(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
BY EIRIK KYDLAND (text) and TROND SØRÅS (photo)
[nachspiel] At the hip-hop club Rå there is a nachspiel after the American rapper The Games sold out Oslo concert. Still, there is little resemblance to colorful music videos full of half-naked ladies and brisk rappers with dollar piles in their fists. The bass throbs pleasantly in the walls, and everyone dances with the seat and style they may have. Some have stiff upper lips, some have short skirts, and everything is just like at any village party or nightclub. Maybe apart from the proportion of huge bubble jackets, and some of the songs that The Games' own DJ sends out into the room, as in the boss's own "Let's Ride":"Got the whole world in the club / Hop in the low-rider, long as you got bitches in the back / I turn it into a strip-club / Call it a lap-dance, when the '64 bounce that ass."
At the bar, DJs Jacob and Johnny from The Jaywalkers hang with semitrailers in hand and a view of the dance floor.
- It will probably take 30 years before hip hop takes over the strip clubs in Norway, they think.
- DJ Nuhhh tried to play on Blaze last year, but it apparently worked shitty. The strippers did not quite know how to move to the music, and today's Norwegian strip club clientele is probably not quite ready for hip hop.
The boys have noticed the growing fascination for stripping and lightly dressed ladies in American hip hop lately. They feel that one should not take it too seriously, but as good entertainment.
- To put it this way: It is not very difficult to like the combination of naked ladies and good music, they say with a smile.
Stars and strippers
Turn on ZTV, watch a new hip-hop record or read an interview with an American rapper. Chances are that the attention will be challenged by stripper talk and thin-skinned ladies in explicit dance. The stripping motif has become such a common part of today's commercial hip hop that one would almost think it was a fixed genre.
For a long time, hip-hop artists from the southern states of the United States have become fascinated by stripping, and often they are releasing their new tracks as "strip club anthems". Rappers such as the Ying Yang Twins and Lil Jon actually have such a familiar relationship with the stripping culture that they prefer to present new music on stripping ball over regular hip-hop clubs. Producer and record mogul Jermaine Dupri from Atlanta tells Billboard magazine that stripping clubs have become the major breakthrough arena for hip hop discs in the southern states. He also had girlfriend Janet Jackson strip in the video for his "Gotta Getcha".
Since southern state hip-hop has grown out of the underground and into commercial hip-hop, stripping aesthetics have also become trendy. Now even the biggest artists like Jay-Z, Pharrell and The Game are rapping about strippers, while The Pussycat Dolls were not intimidated by being called "singing prostitutes" by Borat during the MTV Europe Music Awards, and stripping in the video for "Buttons" .
Norwegian rapper Joachim Alte, aka Kleen, believes the fascination for stripping originally comes from the asphalt jungle. He himself has up to several times spiced his music videos with excellent Norwegian glamor models.
Coming from the pimples
- Hip-hop culture has basically nothing to do with stripping, but those who come from street level in the southern states are often involved in pimping. In the southern states, the hustlers' main occupation has taken place in the environment around strip clubs, so it is natural that they talk a lot about it.
Music journalist Ole-Martin Ihle holds a master's degree in African-American Studies from New York University. He thinks the strip club is the perfect backdrop for the hip hop artist.
- The strip club will be a stage, where everything that is important for hip hop can be shown. Here money changes hands, you sprinkle yourself with banknotes and brag about your flashy consumption. In addition, you have the gender role play at the strip club, the woman is turned into a commodity and reduced to a transaction, says Ihle, and tells how enormous unemployment among the black working class in the 1970s and 80s forced many men into street crime, and that this also has had an impact on today's hip hop culture.
- In fact, blacks in the United States have a very traditional view of family structure, which means that it is the man who will provide food on the table. If he fails to feed his family, it is like being deprived of his manhood.
Ihle believes this may explain why parts of hip-hop are perceived as oppressive to women.
- The woman is seen as a threat to male autonomy, and some feel that they restore the balance in their lost masculinity when they can treat the woman as a commodity. In many hip hop lyrics, it does not seem as if sex is something digg. The important thing, however, is to show that you have full control over your emotions even if you are surrounded by naked ladies.
The rear part takes VISA
Since an important part of hip-hop culture is about bragging and boasting, it is not always easy to distinguish between genre consciousness, irony and unpleasant male chauvinism. Mari from the rap duo Red Sauer believes that it is not in the nature of hip hop to be concerned about stripping, but that it is due to a trend in time.
- We see a sexualization of society that is also reflected in popular culture. It is popular culture and not hip hop that is sexualized.
