New Haven Independent

Students from New Haven Academy and Coop High School sat in rapt attention through the documentary “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” which looks at how black manhood is portrayed in rap music and hip-hop culture (and through the subsequent panel discussion, pictured). They sang along with clips from 50 Cent, and most of them laughed at white kids in the film talking about why they like the music.

The film included interviews with some of the best-known rap artists and producers over the past 25 years, as well as hip-hop historians. They explained how the gangsta rap takeover of the genre coincided with independent labels being bought out by the major labels, which are controlled by white business executives.

So in whose interest is the depiction of African American males as sex-crazed, violence-prone pimps and black women as ‘“ho:s? The film included scenes from several videos, albeit blurred, showing scantily clad women in extremely suggestive sexual situations.

It turns out that 70 percent of rap music is consumed by young white males. In the film, a group of young white men and women agreed that hip-hop culture reinforces negative stereotypes of African-Americans, even as they said how much they like the music, which gives them a window on another culture they otherwise wouldn’t know anything about. One white activist even said that it could have been invented by the Ku Klux Klan, so damaging is it to black people.

Afterward a panel of four African-American adults of various ages addressed the students. The rapper known as Influence said he wouldn’t write any lyrics he couldn’t say in front of his mother and grandma. He added, to enthusiastic applause, “Understand…if you break down your black women, you break down the contents of you.” Click here for more.

Nardo Burgos, a Co-op graduate who works at AIDS Project New Haven, urged audience members to get tested for HIV, to always use a condom if they have sex, and to realize that not all teens are having sex, despite what’s portrayed in hip-hop videos. He said guys’ complaints that condoms are “too small” is a myth. “One size fits all. I could put a condom over my head right now with no problem,” he said.

Panelist Andre Davis works with the Male Involvement Network, encouraging fathers to build relationships with their children. He grew up in the Church Street South housing project, a.k.a, the Jungle, and survived a shooting. Now he talks about ways to solve conflicts other than by violence. He also raps, and recited a few lines of a poem he wrote with a funny surprise ending. Hint: it has to do with fatherhood. Click here to listen.

Michelle Turner, who hosts Electric Drum on WYBC radio and who used to be a disk jockey, was the last panelist. She said she has a 10-year-old daughter with whom she’d love to share hip-hop music and videos. But she can’t. She also said that some of the music outlets have recently been caught up in a pay-to-play scandal, and “payola” is why the same dozen songs get played over and over.

When the students got a chance to talk, they weren’t shy about expressing their opinions. Wendy Cohen, a senior at Coop, said she’s from Wallingford, a town infamous for support for the KKK, at least in the past. That’s one reason she wanted to go to school in New Haven — to meet people from different backgrounds. She said that all kinds of music should be for all kinds of people, that it’s discrimination to laugh at white kids listening to hip-hop. She also said that nobody really looks like the women in the videos, that everyone is airbrushed to look perfect. Click here for more.

From the back of the auditorium one female student said if women dress that way and act that way, they don’t deserve respect. Another chimed in that it shouldn’t matter what woman wears; she still doesn’t deserve to be demeaned or assaulted by any man.

Annicia Smith (pictured), a sophomore at Coop, said maybe the kids in the audience laughed at the white guy in the documentary “because he doesn’t know what rap means”

The principals of Coop and New Haven Academy, Dr. Dolores Garcia-Blocker and Greg Baldwin, respectively, are working with their students to remove the N-word from their school. In the documentary, that word was bleeped out dozens of times.