Can R. Kelly Count on "His" Women ?

I read this article about Black women supporting R. Kelly in the Chicago Sun Times and I have to say I was both surprised by the reporter's frankness and disappointed that the story even existed. In spite of the theme of the article, the one positive thing that came out of it for me was the focus on protecting our young Black girls from predators instead of blaming them or labeling them as "fast."

Frankly, the tolerance for older men having sex with underage girls in segments of the black community is one reason too many children are born into impoverished circumstances.

Because adults fail to see these older men as sexual predators, they end up blaming the minor girls for the inappropriate sexual contact.

It should be as unacceptable in the black community for older men to have sex with these physically mature but emotionally immature females as it is for older men to marry underage girls at a polygamous compound.

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Along these same lines, The Black Snob has an amazing piece about how the culture of modern Hip Hop has essentially preyed on young Black women. In my estimation, this "entertainment" is every bit as damaging as what Mr. Kelly has been indicted for. (The language is a little rough in places....apologies to the easily offended)

A few years back I started making Andy Warhol homages to Lil Kim. Not because I liked Lil Kim or her music. Not because she was some epitome of manufactured beauty. But because of what she'd become, because of what Christopher Wallace, Notorious B.I.G., created her to be, the one thing she had to sell and sold greatly.

Lil Kim is a commodity like so many other things in the post-Shiny Suit Era of the Hip Hop Industry. A time when female MCs were really damaged girls on the come up willing to become glammed up, exalted strippers spitting rhymes they did not write. Flaunting game that was coached and coaxed. Male producers boosting them like hot cars. Flipping them like refurbished homes. They were ample, eager, hungry enough to get down on all fours and become profane provocateurs who could provide money based on "Pussy Power."

Pussy Power is not feminism. It is not womanism. It is about your worth being reduced to your private parts. Your parts being the only thing you can sell. Tits. Ass. Vagina. Marginal face with exemplary chassis. Girls getting bodied for talents they never possessed, but paraded about as the supreme because they fulfill male fantasy. This is not the same as an attractive woman with brains who uses her charm and guile and beauty to advance like an axiomatic Goddess. A success story who glides amongst us and gains the longing stares of men and women alike. This is the aspirational woman. The dream.

The likes of Lil Kim, Trina, Remy Ma and Foxy Brown fresh from prison are not.

It's amazing that any woman, girl, child could look at this coterie of cunts and find their dreams. That they could learn their sad origin tales of sexual abuse and abandonment leading them to paths of decadence and destruction and want to cosign to a testosterone fueled world where a credit card in the crack of an ass crudely demonstrates the vulgar truths.

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