That is why what the Spelman students did is so important. Nelly isn’t pressed to truly think about this issue because our lived reality continuously reinforces his sentiments. It was here before Nelly and it’s thriving after his short reign at the top of hip hop charts. We know through our lived experience that almost every mainstream rap song and music video is embedded with the domination of women mentality. The truth is, Nelly (as he not so eloquently pointed out) is not the only one. More specifically, if Black women dare to speak up for the ill treatment of women and girls, we’re viewed as somehow betraying our community. Treating women like property and refusing to acknowledge the right of Black women to voice their concerns outside of supporting male centered thinking is the norm. Nelly is refusing to acknowledge the ghost of his Tip Drill video and what it stood for because he doesn’t have to. It’s deeper than Nelly would like to think. Just take a look at this trailer for the documentary Very Young Girls. This normalization says, “It’s okay because they’re made for this.” Consequently, Black women are often blamed for the sexual abuse that they endure. The degradation is so normalized that more often than not, Black women and girls have a hard time getting support after being molested, raped, and forced into prostitution (sex slavery). And the promotion of this objectification through both song and video, participates in upholding a wide spread normalization of the degradation of specifically Black women. They do not speak for all of us, yet unfortunately they are viewed as a representation of Black women.
Yes, those are Black women in his videos that willingly consented to being objectified. Should we only care about his sister and not the other millions of Black girls and women that are being objectified and hyper-sexualized?īefore you go there, let me say this.
For some reason, he can’t see that yes this is connected. The same bodies that he was seeking bone marrow from. Those students weren’t attacking his bone marrow drive efforts, they wanted him to confront the public spectacle that he created off of Black women’s bodies. I’m surprised ( I don’t know why) that after all this time Nelly still doesn’t get it. He believes that they should have left the issue of his misogyny alone and just focused on bone marrow. However, he recently appeared on the Huffpost Live show where he basically blamed the students of Spelman for the death of his sister. Over the past few years, the dust has settled and Nelly has slowly reemerged in the spotlight. His sister also lost her battle with Leukemia. It tarnished Nelly’s career and he hasn’t recovered since. However, the Spelman students did host a bone marrow drive of their own. He pulled his funding from the bone marrow drive and it was a huge media fiasco. They invited him to speak on the issue and have an open discussion about it. But his plans were foiled when a group of Spelman students confronted him on the issues of misogyny and the hyper-sexualization of Black women in his music videos. About ten years ago, Nelly was set to launch a bone marrow drive for his sister at Spelman College. Hip Hop artist Nelly has reignited a 10 year old firestorm about his notorious Tip Drill video.
It could have been somebody that was coming to that bone marrow drive that day that was possibly a match for my sister that didn’t come because of that.“It mus be that a** cause it ain’t your face. That was unfairly because we could have still had your conversation after I got my opportunity. You robbed me of an opportunity, unfairly my brother. “The Spelman thing, the only thing I feel I woulda did different is kick somebody’s A$$. Nelly would say much later in a Huffington Post Live chat with Marc Lamont Hill that having to cancel the drive over the uproar over the video enraged him: Women at Spelman University even protested Nelly’s visit to the school to throw a bone marrow drive to help find his sister, who was suffering from leukemia and eventually passed from it, a donor. While he might have thought it was harmless and artistic, we all know that the video caused quite a stir, as many thought the women in the video were objectified and treated as just parts (the focus was mostly on their backsides, which went along with the song’s lyrics). The first time you saw a naked statue did you think, ‘Oh man I’m looking at something or…you know?'” I thought that was very, very, very artistic. Maybe some people mistook it the wrong way.īomani Jones: “What was artistic about sliding that credit card down a woman’s body?” I put it on a show that was for adults at an adult time. Being an artist, your responsibility is to create. I never regret it as far as being an artist. Nelly: “That was a very, very very interesting day.
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