K-Dot Visit the White House: How HyperMasculinity Shapes Black Males

K-Dot and Ali "Set Trippin All Around"
photo credit @mixedbyali, Instagram.

In his last year, President Barack Obama has been doing many phenomenal and racially oriented things. He signed governance to release criminals with lower level offenses, freeing many of the homies and doing what Lauryn sang in that hook. He has been using phrases like “pop off,” and even invited a rapper who is always consciously calling the system out for its many failures to sit with him at the White House. Having someone like Kendrick Lamar be invited to the White House is huge.

A very politically conscious man who speaks out about injustices in the political and justice systems of America, Lamar visited with Obama to discuss a new mentoring program, as well as My Brother’s Keeper, the mentoring program currently running. Kendrick Lamar, who has come under much scrutiny because of his music and who  was under the scope of Fox News because of his BET performance, where he stood on a police car rapping his song of resilience, “Alright” is always very true to the political statements he makes. When asked, he never hesitates to say how he feels about the ills of the world and of society. It is no coincidence that this song has been used by many protest groups around the country fighting against the heinous acts of police brutality, being chanted by the angry youth who know they have to face police who wish to hurt them.

However, K-Dot represents much more than political discussions and anger at the system. Kendrick also speaks to our young, black men who are struggling through the hoods they live in. The ones who could’ve and should’ve been great in life by any and at any level of means but ended up doing many of the wrong things. K-Dot especially talks to the young men who sign their lives away for a militia based on colors of red and blue, turf that doesn’t really belong to them, and “brothers” who brutalize each other before forming bonds. K-Dot isn’t a flashy rapper. He doesn’t appear in diamonds and gold. He looks ordinary but possess a skill that reaches millions and emotes with them. Kendrick represents a reality and he grittily speaks on it in many of his songs.

In his song “u” on Grammy nominated album To Pimp A Butterfly, K-Dot pours his heart out with a gut-wrenching sob while guzzling down alcohol in a hotel room mirror. He is speaking on every failure and making amends with the man who left his hood and his “brothers” while one was in the hospital dying. This level of emotion doesn’t have a constant place within hip hop music, within the male community, and especially among black men who are taught to deal with their emotions and heartache in silence. The only emotions allowed to prevail are anger and hubris.

Black men are taught to be nearly devoid of emotion. They are taught to trust their friends, but never to explain how they feel. Never to show fear or weakness. It is a complex system that all men live in, but for black men, it is hardened by violence and turmoil from out side dope boys and schoolboys and every other man they can encounter. With racial violence, injustice, inequality, and disparity to add to the pot, it is never an easy plight and because of this, Black male (teen and adult) depression is at clearly high but poorly documented rates. HyperMasculinity and wanting to be “a man” who is strong and unmovable in the face of adversity from any source plays a major role. Being a man who is meant to protect leaves him unprotected by default. Like Tupac, his predecessor before him, Kendrick speaks on all of these aspects that and many more that cause Black men mental detriment, and brings it from the streets to the White House, something he said he would do.

But to the little black boys and girls who listen to him, K-Dot says more than just a couple lyrics that rhyme. He has lived through what they live through and he speaks on it, millions hear it, and these kids feel represented. They listened to the violence and death he used to be a part of as a gang member affiliate, how he made amends with him self and found God. They saw him keep his promise to get to the White House and now see how he is speaking with the president about political moves for “the homies,” the people in Compton and across the US who have to deal with the hardships he faced. Most importantly, he didn’t come in a suit, tie, and dressed to the nines. He came as himself and greeted the president like a friend. He showed that he belonged there, even posed for many of the pictures like he was in his hood in front of the Compton Swap Meet.

K-Dot visited the White House, but more importantly, K-Dot’s message made it there and now some of our babies, the young and the grown ones who have never been fortified, can feel heard.

Supporting Tyga or Supporting Rape Culture?

In the wake of the Bill Cosby scandal, rapper Tyga has been in the media recently for DMing  fourteen-year-old aspiring singer O’Malia. Ok Magazine released an article discussing in high detail the conversations that were had between the young girl and the 25-year- old rapper. Tyga has denied the allegations, claiming the messages were about her musical talents, and O’Malia is telling the media (with her attorney present) that he tried to pursue a more intimate relationship with her. This is not difficult to believe since it was once rumored that he was dating seventeen-year-old Kylie Jenner, only owning up to their relationship in the media once she turned eighteen. They often told the media that he was just a friend, however their followers Instagram, Twitter, and especially Snapchat saw a more intimate relationship between the two.

