One of the greatest things I have read on the subject of music and feminism was by Jessica Hopper. In her article for Punk Planet in 2003 she wrote about the“rift within, a struggle of how much you can ignore just because you like the music” when it comes to treatment of women in songs.
The truth is we let musicians say what they want and how they want in their songs. We consistently allow ‘art’ as a pass for rape fantasies, homophobia and misogyny. We listen, we tut, we consume, we listen, we tut, we consume. It is all ‘art’. I am in no way advocating banning artists for misogyny or wanting censorship. We need to question the integrity of a person, not the artist as to why they have chosen to use their lyrics.
This issue of misogyny is prevalent throughout most genres, yet for myself there seems to be a clear example of why we must take a step back and question taste.
Kanye West paints himself as music’s enfant terrible. West proudly gives the middle finger to big business yet he proudly sits as the largest musician of Universal’s rostra. A punk attitude swathed in consumerist needs, he cries that he is misunderstood and ignored by the mainstream yet is married to one of the most ubiquitous humans on this earth. His arrogance knows no bounds, last Glastonbury he titled himself as ‘the greatest rockstar in the world’, but now he titles himself “50% more influential than any other human being in the history of the planet”.
These are big words, they are of course ridiculous words with no standing or support. In no way do I mean to hate on Kanye West but surely we should question him as a person. Surely we should question the person that calls the producer of ‘The Wall’ by Pink Floyd a “nobody”. Firstly we should question the lyrics of a 38-year-old man on an album made in 2016.
“I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex
why?
I made that bitch famous”
Kanye West is of course referring to Taylor Swift, a 26-year-old pop star with 10 Grammys to her name and also a cool $200,000,000. He infers that via his outrageous stunt, invading her at the VMAs in 2009 he made her famous. Although personally not a fan of Taylor Swift, my music knowledge serves me correctly that Taylor Swift became famous due to the release of infectious pop/country songs not a single awards evening.
The bland arrogance is of course not the most concerning issue with this single line in an album of derogatory slurs. It is the assertion that
1) Kanye West, a married man with two children wants to sleep with a woman ten years younger than him (the age difference is not a huge issue, but we can all catch what I mean)
2) For this to be a consensual act Taylor Swift must agree to it, Kanye answers this is due to her wanting to thank him for making her ‘famous’.
3) The B word.
The line may seem funny and yes ‘Famous’ has a great hook and features Rihanna sounding magnificent but this line is like a knife in a playground. Rap and other genres call women ‘bitches’ almost as an okay label. Kanye West even went as far as calling it endearing in his tweets.
4th Bitch is an endearing term in hip hop like the word Nigga— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) 12 February 2016
Feminism 101 can teach you that comparing any gender to an animal in such way that all men are ‘dogs’ and all women are ‘bitches’ is utterly wrong. I ask myself as I listen to the thirty second previews of ‘The Life Of Pablo’ (I will not pay for TIDAL) am I comfortable? Not only as a feminist, but as a music fan. The biggest artist of my generation STILL promotes misogyny. The rift for me grows and grows.
