Ja Rule's Complex comments

Posted by

on September 13, 2007

Complex Magazine, a magazine for "men" (presumably, straight men) has an online interview with Ja Rule, in which they ask the rapper about his take on possible congressional hearings on the need to tone down the misogyny and homophobia in hip-hop lyrics. His take? If anything, Congress should be holding hearings on the media's promotion of homosexuality....

Ja Rule: There's a f***ing black kid right now about to get 25 years for having a fight with some white kids over hanging the nooses over the white tree, lets get to that. Let's get into sh*t like that, because that's what's tearing up America, not me calling a woman a b*tch or a hoe on my rap songs. And if it is, then we need to go step to Paramount, and f****ng MGM, and all of these other motherf**kers that's making all of these movies and we need to go step to MTV and Viacom, and lets talk about all these f***ing shows that they have on MTV that is promoting homosexuality, that my kids can't watch this sh*t. Dating shows that's showing two guys or two girls in mid afternoon. Let's talk about sh*t like that! If that's not f***ing up America, I don't know what is. There's a lot of issues we can address besides hip-hop, but they want to put everything on us like we're the problem. But see, and this is going to be a shameless f***ing plug, but I said, "when everyone wants to point the finger, and ask why there's so much corruption, they only need to look in the mirror." It starts with themselves.

To me, Ja Rule's comments look a lot like "blaming the victim," and I get really peeved when anyone says that LGBT visibility is what's "f***ing up America." However, I suppose you could argue that there is a double-standard involved. He personally (and idiotically) finds same-sex content on television objectionable and yet there are no congressional hearings, while people outside the hip hop community personally find hip-hop misogyny and homophobia objectionable ... and politicians respond to their concerns.

Ergh. I guess I'm still forming an opinion on this one. What do others think?

Note: Hat tip to AfterElton.com reader Mikey G. for starting a forum topic on this subject.