Janelle Monae has become one of the most outspoken talents of her generation, with her genre-defying music and the expansive roles that she’s become known for as an actress. It’s her own relation with the music industry that she recently had a re-ckoning with and now she’s encouraging others to wake up to the problems with hip-hop music.
With uprisings happening all over the country around various issues, it seems to be a great time for people to champion ca-uses that are near and dear to them. There’s been a ton of changes that have happened as a result of people speaking up and speaking out, though there are many that feel there can be more. Music hasn’t seemed to have had as much of a “come to Jesus” moment, at least not enough for Janelle Monae.
There’s been a recent documentary that has been causing some di-sruption in the music business about Russell Simmons.
Here’s the official logline from HBO MAX: “Directed and produced by Kirby Di-ck and Amy Ziering (‘The Hunting Ground,’ ‘The Invisible W-ar’), and first reported by The New York Times, ‘On the Record’ presents the ha-unting story of music executive Drew Dixon as she gra-pples with her decision to become one of the first women of color to come forward and publicly acc-use hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons of misco-nduct.
The film chr-onicles not only Dixon’s story, but that of several other women — Sil Lai Abrams, Sheri Sher — del-ving deeply into the ways women voices are all too often silenced and igno-red when reporting these stories.Russell Simmons, many su-spect because of the documentary and potential ch-arges, has sold property, stepped down from his companies and closed up businesses, having made the decision to rel-ocate to Bali – which infamously has no extradition treaty with the United States of America.
That being said, the documentary features a whole host of stories of what women in the business of hip-hop have dealt with for decades and now, they’ve gotten another supporter with Janelle Monae’s recent tweet storm.“I really only ever wanna hear women rapping. The amount of mis-ogyny from most of men in rap and music is infu-riating,” Janelle’s series of tweets started. And she had plenty more to say.
“Misogny [sic] has NEVER been okay yet it has become normalized. Women didn’t create [it], y’all did. SO YOU DO THE WORK to ABO-LISH IT.”Monae also talked about being trig-gered and gas lit by the music she listens to and how she’s ready to move on from it, even adding that her and “her girls” still dance to the music despite the lyrics. That seems to be totally off the table, now.
This Article First Published On ALLABOUTLAUGHS