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10 Prioritized the hip hop (re)construction of black womanhood in GIRLFRIENDS and THE GAME nghana lewis Why is it important that a Black woman created, wrote for, and co-produced1 two highly-regarded television situation comedies that engaged a variety of Black women’s health issues while at the same time these issues were being reduced, simplified, or altogether ignored in mainstream American hip hop? Mara Brock Akil tacitly responded to this question when asked why four episodes of the third season of Girlfriends (2000–2008), the situation comedy she created and co-produced for UPN, addressed the HIV/AIDS crisis among Black women in America. “I have things I want to say,” explained Brock Akil, “about bridging television’s gap between entertainment and education. I’m doing a show about women—African-American women—and I feel that a lot of times our issues don’t get national attention. Prioritized.”2 Over their eight- and three-season runs respectively, neither Girlfriends (2006–2009) nor The Game (2010–; also created and co-produced by Brock Akil), secured large mainstream followings. Both shows were, however, well received among Black audiences, especially Black adults and the subgroup of women eighteen to thirty-four. According to Nielsen Media, both were consistently ranked among the top ten African American TV programs during their series runs.3 The prioritization of Black women’s health issues in Girlfriends and The Game and the popularity of these programs with Black viewing audiences invite inquiry into Brock Akil’s creative vision and market capital throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century. During this period, HIV/AIDS became the leading cause of death among Black women ages twenty-five to thirty-four, and new rates of HIV/AIDS infection were second highest among Black women (behind only gay Black men). The same period gave way to the virtual disappearance of female MCs in mainstream hip hop while simultaneously the representation of Black women’s bodies, Black female sexuality, and Black womanhood as mere spectacles accelerated hip hop’s global expansion and influence . The appeal of Girlfriends and The Game to Black viewers and the challenges 157 these programs experienced gaining mainstream audiences tell us something about the possibilities and limitations of pop cultural investments in narrative constructions of Black womanhood at the turn of the twenty-first century. This chapter argues that among the enduring legacies of Girlfriends and The Game are their positioning and location of Black women’s experiences within rounded narratives of identity, sexuality, health, and authority. These negotiations serve not so much to countervail as to complicate the reduced projections of Black female subjectivity and sexuality in mainstream hip hop. Given the undeniable influence of hip hop culture on Brock Akil’s creative vision and the role of the hip hop generation in keeping Girlfriends and The Game on the air both during their series runs and in syndication, this conundrum is especially perplexing. For Brock Akil and other Black women born after the civil rights and Black Power movements of the 1950s and 1960s, these negotiations set in motion what Molefi K. Asante Jr. describes as a search for a “deeper, more encompassing understanding” of Black womanhood “in a context outside” the corporate monopoly of mainstream hip hop.4 They attribute a “broad range of abilities, ideals, and ideas” to Black women and acknowledge shifts in public discourse on race, gender, class, and sexuality brought about by the women’s movement, antipoverty campaign, and gay rights movement—historical forces that, as Asante rightly points out, mainstream hip hop “has either failed or refused to prioritize.”5 As early as 1987, when the initial spate of scholarship giving rise to hip hop studies was published, critics projected that the failure to prioritize these and other issues reflective of the social contexts and economic conditions that fostered hip hop’s emergence would deepen the “elision of women” in hip hop’s growing commercial image.6 The following decade produced several classic hip hop recordings by female MCs including Salt-n-Pepa’s Very Necessary (1993), Da Brat’s Funkdafied (1994), Lil’ Kim’s Hard Core (1996), Foxy Brown’s Ill Na Na (1996), Missy Elliott’s Supa Dupa Fly (1997), Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), and Eve’s Let There Be Eve . . . Ruff Ryders’ First Lady (1999), all of which were certified platinum or multi-platinum. But as veteran MCs Trina, Missy Elliott...

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