Commentary in the works: Hip-hop and porn
Tomorrow I will be giving some perspective on this growing segment within the world of hip-hop. Today will be part one in this series.
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For the boisterous Atlanta-based rappers Lil John and the East Side Boyz, Dec. 10 was the crowning night of what had already been a triumphant year. Their album “Kings of Crunk” had been certified platinum; their song “Get Low” was in heavy rotation on MTV and commercial radio. That evening, at the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas, they collected three Billboard Music Awards, including one for R&B/hip-hop group of the year.
But the rappers didn’t linger over their victory. Instead, they skipped the after-parties and rushed upstairs to their suite to film a graphic girl-on-girl sex scene for their new porn video, “Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz American Sex Series,” which was released last month through adult video stores and the Internet. “It’s not softcore porn,” Lil Jon said by telephone
from Atlanta. “It’s some real XXX.”
Hip-hop has lately taken a turn toward the bourgeois, with prominent rappers renouncing violence, embracing philanthropy and donning pinstripe suits. But in deliberate defiance of this newfound respectability, some top acts have begun to pursue a less-than-wholesome sideline: commercial pornography. Pop music has always pushed sexual boundaries, of course, and rap has never shied away from gleefully smutty lyrics. But now, some stars are moving beyond raunchy rhetoric into actual pornographic matter, with graphic videos, explicit cable TV shows and hip-hop-themed girlie magazines…more