She cites, among other things, St. Louis rapper Nelly's music video "Tip Drill" as a frightening example of condescending women's views. In the video there is champagne party in a luxurious villa. A wall of buttocks cradles the camera lens throughout the song, while Nelly and his friends slap on the ladies with dollar bills. Finally, Nelly pulls her credit card through the buttocks of one of the girls.
- That video is just over. I became physically ill when I saw it, says Mari resignedly.
On the contrary, I think Nelly's original card use is a good example of hip-hop humor.
- It's funny because it's so expensive. When it is so exaggerated, it is difficult to take it seriously, and it testifies to a kind of distance. To be able to take it this far, you have to know what you are betting on.
- But is there really an argument for behaving that way?
- No it's not. But here in Norway, it becomes extra difficult to understand the humor, due to the historical and sociological distance to the United States.
Kleen often thinks hip hop is misunderstood because of its broad sense of humor.
From the outside, hip hop works a lot
culture repulsive: Baptism, violence, stripping, and people who are far too big for it. But there is no doubt a lot of humor about this, and one may have to be consecrated to understand this. It is allowed to be a lot more fun in hip hop than it is in real life or in other genres.
He seems light-skinned ladies and glamor models dress some music videos, including his own. In his latest video, "Big Spender," he eats sushi straight from a pair of naked tits without getting the taste of his mouth.
- Being a pimp and selling ladies is discriminatory. But to brag that you have had many ladies is something completely different. All boys do.
- Would you like to play at a strip club?
- Maybe. If they pay well enough, says Kleen.
Mari from the Red Sheep thinks it will be too easy to hide behind jokes and boasts.
- If a guy slaps me on the ass and I react, the answer is always that it was just meat and that you must not take it so seriously. That is the classic excuse of harassment, she claims.
At the same time, she does not want to appear sober.
- I am happy that hip hop has been valued and accepted as music. In the past, rappers were seen as completely stupid in the head and at least not as musicians. Therefore, it is important for us to not only complain, but accomplish something in the form of hip hop we think is good.
"Now women, get your asses up and rise up !," Norwegian Kohinoor shouts in the song "Shake Our Pm Pum", taken from the debut album Kohi de Browny, released January 29. In the music video, she strolls around like a pimp at a nightclub, while petting young boys on the nipples. By turning the stripping trend on her head, she hopes to dissolve into a male-dominated music genre. She believes that there is a woman's fight in a roomist.
- Of course, it's not just about throwing tits and shaking your ass for the female population to get up, but I think it does not hurt to dance a little dirty. Not all feminists can live in the Stone Age, one must also think about who one is communicating with.
- So what exactly do you want to communicate?
- I can not say that young girls should not shake their asses. Then it is more important to say that you should have fun, but take care. Because there are bad men out there who do not want us well, but who look at us as objects.
Feminist rumperist
Kohinoor believes hip hop's stripping pill may be because the genre lacks profiles that dare to front their opinions and stand against the ease of popular music.
- Today, many stars are because they are easy to deal with. Hip hop actually comes from the street, and was started by people who raped out their dissatisfaction. But now it's mostly about how many diamonds you have.
Ole-Martin Ihle believes that one should detach from the romantic notion that all hip-hop should be socially critical and politically conscious.
- There will always be demands on minority groups that they must be political and meet a moral standard. Some feminists believe that all women must fight the women's struggle, and in the same way black rappers will always be criticized for not being political enough. Many people talk warmly about an era when hip hop came straight from the street level and the rappers talked about politics and drug problems. But now sex is the new crack, and that's just the way it is, says Ihle, and says that the rappers' boasting, thick gold chains and insane consumption can be seen as a raised middle finger to anyone who has kept the black man down.
- One should not forget that hip hop has created a new black entrepreneurial class in the US, and then they play shamelessly and proudly on everything that sells. It may be difficult for the white middle class to understand, because we have to degrade ourselves to rebel. For poor black Americans, success is the uprising.
- Simply The American Dream?
- Is there anyone who embraces the American values and the American dream, then it is the black hip-hop artists. And nowhere is this shown in such an inflated form than at the strip club, says Ihle.
Back at Raw, 22-year-old Alexandra and her girlfriend are ready for the dance floor. She thinks today's young people are easily influenced by the nudity of the music videos.
- You see it out on the town. The lightly dressed girls are getting younger and younger.
- Would you go to a strip club to hear the latest hip hop?
- No, I would never accept that! she slams, and disappears into the crowd on the dance floor.
