XXL Magazine is apologizing for a controversial video on young love advice from a much older rapper Too $hort that was sure to make anyone cringe.
Too $hort released a video with the magazine which gave advice on how to "turn out" young girls. The rapper, who has been known to release sexually explicit songs throughout his career, offered the advice to teenage boys.
"When you get to late middle school, early high school and you start feeling a certain way about the girls. I'm gonna tell you a couple tricks," he said on the video. "A lot of the boys are going to be running around trying to get kisses from the girls. We're going way past that. I'm taking you to the hole."
Crazy, right? It only gets worse from there. In graphic detail, the rapper offers steps that young boys can use to get to a young girl's heart.
"You push her up against the wall. You take your finger and put a little spit on it and you stick her finger in her underwear and you rub it on there and watch what happens," Too $hort said.
Not all readers appreciated the advice. The first comment on the site read, "This clip is totally INAPPROPRIATE on so many levels and advocates sexual aggression toward young gir;s that['s] consider[ed] RAPE, I'm [really] surprised this clip is publicly viewable. XXL lacks social responsibility with this immoral content!"
Charing Ball, cultural critic and writer for The Root, questions why Too $hort was given a platform for giving "fatherly advice" in the first place, particulary by a white female editor. "That is like Essence magazine hiring Don Imus to give black women hair care advice, or Rick Santorum being invited to an LGBT rights organization luncheon to speak about marriage equality," Ball wrote.
A large outcry on Twitter and blogs have prompted the video's removal from the XXL website and a circulating petition is calling for the dismissal of the Editor-in-Chief Vanessa Satten for promoting the rape of young girls.
"The minds and bodies of black girls are continually under attack," the petition reads. "Those in charge at XXL, particularly Vanessa Satten the magazine's editor in chief, value the security of young black women so little that they chose to trade it for pageviews. Let them know that we will not sit and watch while they wage war."
Satten defends her position, saying that she doesn't see all content before it goes live.
"I agree with their perspective. When I saw this video, I was truly offended and thought it crossed the line," she said. "I had it taken down immediately. I am disappointed that an employee decided to post it and I am putting internal procedures in place to make sure content like this does not go on the site."
Too $hort's reasoning was this: "I want to apologize to anyone I may have offended with the XXL video interview I recently did. When I got on camera I was in Too $hort mode and had a lapse in judgment. I would never advise a child or young man to do these things, it's not how I get down. Although I have made my career on dirty raps, I have worked over the years to somewhat balance the content of my music with giving back to the community...If you're a young man or a kid who looks up to me, don't get caught up in the pimp, player, gangster hip-hop personas. Just be yourself."
Do you buy these apologies? Do you think this type of advice from this kind of recording artist is too much, perpetuating rape culture that's so pervasive among young girls? Speak!
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