Stuff African People Hate

No, African People (I) don’t hate girls. I, however, can’t stand the song (Girls, Girls, Girls), which was the second single off of Jay-Z’s Blueprint album. In the lyrics, he says

“I got this African chick with Eddie Murphy on her skull
She like, “Jigga Man, why you treat me like animal?”
I’m like excuse me Ms. Fufu, but when I met your ass
you was dead broke and naked, and now you want half”
I was in high school when the song came out, and never looked at Jay-Z in the same way. The sad part about it is that I was rocking my head to the song before this point. I had to re-evaluate whether or not I was just being sensitive and angry, and if he had degraded any other group of women in the same way. After all, the song also included the following:

“I got this Indian squaw the day that I met her
Asked her what tribe she with, red dot or feather
She said all you need to know is I’m not a ho
And to get with me you better be Chief Lots-a-Dough”

Many young Africans I’ve met and known growing up like and support hip-hop. The older heads will pick Fela Kuti, Sonny Okosum, or Miriam Makeba any day of the week, but as younger Africans have assimilated, so have their tastes in music. The American industry is actually becoming quite large in places like Nigeria, where the ThisDay Music Festival (featuring Jay-Z) was held in Abuja this past weekend. However, songs like “Girls, Girls, Girls,” not only degrade African women, but the lyrics perpetuate the stereotype and image of the African tribeswoman with a loincloth around her waist.

Hip-Hop:

I can’t pick on Jay-Z without referencing the subjugation of women in most rap songs. Hip-hop, what rap used to be, was not so vulgar and objectifying with songs like “Bonita Applebaum”, groups that spoke truth like Tribe Called Quest, and a time that was the high-energy, high-emotion, and high-pride post-black power era. Rap today is a little different.

<– Her mom didn’t know where she was…obviously.

Sure there are some songs and artists that capture what the genre was meant to evolve into, and even songs and artists whose idiotic lyrics are nice to dance to when you’ve had a bad day and need to dance; but the sad majority of rap songs profoundly subjugate black women, and make no effort to portray positive images of the diaspora. I really don’t care to go into (the many) arguments of funding and distribution of artists, the comparison of how women are portrayed in other genres, or BET.

“Excuse me Miss Fufu”…. wait, what is fufu?:

Fufu is a dish cooked to be either consumed with a light soup, or with greens. It is made with different ingredients, depending on where you are, but predominantly from starch, cassava, and yams. The trick is that it cannot be chewed. You swallow it along with a side, whether it be pepper soup or collard greens. In the states it is harder to find authentic ingredients to make it, but if you go to an international food store you’re sure to see a box that says “fufu flour” that can be mixed with instant potato flakes to make an identical dish. In some francophone countries they call it couscous, in Cuba they call it fufu de platano, and in the Dominican Republic it is called mufongo. Fufu’s a pretty heavy dish because the starches make it high in carbohydrates, so not many people eat it everyday (though I know exceptions). My mom used to make it every Sunday with pepper soup and yams.

<–Fufu and pepper soup

Eddie Murphy Raw:

In Eddie Murphy’s stand-up 90 minute film Eddie Murphy Raw, he jokes about finding a woman from the African bush to marry. Murphy also starred in Coming to America, the popular film about an African prince that travels to the states to get married. Although Murphy (like most comedians) pick on a number of groups during the length of the production, references like these are what fuel unfavorable and uncivilized perceptions of Africa.

The lyrics make up more than just a song; rap lyrics are creating a message that is circulated widely among young Black people, to a point where the sentiments expressed in the songs may sometimes even become intrinsic to impressionable listeners. And if what schoolbooks and a broken system are asserting about us is being reinforced BY US, it’s hard to figure out where to begin in our re-education and liberation.