Comparing Sexual Themes in Rap Music by Female and Male Music Artists: A Qualitative Study
Social Sciences
PSYC 182
This paper explores the different sexual themes between rap music with female music artists and male music artists and how they compare. The data corpus consists of 20 rap/hip-hop songs, 10 of which are sung by women, and the other 10 sung by men. The songs were taken from two separate lists featuring top rap songs of 2019, which were analyzed thematically. Overall, the songs by male artists contained themes of female objectification and sexual domination, while the songs by female artists contained themes of sexual and erotic agency. Both categories of songs shared themes of the artist’s sexual irresistibility, transactional sex, and humiliation through infidelity.
