Just a Gwai Lo - fun within prescribed limits

Felicia R. Lee on Tricia Rose: “From her perch, the stories are bleaker than ever. She still listens to a lot of hip-hop, a genre she deeply appreciates despite its warts and contradictions. But straying from the music's roots in alienation, the narratives and videos of today's best-selling commercial hip-hop are more misogynistic and more infected with brutal images of black masculinity, she said. The pimp is a recurring trope, reflecting black needs for power and control of women and white fantasies about black sexuality and violence.”