The national outcry in the United States over racist remarks by radio host Don Imus has triggered a fresh debate over the use of misogynistic language beloved by rap artists.
As civil rights activists held victory parties following the sacking of Imus over his racial slurs, other black commentators began soul-searching over epithets such as "ho" and the portrayal of women as sex objects in rap videos.
For some, Imus's use of the phrase "nappy-headed ho's (messy-haired whores)" to describe the mostly black Rutgers women's basketball team was an inevitable consequence of rap argot entering common usage by osmosis.
"The language from the rappers and comedians has seeped into the culture to the point that Don Imus thought it was okay to call black women 'ho's'," said Carol Swain, a professor of law at Vanderbilt University.
In a blog on the Huffington Post, commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson said rappers like Snoop Dogg shared responsibility for the Imus furor, and accused black leaders of tolerating sexist rap lyrics for too long.
"Imus demeaned a basketball team, Snoop and his pals have demeaned a whole generation of young blacks, and especially young black women, and blacks have let them get away with it," Hutchinson wrote.
"That's why Imus is their Frankenstein."
Snoop Dogg, who this week received a suspended prison sentence and 800 hours of community service after pleading no contest to drugs and weapons charges, dismissed the argument that hip-hop was to blame.
"It's a completely different scenario," the rapper told MTV. "(Rappers) are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports.
"We're talking about ho's that's in the 'hood, that ain't doing s..t, that's trying to get a nigga for his money. These are two separate things."
But for Hutchinson, the language Snoop used in his defense only serves to provide further evidence of the problem.
"In one grotesque sentence in his knock against Imus, Snoop managed to get in all the ancient stereotypes about black women," Hutchinson wrote, calling on leaders like the Reverend Al Sharpton to boycott the rapper's next album.
Sharpton meanwhile has insisted that sexism in any form should not be tolerated. "We will not stop until we make it clear that no one should denigrate women," he said at a news conference in New York on Thursday.
"No one, even in the name of creativity, should enjoy a large consumer base when they denigrate people based on race and based on sex."
Film-maker Byron Hurt, whose recent documentary "Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes," looks at sexism and gender stereotypes in mainstream hip-hop culture, meanwhile took aim at music videos populated by scantily clad women.
"You're seeing repetitive images of woman as boy toys, as sex objects. I think that's a problem," Hurt told CNN.
But Russell Simmons, a record executive and leader of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, a group which aims to promote the music, said rappers were only guilty of reflecting the world around them.
"We're a violent country. That's our sad truth. And rappers are a reflection sometimes of our sad truth," Simmons said, rejecting comparisons and Imus and the hip-hop community.
"Hip-hop is a worldwide cultural phenomena that transcends race and doesn't engage in racial slurs," Simmons said Friday in a statement.
"Don Imus' racially motivated diatribe toward the Rutgers women's basketball team was in no way connected to hip-hop culture."
Vanderbilt academic Swain meanwhile expressed hope the Imus furor would force the black community to address the sexist portrayal of women by rappers.
"If we engage in a broader dialogue and hold members of our community accountable then that will be a positive for the whole affair," she said.
