Sonically Speaking: 30 Years of Hip Hop & Reproductive justice
Every movement needs a soundtrack. Whether it’s a wail within your spirit, the blues at your hips, or soca at your feet we have always used sound as a carrier of messages to the masses.
Reproductive Justice (RJ) is my movement home. It’s the lens from which I’ve come to understand the world and if you know me, you know how much I love hip hop! As a 90s baby, I was the kid who sat on AZ Lyrics for hours learning the words to all the greats. And yes, I can still rap “My Ambitionz az a Ridah” bar for bar. (Much respect to all the OGs, but Tupac is in fact the GOAT)
With 50 years of culture to shoulder up on, the legacy of hip hop is deep and wide. While the genre and the artists who’ve pushed it forward have come up against many challenges over the years, the influence of hip hop culture is all around us. Hip hop’s truest embodiment is protest song, chant, and anthem. It is a vibration that moves you to say it with your chest. It is a rhythm that makes joy possible despite unthinkable doses of pain.
As a reproductive justice advocate, hip hop is my soundtrack. I remember reading When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip Hop Feminist Breaks It Down when I was starting to understand what it meant for me to be a Black girl in the United States of America. From affirmations and mood shifters, to PSAs and legendary diss tracks, hip hop helps to transmute, convey, and subvert the bittersweet reality of being Black in the U.S.
The foundational tenets of reproductive justice say that it is within your right to decide if, when, and how to have or not have children, the right to parent the children you have within safe and sustainable environments free of violence and to do so as a fully realized human being along a spectrum of expressions. Read that one mo time!
Doesn’t that sound like freedom?
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Doesn’t that sound like hip hop?
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Doesn’t that sound like freedom? - Doesn’t that sound like hip hop? -
The origins of RJ are credited to 12 Black Women, who as part of the Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice, coined the term in 1994 to talk about how other movements of the time were lacking in representing their lived experiences. In particular, the mainstream feminist movement and the large-scale Civil Rights and Black Power movements did little to represent the specific needs of Black Women without making them subject to even more violence and suppression.
The foundations of the RJ movement were built on a legacy of freedom fighters eventually taking root in contemporary Black feminisms. It was a collaborative effort between mamas, queer folks, activists and organizers, elected officials, clergy members, and everyday people who brought a wide range of thought leadership and their own lived experiences.
The historical moments leading up to the early 1990s (think: genocide, colonization, imperialism, enslavement, racialized capitalism, ableism, gendered violence, homophobia, etc.) set the tone for solidarity. RJ uplifted human rights as a means to achieve social justice in response to immense repression, here in the U.S. and abroad.
The momentum of the reproductive justice movement was solidified through the intentional and arduous undertaking of building relationships across difference, meaning making, and actualizing our dreams in the most radical ways possible.
Doesn’t that sound like what we need right now?
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Doesn’t that sound like hip hop?
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Doesn’t that sound like what we need right now? - Doesn’t that sound like hip hop? -
I created this playlist to celebrate the last 30 years of reproductive justice against the backdrop of a soundtrack that illuminates a wide range of experiences between the beats and rhymes.
Many songs you’ve probably heard before, but I want to challenge us to listen beyond their catchiness and hear them again with the tenets of RJ in mind. You’ll hear about abortion, some of the realities of sex work, and the impacts of drug use and incarceration on working families and our larger communities. Perhaps you’ll hear your own story with themes on the challenges of single parenting, insisting on pleasure, and exploring your sexuality or gender expression.
This playlist isn’t exhaustive as I’m sure there are many other hip hop songs with themes of RJ storytelling. However, if this is a glimpse into the sonic diary of the last 30 years, my biggest wonder is what will the next 30 years sound like?
