I remember the VIBE magazine article Liza Rios was featured in.


Hip Hop Women Recount Abuse at Their Own Risk
Run Date: 06/11/06
By Carla Thompson
WeNews correspondent
A few women who have survived abusive relationships with rap stars are breaking the silence about domestic violence. But a "no snitch" rule is still widely observed in the hip hop music world.


(WOMENSENEWS)--Big Pun--born Christopher Rios on Nov. 10, 1971 in the Bronx, N.Y.--was a 697-pound platinum-selling solo rap artist who died in 2000 at the age of 28 from a heart attack.

After his death, his widow, Liza Rios, chronicled their stormy relationship and the physical abuse that began when she was 16 years old in the 2002 documentary, "Big Pun: Still Not a Player," which she co-produced and which included footage of Pun pistol-whipping her.

The documentary did not earn Rios many friends in the hip hop community. When she tried to recruit hip hop stars to perform in a fundraising tour to benefit programs to fight domestic violence, her calls went unanswered, according to various reports in hip hop publications.

The documentary did, however, turn journalist Elizabeth Mendez Berry into a Rios fan.

"I think Liza is a hero," says Berry. "She could have been a tragic first lady of hip hop but she decided not to be . . . She could have been sort of 'a first widow,' a woman who gets sympathy galore because of her fallen (husband) and who doesn't rock the boat."

Instead, Berry found that Rios, unlike many hip hop women, was willing to break an unwritten rule about "not snitching" on the domestic violence in the personal lives of rap stars.

After some initial difficulty reaching Rios, Berry interviewed her for an article about domestic violence in the March 2005 issue of VIBE, the New York-based hip hop magazine.

'Rap's Black Eye'
Berry's article ran under the headline, "Love Hurts: Rap's Black Eye."

Aside from Rios, Berry got very few women to allow her to use their names in the story.

Among others, Berry also approached hip hop rhythm and blues singer Faith Evans, the former wife of the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. but Evans, who has sung about the violent death of a young woman at the hands of her boyfriend, was unwilling to talk on the record about her experiences.

She found that many of the women she interviewed--who only agreed to talk to her off the record for fear of reprisal from influential members of the hip hop community--did not think about their experience in terms of "domestic violence." Instead they talked about having "fights."

"They are 5 feet 2 inches and are having 'fights' with guys 6 feet 4 inches," says Berry. "If you ask them if they were abused, they would say 'no.' If you ask them if things ever got physical, they would say, 'Oh yeah, we had 'fights.' The women don't think of themselves as victims because they fought back or initiated the conflict."

One other female artist willing to go on the record with Berry about her abuse was Charli Baltimore, a rapper once signed to the New York City-based Murder, Inc. Records.

Both Rios and Baltimore said they knew enough about the hip hop world to expect repercussions for coming forward, but Berry was unprepared.

"A lot of people were calling me out on the Internet . . . several anonymous writers made negative comments and-or threats about me," says Berry. "People were saying they were worried about me. A period after the article was published, I was advised by colleagues not to go out at night."

How Hazardous is Hip Hop?
Rios's experience, the unwillingness of women to talk openly about domestic violence and the aftermath Berry suffered for writing her article raise questions about how hazardous the hip hop music world is for the health of women associated with it.

Dr. Angie Colette Beatty, assistant professor of communication and African American studies at St. Louis University, says the music is pretty clearly detrimental to the image of black women.

"We see black men being abusive to black women and we see black women not being offended," said Beatty, referring to hip hop videos. "These globally transported images leave the impression that we (black women) are doing it to ourselves and that if we cover up and respect ourselves, the problem would go away."

Beatty says women in hip hop have to "walk a ridiculous line. They have to be hard-core but can't be too masculine." As an example Beatty points to Lil' Kim, the hip hop star who got in legal trouble in 2005 for committing perjury. Beatty says that now she is being celebrated by some in the hip hop community as the first woman to do jail time.

Putting Up With Something Else
Dr. Suraiya Baluch, the director of sexual violence prevention programs at Barnard College and Columbia University in New York, agrees. "The mandate is to be a superwoman," she says. "People have been putting up with cruel and unacceptable behavior and the perception is that this is yet another something that you have to deal with."

Tempering his criticism of hip hop, Mark Anthony Neal, associate professor in the black popular culture program in African and African-American Studies at Duke University in Durham, N.C., notes that the art form expresses social ills and doesn't create them.

"Because hip hop is an easy whipping boy, there is a tendency to attribute the worst gender and sexual politics to castigate hip hop in lieu of having real conversations about domestic violence and other issues more broadly and individual artists within hip hop," says Neal. "We are critical of artists and of the channels, but are never really critical of corporate interests that are producing and distributing it."

Neal also points out that hip hop is not the first musical genre to spawn stories of domestic violence.

"You can talk about James Brown who had a history of domestic abuse as recently as his 70th birthday," says Neal. "And Patti LaBelle talks about Jackie Wilson attempting to rape her in her autobiography. We live in a culturally fundamentally patriarchal society that says men are and should be more powerful than women and violence is the way it is effectively manifested in society."

