13 notes &
Too $hort, an elder statesman in the rap game, has made a career of portraying himself like a pimp. While he doesn’t have the youth on lock the way a Jay-Z does, the entire premise of his XXL video series was that a younger generation of artists and fatherless young men perceive Too $hort as a parental figure. For him to claim that he hasn’t instructed younger males to participate in age-inappropriate and potentially coercive sexual behavior is a Mitt Romney-level flip-flop.
More important than Too $hort’s previous record, is his attempt to use “giving back to the community” as a defense. I don’t expect Too $hort to have the language to address what rape victims, scholars, activists and feminist writers and bloggers call “rape culture.”
What I do expect from him is more reflection. Claiming to have gone into “Too $hort mode,” as if he’d been possessed by Pimpin’ Satan isn’t enough. Broad claims of community service aren’t, either.
Learn you something, Too $hort! Then find an anti-rape organization that serves Black, Latina and other girls of color or provides anti-sexist training for men and write them a check. A big one. (Three that come to my mind: Chicago-based A Long Walk Home, Brookyn-based Girls for Gender Equity, and the DC-based national organization, Men Can Stop Rape.)
