because I am NOT one of the guys.  I’m a woman, a proud woman in and of hip-hop.  I should be able to speak my mind freely without the threat of being, as one said on Twitter, “hoed down” by a peer.

I love this music and love this culture, but like any relationship feel I deserve in return what I’m giving.  It is high time we as a culture take accountability for the environment of misogyny we’ve created and that we as women of the boom-bap demand our just due.