ABSTRACT. Author argues that few writers, feminists, and cultural commentators have actually understood why gangsta rap artists vilify women, especially blacks, with demeaning lyrics, often decrying words that wound as patriarchal oppression. Such critiques deny access to the deeper, more repressed sources for the murderous rage and corrosive hatred that such artists appear to have for black females. Rather, the author posits that the source of such rage and hatred is childhood cruelties of black infants and toddlers in the earliest years of their lives by black parents, especially females. That cruelty gets repressed, surfacing again as nearly autobiographical lyrics because these artists unconsciously need to reveal the truth of their cruel sufferings to others, and they need others like enlightened witnesses to validate their lyric-based personal histories, without at the same time directly confronting their cruel mothers. pp. 73–92

Keywords: race; gender; mother-son; maltreatment; lyrics; developmental psychology

How to cite: Robinson, Reginald Leamon (2015), "Gangsta Rap Lyrics and Early Childhood Cruelties: Are These Artists Searching for Enlightened Witnesses and Seeking to Reveal the Real Truth of Black Mother-Son Love?," Journal of Research in Gender Studies 5(1): 73–92.