Portraying women in rap music

I don't know how many of you listen to Lupe Fiasco, but he's one of my favorite rappers, and one of the few hip hop artists I like, because he likes to write about the world as he sees it. He confronts issues on the local, national and international scale in a lot of his songs.

One of the singles from his new album is called "Bitch Bad" and it became somewhat of a controversy when he released the song. I really love the lyrics and the video (which I linked to above) because it gives clarity to the message he's trying to get across without being ridiculous. If you don't want to watch the video or don't have time, the basic message of the song is that the culture that African Americans have created in hip hop is demeaning to themselves, similar to blackface practices way back in our country's history. One of his main points is calling for these artists to stop creating images of women that could negatively influence children, which perpetuates the culture that is no good for them.

I mainly wanted to post about that recent song, but he had another song called "Dumb It Down" back in 2007 that taught a similar lesson. In that one, he is trying to tell both the music industry and his audience that he won't stop using a wide vocabulary or talking about issues he finds important simply because he might sell more records that way. In "Dumb It Down," he has two other people rap back to him with opposing views, one being a preppy white man. This character is trying to tell Lupe that he's treating women (especially from low-income areas) like equals, and it's giving them self-esteem and now they want to graduate from school and "they're starting to think that smart is cool." He's basically telling Lupe that none of that is a good thing, and they need to stay oppressed. Lupe's view is obviously that the preppy character represents a lot of mass media these days, and it needs to stop.

Sorry for rambling, but I think his music is worth checking out if you don't know about him already. What do you guys think of the messages of these two songs? If you listened, do you get the same idea that I was getting, and if it was different, how?