Worst Show Ever
I fully understand the joys of mindless television. It's not like we sit around our house watching PBS all day. I enjoy Survivor. Stacy is a fan of America's Next Top Model. It's all good.
But there are times when television throws me a curve ball and surpasses what I thought would be the lowest the bar could possibly be set.
Enter Miss Rap Star Supreme, courtesy of our friends at VH1. Mind you, VH1 has a tack record of giving us sub-par rap reality shows. Almost 18 months ago I noticed that VH1's White Rapper Show was racist against white folks. And now, VH1 is at it again.
I'm not going to go into all of the issues I have with Miss Rap. It's casting is similar to the White Rapper Show, in that it picks a bunch of unstable people who can't rap very well (but think they can) and throws them in a house together so that they can battle it out on the way to rap stardom. Whatever.
The mess of a show can best be understood by the single scene I caught by chance this past weekend.
The women were mad at each other and about to throw down. So the host comes in and tells them to get ready, because they are going to a house party to get some air. Lo and behold, they end up at the mansion of rap star Too $hort. Mind you, $hort Dogg gained fame in the '90's by lyrically exploiting women. Well, these particular hip hop heads didn't seem to care. They went nuts when they realize that $hort was there.
In an ingenious act of scripting, the host then pitted the ladies in a rap battle against $hort. He proceeded to absolutely kill them with his rhymes and drop some bars that were indicative of his misogynistic trademarks.
The crazy thing is that the ladies ate it up. Absolutely loved it. And I'm like, hold up...wait a minute. This dude disrespects you, he takes a dookie on your gender, and you're going to give it up for him? Really? Where else would that happen? If a white dude got up in front of a crowd of black folks and proceeded to drop a bunch of N Bombs and deprecating language, how would the crowd respond? Please.
But it gets even more unbelievable after that. The ladies have a chance to battle back at $hort, so they take some time out to pen their responses. What both groups come back with are raps that end with the idea that these ladies will take $hort's women from him in the end. In essence, they all bought into this economy where the currency is women. They felt as though their legitimacy as MC's was contingent on how many women they could get. Wow. Objectifying your own to get up.
So I'm ticked at VH1. I love Hip Hop, but it needs to get over its misogyny. And it's hard when giant media outlets just feed the monster without bringing any kind of reason or thought into the discussion. And, might I add, that they really make my job a lot harder. Because the girls we work with eat this stuff up and now we have to deprogram all of this junk.
Stupid VH1.
Fair Dinkum
But there are times when television throws me a curve ball and surpasses what I thought would be the lowest the bar could possibly be set.
Enter Miss Rap Star Supreme, courtesy of our friends at VH1. Mind you, VH1 has a tack record of giving us sub-par rap reality shows. Almost 18 months ago I noticed that VH1's White Rapper Show was racist against white folks. And now, VH1 is at it again.
I'm not going to go into all of the issues I have with Miss Rap. It's casting is similar to the White Rapper Show, in that it picks a bunch of unstable people who can't rap very well (but think they can) and throws them in a house together so that they can battle it out on the way to rap stardom. Whatever.
The mess of a show can best be understood by the single scene I caught by chance this past weekend.
The women were mad at each other and about to throw down. So the host comes in and tells them to get ready, because they are going to a house party to get some air. Lo and behold, they end up at the mansion of rap star Too $hort. Mind you, $hort Dogg gained fame in the '90's by lyrically exploiting women. Well, these particular hip hop heads didn't seem to care. They went nuts when they realize that $hort was there.
In an ingenious act of scripting, the host then pitted the ladies in a rap battle against $hort. He proceeded to absolutely kill them with his rhymes and drop some bars that were indicative of his misogynistic trademarks.
The crazy thing is that the ladies ate it up. Absolutely loved it. And I'm like, hold up...wait a minute. This dude disrespects you, he takes a dookie on your gender, and you're going to give it up for him? Really? Where else would that happen? If a white dude got up in front of a crowd of black folks and proceeded to drop a bunch of N Bombs and deprecating language, how would the crowd respond? Please.
But it gets even more unbelievable after that. The ladies have a chance to battle back at $hort, so they take some time out to pen their responses. What both groups come back with are raps that end with the idea that these ladies will take $hort's women from him in the end. In essence, they all bought into this economy where the currency is women. They felt as though their legitimacy as MC's was contingent on how many women they could get. Wow. Objectifying your own to get up.
So I'm ticked at VH1. I love Hip Hop, but it needs to get over its misogyny. And it's hard when giant media outlets just feed the monster without bringing any kind of reason or thought into the discussion. And, might I add, that they really make my job a lot harder. Because the girls we work with eat this stuff up and now we have to deprogram all of this junk.
Stupid VH1.
Fair Dinkum