User:Frukiiwit/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
LGBT representations in hip hop music - Wikipedia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have decided to evaluate this article because the topic concerns ideas to which I have given considerable thought and which I believe would be beneficial for wider audiences to contemplate. Namely that hip hop music is a staple of popular culture; both the genre and its artists are extremely influential not only to fashion trends, but they also heavily inform public opinion and patterns of thinking and behavior, especially in younger, more impressionable audiences.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The first paragraph does not define "LGBT representations in hip hop music" or explicate what it means. The first sentence simply makes the statement that they "have existed since the birth of the genre despite blatant discrimination". Overall, the lead paragraph contains a lot of statements summarizing negative attitudes toward the LGBT community in hip hop music without explicitly describing how this relates to the representation. In other words, this negativity is assumed to be the representation. It almost comes off as a critique of hip hop music and its poor representation. While it may be the case that most LGBT representation in hip hop music is negative, the overall tone in the lead section comes off as opinionated and strongly biased, with diction and phrases such as "despite blatant discrimination".

There is an intro paragraph on "homo hop"/"queer hip hop", a paragraph discussing the criticisms of "homo hop", and the last paragraph discusses increased visibility and more positive representation of LGBT people in hip hop. (It also name drops artists, most of whom are outspoken supporters of the LGBT community. It does not mention any LGBT hip hop artists themselves, which the article later does.)

The latter three paragraphs serve as the introduction to three of the topics later discussed in the article: the "homo hop" section and the "Evolution" section. However, it is not clear that the last paragraph serves as the intro to the "Evolution" section. There isn't a clear introductory paragraph for the "History" section nor for the "Song lyrics" section.

The overall organization of the lead section does not match the presentation of content in the body of the article.

Content

The article seems to gloss over some details mentioned in passing which could be further expanded into paragraphs. The majority of the article centers male artists, and male ally artists. Female artists and LGBT female artists are not given the same space. For instance, almost the entirety of the "Song Lyrics" section concerns the homophobic song lyrics of Eminem, while Young M.A., a popular lesbian rapper, is mentioned in passing only twice in the article. Other notable female hip hop artists, such as Queen Latifah, Syd tha Kyd, MK xyz, and Princess Nokia are good examples of notable queer female hip hop artists who are not mentioned.

Moreover, the majority of the article concerns the history of negative representations of LGBT people in hip hop by straight, male artists, with a significant section highlighting "homo hop" as a solution to this. While this is a large facet of this topic, it is also beneficial and relevant to mention positive LGBT representation in hip hop. This is attempted in the section on "Evolution", which gives a strong description of outspoken artists who identify as LGBT allies and overall increased media coverage of LGBT artists in the genre. However, only one queer artist, Jipsta, is allotted an entire paragraph, and Lil Nas X is only mentioned briefly a couple times despite his extremely successful rise to mainstream success and contribution to positive LGBT representation in hip hop. He should at least get an entire paragraph as well--there is ample scholarly publications discussing his impact on LGBT representation in hip hop and the overall perception of hip hop by the public.

Lesbophobia in hip hop music is a pervasive phenomenon and is extremely relevant to this topic, relevant enough to warrant at least a paragraph somewhere, if not an entire section if enough sources are found. It is not mentioned anywhere at all in the article and is a major content gap. Furthermore, the section on "Song lyrics" is interesting but seems a bit awkwardly placed. I believe there may be space to incorporate song lyrics as examples in other sections that delve into particular facets of this topic as opposed to having them thrown all together in one section. I can think of adding this as a subsection of "Later negative representations" and perhaps pulling this out from the "History" section and making it a section on its own could be a solution.

The section on "Notable artists" is a nice touch.

Tone and Balance

The lead section contains some diction and phrasing that could potentially come off as opinionated and biased. In the body of the article, there are instances in which the original makes statements which are flat-out impositions of judgement or sounds as if they are drawing a conclusion based upon reference material. The article sometimes reads like an academic paper that is trying to support a thesis. See the below:


 * "As Shorey writes, this subversive genre is steeped in racism and homophobia in and of itself, and merely serves to further marginalize the identities and narratives it allegedly gives a voice to."
 * "Though Western society has a predisposition to impose socially constructed labels and binaries, Shorey dismisses..."
 * "Despite criticism, other have been more circumspect about the dichotomy."

Sources and References

Most references are articles from hip hop, music, or popular culture news sites or (inter)national newspaper sites. A few are from reputable scholarly journal publication sites, like JSTOR. There are 137 references listed, but only 67 of those are cited in the substantial body of text; the rest are citations for each of the names listed under the "Notable artists" section. Given the topic, this is understandable.

However, some sources no longer exist and the links redirect to 404-Page Not Found pages. There are a couple YouTube videos, one of which is an interview with Kanye West in a sentence that makes a claim about Kanye West as stated by Kanye West. (If I recall correctly, this does not abide by source guidelines.) On several occasions, entire paragraphs are cited using the same source. These sourcing issues should be corrected.

Organization and Writing Quality

The different sections of the article do not all have corresponding introductions in the lead section. For the ones that do, they are not presented in the order in which the lead section mentions them. Significant reorganization will improve the overall readability of the article.

The writing quality can be improved, especially at the level of sentence structure and paragraph organization. There are also some minor typos and grammatical errors, most noticeably in the long "Evolution" section.

The "Criticism" section seems to be a continuation of the discussion on "homo" hop, but it follows the section on "Evolution", which discusses the overall evolution of LGBT representation in hip hop. This section should either be removed and embedded within the "homo hop" narrative, or the "homo hop" subsection of "History" should come out and be a separate section. The "Commercialization" subsection could be embedded within the "Evolution" section.

Images and Media

There are no images nor media whatsoever. Ideas for images/media to embed:

Talk Page Discussion
 * LGBT hip hop artists
 * Image pertaining to "Rapper's Delight" -- the first hip hop record to go mainstream (and also included negative LGBT representations)
 * Album covers?

The major takeaway I got from the Talk Page is that the article was originally written to discuss "homo hop" or LGBT hip hop, specifically. So, was the article expanded to encompass LGBT representation in hip hop music in general? If so, that would explain the somewhat confusing organization of the article and the roughness of the lead section.
 * This article has been written, edited, and evaluated by multiple classes
 * Some debate about Frank Ocean's connection to homo hop

Overall Impressions

After an initial read, my major impression of this article is that it provides a brief overview of the topic with some selected details as opposed to more in-depth analysis of the topic of LGBT representation in hip hop music. Moreover, the organization and writing quality could be improved, and perhaps even an expansion and refinement of the sources and references. Furthermore, I believe there are some content gaps which could, if addressed, improve the overall depth of the article. The article also has a somewhat argumentative tone in a couple of the sections, which should be resolved to maintain neutrality.