Chapter 40: There are Bitches and Hoes Summary

Tricia Rose takes a deep look into hip hop and rap music of our society today in this chapter. Her main purpose for writing is to explain how the lyrics of the songs impact our society, specifically the black community and women. Rose opens the article by elaborating on pimp culture and how our society views pimp culture. She talks about how pimp culture's ideology and expression in pop culture are fundamentally exploitative to women by explaining how the rap music features lyrics that depict domination of prostitutes, and how street pimps use physical violence as well as emotional and psychological manipulation to control prostitutes. She dives even deeper into pimp culture and provides a "fundamental pimp attitude", which she believes is that women are bitches, and bitches are whores and prostitutes. After laying the framework of the article with information on pimp culture, Rose moves on to how hip hop and rap affect the young women in our society today.

Rap and hip hop lyrics have a tremendous impact on young women according to this article. Rose explains that rap songs encourage young women fans to emulate the behavior of bitches and hoes to get attention, to be desired, and to be considered sexy. This behavior is explained by the prominence of gangsta rappers who receive a lot of money and fame for their hip hop music. To contrast, for some women the only means of making any gains is through behaving in hyper sexual ways. All in all, rap and hip hop lyrics are causing young women to exploit themselves similar to the way rap artists exploit women.

After talking about the impact rap and hip hop have on young women, Rose shifts gear into the perspective of the rap artist. She includes quotes from artists like Snoop Dogg and many others. Some rappers try to defend themselves by saying their songs aren't about women. Snoop Dogg explains that the reason for the exploitation of women in hip hop are because of the artist's upbringings. Most of them grew up living life in tough, poor neighborhoods, which is what the songs represent. Rose doesn't offer an opinion on the matter, but continues on to explain that the rapper needs to exploit "bitches and hoes" because they add a status and value to their pimp images. She says that the process of locating, labeling, partying with, then discarding a black woman is part of enhancing their performance as gangsta and pimp style rappers. Rose concludes the article with a call to action, calling on empowered women to be in charge of their own sexual imagery and give themselves freedom to express themselves as they see fit.