interview with J. Medeiros about "Constance"

[sam]

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/features/a ... -medeiros/

The whole interview is worth reading, but here are the highlights for me.

So how’s the response been to the subject of human trafficking?

You know it’s crazy to see people freeze up. I did this live reality-type internet radio show that I knew nothing about but I found out afterwards that it was an adult station that filmed porn and right in the middle of all the sex programming they have this hip-hop show and they started asking me about my music and they didn’t know anything about me. My appearance was just set up by the promotions department. And hear I am talking about “Constance” and as soon as I said “pornography”, “child porn”, “misogyny”, “human trafficking”, the whole place went silent, I thought the power got cut or something. They didn’t know what to say and worried that they were going to get kicked off the site. During the commercial they were laughing at the situation but on camera they were nervous. I still went in and played “Constance”. I guess this reality TV stuff is a good thing sometimes.

With the title being Of Gods and Girls, it seems like you’re taking the current dialogue on women in hip-hop lyrics down a different route?

I’ve never used my music to jump on the bandwagon or cash in on what’s hip at the moment. I wrote a lot of the songs on Of Gods and Girls three years ago and the work I did with the Procussions nine years ago was always about talking about how our culture views women. To hit the media with a message saying it’s hip-hop, a black or white issue, or urban is not my perspective. I think it comes down to the identity of man in the broad sense of humanity as a whole. I don’t necessarily come from a perspective to write for women but to write for “man” to redefine man by writing about women. As I a write about women I’m saying something about myself and redefining what it means to be masculine. Even the title Of Gods and Girls and the idea is that there is no way we can get around it; that society is run and controlled by man and has always been as far as we know it. It’s women who were wearing veils due to religious practices and it’s women who are being put into prostitution and being raped in this human trafficking, even the male victims are being treated as women in this monster of human trafficking. It’s bigger than hip-hop or Oprah. It all comes down to the idea of man’s idea in history of what it means to be a man and to have control and to use that control to mercilessly exploit women, making them into products.

You mentioned that studies show that the majority of the participators and consumers who partake in the human trafficking are male. Why do you think that is?

Yes, for the topic of human trafficking—which “Constance” is about—the percentage is about 80 percent male and for child pornography it’s 90 percent men are the main ones who are consuming it. I recently read this book called Female Chauvinistic Pigs that was about how the world is changing and in the last ten years feminists have split and that there is new feminist view that pornography is being viewed or exercised as a display of true feminism and allows the woman do whatever she wants sexually. So there are two fronts facing each other making the world an even crazier place where the morality and values are really changing and being switch around from when feminism first began. But even though we might see more women get involved because more women are actually hosting the porn sites, right now the men are the target audience for the child pornography because unfortunately they’re the ones who are hungry for this type of exploitation. It’s just like anything else where we praise the gun runners, drug runners. So how many artists I grew up listening to who at the end of the day I realized that they were proud of pushing crack and heroin to their own people.

[Evo]

You know, initially I was a little put off by the religious aspect in his work like, I think, some other people here. Now, though, the more I read the more I really like him. Thank you for sharing this. It's really good to see socially conscious hip hop again.

[Lost Clown]

You know, initially I was a little put off by the religious aspect in his work like, I think, some other people here. Now, though, the more I read the more I really like him. Thank you for sharing this. It's really good to see socially conscious hip hop again.

See when I found him I didn't think he was 'in your face' religious. I don't care if someone is religious (my partner is) just as long as they don't feel the need to constantly remind me of it. His album's not like that anyway.