there is no shame in battle rap
IS THE BATTLE RAP CULTURE READY FOR AN ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLE?
By MARTH VADER
Think back to the coldest bar you’ve ever
heard in a battle. It rocked you. It threw you back
and you were impressed. Your head was filled with
the double meaning, wordplay and lyricism of the
line. You couldn’t believe he or she had flipped it
like that! They had the whole crowd screaming or
simultaneously, everyone went, ‘mmmmmmm’ —
an instant sign of approval from battle fans. As you
sat there with the Jaz face, you didn’t care that the
emcee was losing; or dressed like a bum; or if they
were winning the battle; or on stage looking fly —
either way, you still didn’t care. All you knew was that
they just used words in a way you didn’t think was
possible. That moment, in a nutshell, is battle rap.
That moment is real — it can’t be faked; most times
it’s just an impulse. The purity of expression that
exists within those moments would lead us to theorize
that any rapper can conjure that feeling with the right
words. With the entrance of No Shame into battle rap
— a transgendered woman from Phoenix, Arizona —
we can finally test that theory.
Homosexuality in hip-hop isn’t a highly
discussed topic. Simply put, it can make a lot of
people uncomfortable. However, the outlets that exist
within the culture for gay men and lesbian women
are very different; one exists and the other does not.
You can turn on Queen of the Ring and see several
femcees boast about being lesbians with lyrics about
how many girls they can “pull” or even how many
other QOTR girls they have already pulled with
their hard bars and incredible skill. Lesbianism in
hip-hop is safe. Sleeping with another woman doesn’t
lower their stock and in some cases, it doesn’t make
the battler any less feminine. If anything, it defines
them. They become the lesbian rapper who looks like
this or sounds like that. 100 Bars Magazine asked K
Prophet — an AG (Aggressively Androgynous Girl
or Stud) and battle rapper — why there’s greater
acceptance of lesbians than gay men in battle rap.
Her response revealed insight into where the problem
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may lie, “Although it took some time, the visibility
of aggressive lesbian emcees builds a foundation for
which others of the same kind can feel comfortable
to step up to the challenge. There’s not as much of
that opportunity for the gay male community. There’s
more of a slightly homophobic stigma that still
attaches itself to the hip-hop community, especially
when it co mes to gay males.”
And that seems very well to be the case. Gay
men have the daunting task of first being seen; then
they must fight off the stigma that inevitably comes
with being seen. Most of us don’t understand No
Shame. It’s human nature to either ridicule or fear
something we’re unsure of. So let’s clear it up and do
the knowledge. A transgendered person is someone
whose gender identity doesn’t match up with their
assigned sex. A man biologically; a woman mentally.
Gender is a self-identity — a choice. A transgendered
person can be at any point across a wide and diverse
spectrum of sexual orientation. Gender and sexual
orientation are mutually exclusive, meaning one
doesn’t determine the outcome of the other. So No
Shame may have been born with male genitals but
she identifies as a woman. If No Shame only dated
women, she would be a lesbian — not a straight man.
Confusing? Probably. But in order to
understand something different, you have to think
outside of the box. Society and media have burned
perceived gender roles and sexual orientation rules
into our heads for years and it can be difficult to
break those chains. The confusion is evident in the
misuse of pronouns. Watch a No Shame battle and
count the number of times you see her referred to as
“he”. Then count the number of times you see her
mockingly feminized as “she” or “her”. Tell me how
many fingers you have left on each hand at the end.
I say, if you feel like a woman and you want me to
call you a woman, I’ll do so. However, it’s not easy
to translate No Shame’s build and appearance into