Berry agrees it is too easy to blame hip hop for domestic violence. "It's not that simple," she says. "But it does contribute to the climate of disrespect. When women are systematically disrespected, people are more likely not going to care what they think. They become comfortable with seeing women objectified, more comfortable seeing them controlled."

Carla Thompson, a New York-based freelance journalist, is author of a memoir, "Bearing Witness: Not So Crazy in Alabama" (August Press) and producer of an award-winning documentary about black women and hair, "The Root of It All" (National Film Network).

Good for Rios! She's a brave woman and her willingness to tell will help others in her situation.

More people should have the courage to break the no snitch rule, then perhaps change will come.

and the even sadder thing is that the culture as a whole forgives celebrities like James Brown, R.Kelly, OJ Simpson, Johnny Cochran, Marion Barry, Tupac, Biggie and probably even Big Pun so the cycle just continues.....but good for these women for standing up for their rights.....even if the Big Pun story will still go down in history as a great rapper who died too young
[Edited 7/6/06 13:01pm]

i believe its kinda unfair to categorize a whole culture in a demonized manner...
Though i feel for Rios, but not all rappers are Women Beaters...
I think its another attempt to cast a black shadow on the culture...
just because their a few bad apples you should never single out a whole culture...

I was mostly talking about hip-hop culture and the media and people that still worship the folks I mentioned. I'm not talking about colors here. I mean look at MJ! He sleeps with kids and people still worship him. Plus, the article didn't say all rappers beat women did it? It was mostly talking about this woman breaking the "no snitch" policy in the hip-hop community. But that is also a tactic used by abusers, in every culture.

God bless the dead.

If you want someone who's proud to portray a "thug" image, well....what do you think a real thug is? A thug has always been a violent person. If you lay your ass with a dog, dammitt, don't complain when you get fleas.

As far as the whole article, the snitch shit is a trip. I think it depends on how you grew up in terms of whether or not you'd condone that shit in your own life. It's really fucked up all around...

Abuse is fucked up, but I think disrespecting the memory of those who should rest in peace is also fucked up.

Like if you have stories about James Brown, bring 'em up NOW, not after he's gone.

And another question: WAS Big Pun a "great" rapper?

CalhounSq said:

yeah he was. he's an emcee's emcee.

CinisterCee said:

Tell it like it is, honey. Shall I not "disrespect" Hitler by praising him, now that he's dead?

CuntOMatic said:

Yeah, because Hitler had SUCH a similar history.

Ass.

CinisterCee said:

CuntOMatic said:

Big Pun wasn't a hater, he just abused a lot. Brown is the hardest working abuser in show business.

I have mentioned this on a few other sites(hip hop).

The response was ' what are you sensitive or something'?

Rappers in general think it's o.k to hit a women, sad but true. The black community defend entertainers who do this such as;

jay z
jimi hendrix
kool g rap
B.I.G
james brown
sly stone
charles mingus
wesley snipes
dennis rodman
[Edited 7/7/06 6:23am]

EmbattledWarrior said:

Proof?

mikek1 said:

You need to effin' stop posting generalizations.

mikek1 said:

UMMM, what's with the editing??? Which one is it - is violence inherent in ALL Black men or just in rappers??? And is it rappers in general or just Black rappers???

Thank you for your statement. It couldn't possibly be a masculine/bravado thing that's been around for ages - abusing women doesn't happen elsewhere, just in Black homes where muthafuckas are rapping. I think you said what you meant the first time. Thank you for your statement, it's so fucking fitting...

CalhounSq said:

Based on responses from BLACK RAP FANS on message boards; MOST think it's o.k to hit a women!

Go on hip hop boards with this thread and see 4 yourself!

mikek1 said:

Again, thank you mikek1 for your comments. I'm glad to see you know Black men inside & out from your message board experiences. It's a wonder I haven't gotten my ass beat yet by a Black man in my 30+ years on the planet - perhaps that experience is just around the corner for me. Thanks for letting me know

CalhounSq said:

Go ask jill jones if black men are abusive; she knows about being 'purple' and blue

mikek1 said:

WHAT THE FUCK DOES JILL JONES HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING??? WHY do you insist on making these generalizations??? Are you fucking kidding me??? Have you never heard of men of other races being abusive??? Do you really think this is a Black thing?? WHAT THE FUCK???

CalhounSq said:

Do you not get the jill jones 'purple' thing?
YES OF COURSE some white entertainers are certainly abusive!
So are latinos and ESPECIALLY MUSLIM ARABS!

mikek1 said:

can i ask you this question, i go to allhiphop.com 80% of the people on that site are white people or white people who hide as black people, on those boards, so dont really judge your ideas, because you come off sounding racists

mikek1 said:

You need to get the fuck off this board w/ your bullshit. I swear some of you mf's come on here just to piss people the fuck off.

So yay for you - spewing bullshit from a keyboard is really admirable.

Ass...



.
[Edited 7/7/06 13:49pm]

CalhounSq said:

mikek1 said:

YOUR part



.
[Edited 7/7/06 14:05pm]

Prince whipped Appolonia pretty good in purple rain!!!
so prince a hip hop dude too!