By Taimoor Nawaz
The word “pretty”, per the Merriam-Webster dictionary, can be defined as “pleasing by delicacy or grace,” which are otherwise feminine traits. Hip-hop, as a result, is not pretty. Sexual conquest, beating the competition, and attaining wealth are more in line with hip-hop’s image of masculinity and how the predominantly male culture asserts it. So when A$AP Rocky refers to himself as “Pretty Flacko” right before he claims he’s holding “choppers”, a certain dissonance rings, and this dissonance is what modern-day hip-hop is exploring and blurring the lines between masculine and feminine images.
Hip-hop’s birth set the presence of identity early as something more conservative and heteronormative, as compared to its disco counterpart, which was more fluid in its approach to gender, sexuality, and identity, as discussed in Joseph Ewoodzie’s book, Break Beats in the Bronx. The sentiment became stronger as time went on, being echoed almost perfectly by the late DMX, who never backed away from being explicit about how he felt about it. When it came to women, they were commonly referred to as “bitches” along with being seen as an item of conquest, whether their value was derived from their beauty or their status in relation to the competition.
Today, however, rap has reached an interesting crossroads. While the remnants of anthems like “Where the Hood At” linger, the image of rappers now completely contradicts DMX. Instead of antagonizing fluidity, they embrace it. The most blatant example is Lil Nas X, who embraced his homosexuality fearlessly. However, if rap was a spectrum, and DMX was one end of the spectrum, Lil Nas X would be on the other end. Nas never attempted to emulate the “gangsta” persona that rappers like the late Pop Smoke exuded.
Enter Lil Uzi Vert and A$AP Rocky, two artists who are more in between the hypermasculine DMX and the fluid Lil Nas X. Lil Uzi Vert, for instance, uses they/them pronouns. Nevertheless, they’ve maintained support for the LGBTQ community and, contrary to DMX, also promote crossdressing, most explicitly on the track “Glock in my Purse.” The song is about what the title endears but also dives into his family and the rap industry accepting his identity, encapsulating what the middle of the spectrum looks like: turning otherwise feminine items into tools to convey masculinity and using that masculinity to convey vulnerability. A$AP Rocky, Pretty Flacko himself, also has been supportive of cross-dressing, donning skirts in public, but also expresses his affinity for his woman, however vulgar. In the song, “D.M.B,” which stands for “Dats My Bitch,” Rocky praises the woman he’s with and appreciates her all the while still referring to her as a “bitch” and “slut.” Rocky opposes the idea of women being a means for conquest but also recontextualizes derogatory words for women through that opposition through what he deemed a “ghetto love tale.”
Young Thug wearing a dress on his album cover, Tyler, the Creator exploring identity in his music, and, most recently, GloRilla exploding onto the scene with a deeper voice are all examples of the varying degrees of the spectrum. In the past decade, the heteronormative roots and the hypermasculinity of the ‘80s and ‘90s have been uprooted with the more fluid interpretations of confidence in hip-hop. The convergences found in Lil Uzi Vert and A$AP Rocky culminated in the opportunity that Lil Nas X seized and while the hypermasculine sentiments still criticize the exploration of gender and identity, rap, more than ever, has become fluid in terms of identity.
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