It’s Time to Unpack Pimp Culture in Bay Area Hip-Hop

Editor’s note: This story is part of That’s My Word, KQED’s year-long exploration of Bay Area hip-hop history, with new content dropping all throughout 2023. 

I’m a teaching artist standing before 20 teenage boys, mostly Black and brown. They’re inquisitive at the moment, which means I have just minutes to grab their attention before they zone out. Oh, and by the way, they’re incarcerated in the high-security unit at San Francisco Juvenile Hall.

“So feminism is…”

I trail off. The white, male teacher assigned to leading discussions for Women’s History Month eyes me. I’m nervous he’ll interrupt again, launching into a mansplanation about why the unit should care about the girls in their community.

“I know it’s sometimes hard for y’all to understand feminism because y’all go through so much,” I continue.

It’s true. Most of them sleep on concrete beds each night. They’re at a pivotal age, a time when they’re in desperate need of positive direction. Unfortunately, they’re locked up instead. And they’re inundated with notions of toxic masculinity.

It doesn’t help that most of the rap music they love reinforces the idea that women are objects. Sometimes they waste sharp wits cooking up ways to exploit young women in their lives. I remember one boy telling me: “I can’t wait to have a wife so she can pay for all my shit.” I guess that Mac Dre line — “I treat my bitch like an ATM card” — already got to him.

To combat this messaging, I handpick rap bars for our creative writing lessons. 2pac’s “Dear Mama” is essentially an epistolary poem, and “Birds Eye View” by Zion I is a great example of personification. But how am I supposed to compete with the allure of patriarchy?

I clear my throat and keep talking.

“Y’all probably heard about the #MeToo movement, right? Well, I met Tarana Burke. She’s the founder of the movement. She told me #MeToo isn’t a women’s movement, it’s a survivors’ movement.”

To my delight, some of my students nod. Furrowed brows begin to soften, and empathy permeates the room. It makes sense. Almost 60% of incarcerated youth have been through the foster care system. And, according to one Johns Hopkins University study, foster youth are four times as likely to experience sexual abuse as their peers. I wasn’t merely standing in front of a group of teenage boys. I was standing with fellow survivors.

For decades, hip-hop has empowered and given voice to countless young people like my students. And now, the culture has grown up. In light of its 50th anniversary, isn’t it time we seriously examine hip-hop’s contradictions? If Bay Area hip-hop is “the product of pimps and hustlers just as much as activists and intellectuals,” how do we uplift its innovative potential while holding space to look at all the ways it falls short?

Throughout my decade-plus of experience as an educator, MC and community organizer, I’ve seen firsthand how hip-hop’s glorification of pimp culture harms people of all genders. Pimping obviously predates hip-hop. But that doesn’t mean we should normalize antiquated ideas about gender, or push played-out power dynamics. We can sugarcoat the truth, but at its root, pimp culture is about exploitation. Ignoring this reality risks harming some of the most marginalized people in the Bay Area. I’m talking about poor folks, and about Black, brown and Indigenous women, in addition to LGBTQ people. I promise you, they’re already paying the ultimate price.

In my poetry classes in juve, the poem “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou was a favorite, especially among incarcerated girls. Something about rising “like dust” against all odds resonated with them. Still I Rise is also the name of a recent creative collaboration among myself and the Bay Area-rooted rappers RyanNicole and Coco Peila. Together we’ve created a three-part video podcast, What’s Pimpin’? A new episode drops each Wednesday on KQED Arts & Culture’s YouTube channel June 28–July 12, and our EP of the same title is coming soon. The project examines pimp culture, with a particular focus on misogynoir. Our goal: having tough conversations and cultivating solutions.

Despite its flaws, Bay Area hip-hop is incredibly creative and full of liberatory potential. I saw this as a young rapper growing up in Seattle, when I had Andre Nickatina’s “Jungle” on repeat. There was something wildly unique about his sound. He was nerdy — referencing Alice in Wonderland and Star Wars in his rhymes — yet dangerous. I could relate. Other Bay Area rappers shared my desire to use the music for revolutionary change. I sang along to Mystic’s “The Life” because it captured my passion to alleviate suffering. Bay Area hip-hop influenced my decision to move to Oakland in my early 20s, over a decade ago. It’s as multifaceted as the streets where it originates.

The conversations we’re having in What’s Pimpin’? are challenging because critiquing Bay Area hip-hop can feel like airing out dirty laundry. The Bay Area often gets overlooked in the music industry despite its outsized influence. Since the gangsta rap moral panic of the early ’90s, white politicians, pundits and other outsiders have bolstered their careers by vilifying hip-hop. And our racist criminal justice system has used rap lyrics to put people behind bars. Fans are rightfully protective.

But as hip-hop artists who believe in gender equality, we want to push the culture forward. We want to separate hip-hop culture from pimp culture, which mirrors the exploitation and domination of colonialism, slavery and racial capitalism — it didn’t start in 1973 with the movie The Mack and didn’t end the day Too Short got a street named after him.

Rapping about pimping is profitable, but behind the glamorous image are real-world statistics about how Black women and girls are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and violence. A 2011 study tracking a two-year period showed that 94% of U.S. sex-trafficking victims were female. Of those victims, 40% were Black and 24% were Latinx. Meanwhile, buyers are overwhelmingly white men.

Protecting Black women and girls is particularly difficult because they’re less likely to be reported missing. According to a May statement from Oakland City Councilmember Treva Reid, of the 1,500 missing-persons cases in Oakland this year, 400 of them are Black women. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

I’m a firm believer in the kind of love that Assata Shakur describes as “contraband in hell.” She says it’s as powerful as “an acid that eats away bars.” If we love our Bay Area community, then we can’t expect to actualize that love without having some uncomfortable conversations. My love for the men in my community motivates me to hold them accountable instead of coddling harmful behavior. My love has inspired me to spend almost a decade uplifting youth trapped in jail cells. My love isn’t about censorship — it’s about owning up to what’s being said.

But I can’t love alone. I need men to step up and question their own conditioning. Our project What’s Pimpin’? isn’t the first to ask an age-old question about exploitation, coercion and control. I can only hope it won’t be the last.

Resources

The National Human Trafficking Hotline is available at 1-888-373-7888 or via text message at 233733.

Bay Area Worker Support offers mutual aid, social support and resources to people working in the sex trade.

Love Never Fails provides housing and support to human-trafficking survivors.

Louder Than a Riot, an NPR Podcast, examines misogynoir and homophobia in hip-hop.

MISSSEY works to prevent girls and gender-expansive youth from being sexually exploited, and supports survivors.

RAINN offers free, confidential help for survivors of sexual violence at 800-656-4673 or via chat at online.rainn.org.

Rights4Girls offers numerous educational resources about sex trafficking.

The South Bay Coalition to End Human Trafficking provides resources to survivors in Santa Clara and San Benito counties.

Survivors Healing, Advising and Dedicated to Empowerment (SHADE) offers support groups, crisis response, peer counseling and more to human-trafficking survivors.