Nelly’s ‘Tip Drill’ tipped the scales
By Lorinda M. Bullock
Of the NNPA
WASHINGTON (NNPA) – For the past five years, Black Entertainment Television’s Uncut provided sexually explicit videos by mainstream rap artists such as Nelly and Ludacris as well as unknowns looking for national exposure.
Now, Uncut has been cut.
The show that grabbed headlines after airing Nelly’s notorious “Tip Drill” – a video that showed Nelly swiping a credit card down the crack of a woman’s rear – ended its raunchy and controversial run earlier this month.
Michael Lewellen of BET acknowledged that the program “was a lightning rod of opposition.”
Uncut aired during the wee hours of the morning and played not just videos straight from the strip club, but videos from independent artists seeking a broader audience and videos that were too violent for regular rotation.
For critics, it was Nelly’s “Tip Drill” that tipped the scales.
Students of the all-female, historically black Spelman College in Atlanta protested when Nelly was scheduled to come to the campus to promote a bone marrow drive for his now deceased sister, Jacqueline Donahue. The students argued if the rapper visited the school, he should make himself available to answer questions about the video. Nelly declined.
Cori Murray, entertainment editor at Essence magazine, said Spelman students energized a movement to dump Uncut.
“It was on but no one was talking about it. But the Spelman girls were like ‘No, we want to talk about it,’” Murray said.
In 2005, Essence launched its “Take Back the Music Campaign,” featuring educational panels and a songwriting contest promoting positive messages. At the Essence Music Festival over the July 4 weekend in Houston, singer/songwriter Jill Scott said that some videos and music are “dirty, inappropriate, inadequate, unhealthy, and polluted.” She added, “We can demand more.”
“Here we’ve got HIV/AIDS growing at an epidemic rate for our 15- to 24-year-old girls, and their ideas of sex and sexuality are coming from TV, the music and the culture,” said Lisa Fager, co-founder of Industry Ears, a Washington, D.C.-based media think tank.
“And they’re thinking it’s okay to be mistreated and have violent sex, and they’re not understanding their sexuality.”
Researchers such as Gina Wingood have made connections between black girls, sexuality and hip-hop music.
Wingood published a study in the American Journal of Public Health in 2003 that examined 522 unmarried black females aged 14-18, who came from non-urban, lower socioeconomic neighborhoods. All of the participants were sexually active in the previous six months.
Her research showed that the girls who were exposed to rap music for 14 hours or more per week were three times more likely to hit a teacher and 2.5 times more likely to have been arrested, compared with the girls who had less exposure to rap. The study also showed girls who frequently watched rap videos were twice more likely to have multiple sexual partners and more than 1.5 times more likely to acquire an STD, use drugs and use alcohol during the 12-month study.
Rap artist Kamikaze admitted to reaping some benefits of having his 2003 video “You Ain’t Hard” featured on Uncut. Kamikaze, who makes up the other half of the group Crooked Lettaz with rapper David Banner, said his video did not have sexual themes, but was “one of those riot-starting, fight-starting songs.”
He said, “With me being an independent artist, my video wasn’t going to make it to 106 and Park at that stage, but it allowed me a platform to be seen.”
Kamikaze voiced a market approach to the music.
“If consumers stop buying the music, then the rappers will stop doing it,” he said.
“As soon as we go out and start supporting the Commons and the Talib Kwelis and the Mos Defs and the people who are positive, then the climate of the industry will change.”
