Women don’t like music nerds

I hate to agree with Bol’s take on women and music blogs—since chances are he doesn’t even agree with it himself, and is just throwing it out there to get a rise from the ‘fruit flies.’ (Incidentally, that term might just be the funniest thing written on this site so far.)

But anyway, as it happens, Bol makes an excellent point. It is true that the music blog phenomenon—and a certain level of dialogue on music in general—is pretty much a male thing. I’m not saying females can’t love music in the same detail-oriented, collector, trivia-obsessed sort of way that most male hip-hop heads do. I’m just saying that, by and large, they don’t.

In the comments section, ONE laments this. “I’m so tired of meeting females that just listen to the radio,” he writes. “Where are the real female heads at? I know they’re out there someplace but y’all must be scarce.”

I feel your pain, ONE. And I hate to tell you this—but you all do it to yourselves. Female heads are about as welcome in hip-hop culture as a sober Jehovah’s Witness is at a crunk Christmas party.

On the off chance that some of you actually want to understand why, here’s the top 5 reasons that female hip-hop heads are a rare breed. (Alternately, this list can be read as tips on how to step your game up. Cause, really, it must be hard to ever hook up with hip-hop being the perpetual sausage fest that it is. Yes hetero. Or not, whatever.)

1. Music knowledge is often passed through word-of-mouth networks that females aren’t part of. As it stands, most girls I know do not sit around and chop it up about the latest Busta cover story, or trade theories about the beef between Cam and Jay, or debate the fact that the South is running things right now, or keep each other up to date on the hottest mixtapes. It just doesn’t happen. (At least not in my town. But shout out to the female heads around the globe that I email with! These women could kick your ass in a knowledge battle any day of the week.)

But anyway, for the most part, girls that are really into hip-hop tend to be isolated, and end up having to seek out dudes to converse with. You all know what happens next. If you are kicking it with a dude, he probably has other things on his mind than having a friendly chat about hip-hop. (Word to When Harry Met Sally.)

When it comes to groups of guys, they typically don’t have any desire whatsoever to have a female present for their hip-hop powwows. I grew up with a brother and our apartment was always full of dudes talking about hip-hop, but most female hip-hop heads don’t have access to that type of environment. A while back I was talking to one of my bro’s friends about this exact dynamic—and he was like, “Come on, T. No group of guys is ever sitting around, like ‘You know what we need? We really need a female friend in our crew to give us another perspective on hip-hop.’” My point exactly.

This, of course, is a circular problem. If women don’t participate in the living room ciphers, they don’t have a testing ground for their knowledge and ideas, and then they come off as ignorant when they try and talk about hip-hop—and dudes are quick to say that all they want to do is shake their asses to radio rap. And then the females get mad and don’t bother messing with it at all. And then you men are stuck hanging around at shows where the audience is 90% other dudes.

2. Internet forums often get hijacked by adolescent male nonsense. The internet should be opening the hip-hop floodgates to females, giving them the chance to get involved in the conversation and soak up information and hone ideas. But more often than not, the level of conversation on the net is driven by the lowest common denominator. Lots of caps, angry outbursts, and name-calling. And all that bickering can be boring as hell.

3. Females get tired of being trash-talked pretty fast. J-Live said it best a couple years back when I interviewed him. “If you think about it, hip-hop scared the women out of the shows,” he said. “For the longest time, if you were an underground artist, and you were doing whatever venues across the country and across the world, cats would be like: ‘Where are the women? How come the women aren’t coming to the shows?’ The only women that would be at the shows would be somebody’s girl, and they came with their man. And you would be like: ‘OK, what’s the matter?’ Perhaps they just got tired of hearing all this. Maybe the switch over to R&B has been about, ‘Look, I am not going to sit here and listen to you call me a bitch all day, I am going to listen to someone that wants to love me.’ So, really it’s about the game. And I kind of tried to put the game back into it. So, ‘Like This Anna’ is really saying ‘Come on back to the show. We are here for you’.”

4. The promiscuity parade pisses females off. If you keep bragging about how much miscellaneous ass you are getting, hip-hop, we might just believe you. And then we’re going to bounce.

5. Most females don’t go in for the Super Nerd shit. Personally, I have a soft spot for internet nerds, so no diss. But I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that most women don’t share that quirk. So all you internet dudes might want to tone down the geek routine. Start by deading the whole “first” thing. Racing each other in the comments section has got to be geekiest thing I’ve ever heard of. If you want girls to hang around for longer than five minutes, cease and desist.