           

When I saw the video of the girl in question, I noted that she looked older than her age. She was a taller, blonde girl, and very pretty. I noted that this girl looked older than her age, much like Kylie Jenner, however, she donned jeans and a sweatshirt, not the make up and clothes Kylie would be wearing at her seventeen years. I noted these things because I know every pedophile has a type. Some don’t always like little kids, some go after impressionable teens.  However, other people noted these traits and as I looked below the video to see who shared it, I noticed a friend of mine commenting that he didn’t believe she was fourteen. Someone else commented that they would consider her to be at least seventeen. Being me, I commented that I believed he was a pedophile. And this is a constant battle in the black community.

All communities have a group of naysayers who victim blame-and-shame. It is everywhere and its one of my goals to stop it. But in the black community, we have a unique way of displaying it, just like other groups and cultures have a way to show theirs. We look at our daughters who are more developed than other girls of our race and of others and consider them to be “too grown,” especially if they entertain the male attention. Being fourteen and looking “grown” doesn’t equate to being, thinking and acting grown. Many of the girls aren’t making sense of the situations they are in when they are with predators, sometimes relishing in the attention because they don’t understand how bad is. Some are suffering it alone (or even hiding it because they like the attention), while others are generally trying to ignore the unwanted male attention they receive because they go through it most days while walking down the street or in the comforts of their own home with “friends” and “family”.

Me at 14 years old. Its not hard to "confuse" my age.

Being a young girl from the city, I can count the amount of grown men that would stop me on the street and not care when I told them my real age. My first encounter happened when I was ten and the guy was fifteen. Though we were both underage, we were in two different “life brackets.” Like him and many others, they didn’t care. The noticed every thing about my body and my face, that looked more “seventeen than fourteen”, so they didn’t care about the consequences. Girls like this, the ones who are built like grown women earned terms such as “jailbait” and “heartbreaker” in the hood because they were untouchable and “risky if touched” but there were never nicknames for the men who dared the risk. 

The risks of dating an under-aged girl were especially ignored if the man was around a certain age. Any man older than twenty-six or so shouldn't be “dating” a teenager (however, there are cases of that as well) and if he were she had to be older than a certain age, about sixteen or seventeen. Men twenty-five and below could “date” girls in their teens as long as they weren’t closer to thirteen. Boys as old as nineteen would date girls that were as young as thirteen, as long as the girl wasn’t “on the clock” meaning she still had an age that was on an analog clock face. This was a true blue formula that people used when I was growing up. And in the hood, it held a level of normalcy. It was nothing to see a grown block boy and his young girlfriend. But it was pedophilia. We may not have called it that, but it was another form of it, sans the pigtails and frilly socks.This is rape culture. These are systemic characteristics that allow our young girls to become easy targets.

In our community we don’t acknowledge this as what it is. We see the young girls and assume that since they are not being dragged and forced, that they are willing participants. Never once do we question the fact that these women are impressionable and young. We even look and assume that because she is a girl, she is smarter and more advanced than the men, therefore she should know better. But it seems we never try to save her from the pedophile or even call it something as bad as that. We saw Tyga and Kylie, and blamed Kylie and Kris Jenner for allowing it to happen, barely calling Tyga a pedophile. We see O’Malia crying and immediately call her money hungry, telling Tyga to wise up. If he were really after her music, why didn’t the message contain him trying to obtain her parents’ information? Fourteen year olds can’t sign contracts and he would know that. So he couldn’t have been trying to do business with her.

Tyga may not be guilty, however, he is already known for liking his girls young, so it isn’t the smartest move on his part to slide in the DMs of another underage girl. However, in social media’s eyes, to some of us anyway, Tyga no longer looks like a young foolish 25 year old dating an eighteen year old. He is now beginning to look like that creepy uncle who you have to keep away from the teenagers because he’s always a little too close to your daughter or the grown man who smiles too hard at your baby sister when she’s at the grocery store. It just bothers me that it took a second girl for us to want to call him out for real this time.