�ś W E L O V E H I P H O P, B U T D O E S H I P H O P L O V E U S ? ”

in mainstream television, film, music, and advertising. The shoe

company Pony broke new ground in a 2002 ad campaign that high-

lighted just how intertwined the two worlds�"pop and porn�"had

become. The creators of the ad campaign decided to use adult film

stars in their print and billboard ads. Acknowledging the pervasive-ness of porn, the shoe company’s vice president, Come Chantrel, ex-plained, �śWhen I grew up in the 80’s in Paris, models were the

ultimate feminine ideal. For the 20-year-old kid, porn stars have kind of replaced what models used to represent.”

The hip hop and porn merger was emblematic of the societal

changes that characterized what one cultural critic called �śthe rise of the amazing pornosphere.” Hip- hop porn reflected the spread of sexual themes and imagery in American pop and youth culture. Dis-

cussing her own corporate experience in the selling of rap music,

Burgos asserted, �śI’ve been selling sex forever from a label’s perspec-tive. In America we sell sex to buy clothes, for cigarette packaging, just for everything. So now as Fatal says, we’re kind of flipping it and using sex to kind of sell music with all the entrenchment and the ac-ceptance.”

Fish �ŚN’ Grits co-publishers contend that the magazine services America’s insatiable appetite for sexually explicit entertainment. By most accounts commercial sex is a thriving business in the U.S. In his discussion of the commercial sex industry, Eric Schlosser writes,

�śAmericans now spend as much as $8 billion to $10 billion on �Śadult entertainment’�"on hard-core videos and DVD’s, Internet porn,

cable and satellite porn, peep shows, phone sex, live sex acts, sexual toys, and sex magazines.” Porn is not only big business; it is also legit-imate business. As Schlosser notes, some of America’s most reputable corporations�"AT&T, AOL Time Warner, Hilton Enterprises�"have

joined the commercial sex economy.

Hip hop’s eagerness to indulge its libidinous desires is not un-

precedented. In the 1950s the �śblue” recordings of comics like Redd Foxx found an audience. Two decades later, the bawdy toasts of

Rudy Ray Moore garnered a cultlike following. But such sexual fare

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