We don’t deserve to see our experiences, especially our most painful ones, turned into punchlines.
This weekend, hip-hop culture inundated the internet. As a New Yorker who grew up during the rise of hip-hop, it’s something I typically love to see: Black people engaging unapologetically with an art form that we created and that has spoken truth to our experiences and our oppression for more than 50 years. But this time, as I listened to each track as they dropped and watched the discourse unfold online, a theme emerged that was impossible to ignore: Serious accusations of violence against women and girls were repeatedly reduced to punchlines in these diss tracks.
In Family Matters, Drake accuses Kendrick of domestic abuse. Then in Not Like Us (and other tracks), Kendrick accuses Drake of being inappropriate with young girls (something many of us clocked a while ago), of being a pedophile and sex offender, of surrounding himself with and protecting other sex offenders. There’s a line in The Heart Part 6 where Drake mocks Kendrick for supposedly being molested as a child, an assault that based on Kendrick’s lyrics in Mother I Sober actually happened to his mother, not him.
My stomach turned hearing sexual violence, molestation and pedophilia being used as fodder for rap battles, merely a few days after the end of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
These tracks leverage sexual violence as a way to attack an adversary, sidelining the actual violation that occurred. … Awareness without accountability cannot be used to measure a shift in culture.
While the references in these songs may suggest a heightened awareness of the issues, awareness alone isn’t progress. It’s a hollow benchmark that can lead one to believe that merely acknowledging or exposing sexual and gender-based violence is enough. The memes, gifs and jokes undermine and diminish the seriousness of sexual assault, an experience shared by well over 100 million people in the U.S. across all demographics. Awareness without accountability cannot be used to measure a shift in culture. Perhaps it shows that as a society, we are actually still too desensitized to sexual violence, turning it into something intended to burn someone in a battle, rather than the public health crisis it is.
Nearly 1 in 5 Black women are survivors of rape, and 41 percent of Black women experience sexual coercion and other forms of unwanted sexual contact. Sixty percent of Black girls will experience sexual violence before the age of 18. For every Black woman or girl who reports rape, at least 15 do not report. Nearly half of Black women in the U.S. will experience some form of domestic violence.
Considering the conditions of our people, using such serious and traumatic experiences for entertainment or competition not only trivializes the experiences of survivors, but also perpetuates a harmful culture that normalizes, even glorifies, and often dismisses violence against the most vulnerable in our communities, especially when it’s attached to celebrity. These tracks leverage sexual violence as a way to attack an adversary, sidelining the actual violation that occurred. There’s no consequence or accountability being demanded here; it’s all for entertainment purposes.
Will we let the allegations go as long as their response is fire? If we look back at past celebrity diss tracks, such as Quavo or Chris Brown’s, which continue this trend, we see that the answer is likely yes.
This is a disturbing mix of misogyny, patriarchy and creative deficiency, commodifying and trivializing assault. And people who love, follow and critique hip-hop have called this out over the decades.
Renowned hip-hop journalist and filmmaker dream hampton has publicly addressed the cavalier way that hip-hop creators trivialize sexual and gender-based violence in their storytelling—work that has garnered her both deep respect from advocates and threats from powerful perpetrators in the music industry. Survivors understand the risk of calling out this kind of behavior, and we know it’s why people often hesitate speaking out. But weaponizing sexual assault to win a rap battle without considering its victims, potentially underage, is simply reprehensible and we have to do better.
Neither Drake nor Kendrick are even remotely equipped to speak to the experiences of women and girls, especially when it comes to the issue of sexual violence.
All of the conversation about the music raises the question: If a woman or girl came forward naming these same allegations instead of Kendrick or Drake, would they be believed? Or would they be attacked in the comments? Similarly would we have believed Cassie if Diddy didn’t pay her right away? How quickly did the public dismiss, mock or deny Megan Thee Stallion‘s assault because she was a Black girl?
When the messenger is a man, especially a powerful and influential one, we tend to believe without much investigation. When the messengers are women—especially Black women, trans family or adolescents—we are quick to disregard them until either a man or droves of other survivors speak to verify our truth. So while artists often speak to the experiences of their communities, many would agree that neither Drake nor Kendrick are even remotely equipped to speak to the experiences of women and girls, especially when it comes to the issue of sexual violence.
Let’s consider Drake, who engages with young girls in ways that would make most adults uncomfortable and who has at least one person on his team who was found guilty of assaulting a woman. In the same track where he accuses Kendrick of hitting his wife, Drake unapologetically shouts out love for Chris Brown—someone with a long public history of violence against women. Drake mocked Megan Thee Stallion and called for Tory Lanez’s freedom after he was convicted of shooting her.
Kendrick’s hardly standing on moral ground either. Kendrick platformed Kodak Black on his 2022 album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers despite being indicted for sexual misconduct. He also vehemently defended R. Kelly and XXXTentacion, who have both committed truly horrific abuse against women in separate cases, threatening to pull his music from any platforms that pulled theirs.
These men and their counterparts are not our saviors or our defenders, as it would appear that they see us as tools to use in their pursuit of a win. Men are able to wield flagrant accusations for entertainment value, getting accolades, attention, even praise for speaking up, but people, often women, who actually experience sexual violence are villainized, dismissed, ignored. As sexual assault is used for commodification, there is a cost, it’s the survivors. Progress can’t be achieved until survivors are respected, instead of treated as casualties for clout and online debates.
Men who love their people, who love Black women do not make light of the harm inflicted on us. They support us in telling our truths and seeking our own healing. Men who hate our abusers take action to help end this war on Black women and build a culture where we can all feel safe, loved and free. Survivors exist across every industry and culture, we already know that survivors across the gender binary have contributed to building hip-hop culture into one of the most beloved and dominant in the world.
Our impact is significant all on its own, and all the more so when you acknowledge the harm so many of us endure while striving to make our mark. We don’t deserve to see our experiences, especially our most painful ones, turned into punchlines. If anyone, including anyone in hip-hop, is going to address issues of sexual violence, survivors need to be centered in the offerings and given space to address them in ways that are serious, safe, respectful, and, most importantly, our choice.
Until then, I’ll just go back to listening to the real rap battle winner: Meg.
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