�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 ? ”

cause Hype’s videos impacted how hip hop was consumed, they also

influenced how the movement was experienced.

But not all was fabulous in the world Hype helped create. His taste for big style relied on a misogynist gaze that produced some painful eĆłects in the worldview crafted in rap-music videos. Hype did not

introduce misogyny to the world of music videos. The mistreatment

and misrepresentation of women had been a staple motif throughout

the genre’s history. Taking its cues from television, film, and advertis-ing, the music video industry developed a system and a style that

stymied the role women occupied. The construction of the female

body/image in music videos has been an ongoing source of cultural

debate and controversy. Some of the earliest critiques of MTV fo-

cused on the sexist iconography in music video.

By making the look and tone of rap-music videos more cinematic,

Hype reinvented the genre. But unlike in the cinema characters in

music videos seldom speak. Thus what they do, or more precisely,

what their bodies do is all the more important. In the larger-than-life videos Hype created, rappers lived like kings. Mixed along with the ocean-view villas, poolside mansions, luxury cars, Cuban cigars,

yachts, and bottles of fine spirits were the women, often scantily clad.

They were essentially ornaments, eye-candy, part of the luscious

scenery and background that catered to the adolescent fantasies of

male viewers. Hype’s hip-hop world was a monument to hypercapi-

talism and consumerism, and women were merely another object to

be owned and disposed of.

Hype’s stylized videos helped introduce a new and disturbing

entry to our nation’s pop-culture lexicon�"the �śvideo ho.” This

archetype has become a stock figure in rap-music videos, variously

portrayed as a groupie, exotic dancer, servant, or seductress. Most important she oozes sexuality while posing meticulously for the male protagonist and male viewer’s gaze. The image of the high-rolling,

cash-money, pimped-out figure is so common in rap it has become a

target of parody in music videos, comedy skits, reality television, film,

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