Features - The Patty Dukes Show
Spoken word artist/Hip-Hop emcee, Patty Dukes weaves seamlessly through English and Spanish bringing messages of street life, community empowerment, feminism and so much more. She reps the Bronx as her place of residence, but her family is from the Dominican Republic and she, herself, was born in Puerto Rico. Patty came to New York at the age of 5. Because Spanish was her first language, she was immediately placed in special education classes and fought to prove her competence.
She began performing at the age of sixteen, getting her start with the Urban Youth Theater in New York City. Patty took classes on weekends, sacrificed partying and hanging out and did whatever she had to do to master the lyrical arts - always surrounding herself with inspiration. "I was always the little sister around everyone else who was in the poetry and the theater game but who were writers and who loved Hip-Hop."
Through poetry and spoken word performance, she was able to perfect her writing abilities, but she always knew, deep down inside, that her calling lied in a connection to Hip-Hop culture and its music. "I'm an emcee and that's my passion!" Still, proving that passion and calling to the world was not an easy task. In fact, it took some time before she was even able to prove it to herself. "I never really thought that I could be an emcee...There were no females around me that were rhyming...It took a while for me to get the confidence and the self-esteem to say, I am an emcee."
The process happened over several years. Dukes and partner Rephstar formed a collective of artists, which they termed The Rhyme Factory. Every Friday they would gather together to freestyle, rhyme and share feedback. Through her participation in that cipher, and the amazing feedback that she received, Patty Dukes built up the confidence to proclaim herself a true Hip-Hop artist. It was her community that gave her the support and the confidence to keep on doing it. "I definitely get a lot of love from people in the street and in my community. because at the end of the day what people want to see is that you're good." The diversity of her fan base compliments the diversity of her lyrics. "It feels so good when I have a bunch of hardcore dudes and they're feeling me, because I never thought that I could have them as an audience. And, they're feeling me because I'm not up here shaking my booty, I have a message."
The need for women to shake their assets to get ahead, is one thing that Patty is not shy about speaking out against. In fact, the Latina emcee recently received an intense amount of scrutiny over some controversial lyrics which targeted J.Lo and her 'ass-et shaking.' The verse was part of a freestyle Patty performed over a Beatnuts beat. It gained unpredictable popularity and quickly became the background music of many Myspace pages. It also had many people asking about a possible Dukes/Lopez conflict. But Patty insists that she has no beef with J.Lo - It's what the image represents that concerns her. "I love what J.Lo has done for the Latino community. I think that she's a beautiful, strong Latina. But I think that we also need to look at and analyze the choices that she has made that have reflected on us."
As a teaching artist, Dukes admits that one of her biggest obstacles is the stereotyping of Latinas today, which not only puts limits on what people expect from her, but also limits what young Latinas expect for themselves. Being a young Latina has become about style and image more so than about community and connecting, which makes the task for people like Patty Dukes, much more challenging. "It's really difficult when I'm talking to my seventh graders and they want to be like J.Lo and dress like J.Lo, but they don't really see what impact she has had on the community. It's hard because I wish that J.Lo herself, would also recognize that. A lot of times when people want to give back, they don't really promote it like they would promote their album and they should promote their philanthropy because the kids need to know that you're giving back to the community and that is important." Unfortunately, representing Latinas in the media has become about hypersexualizing them, rather than highlighting the many qualities that make Latinas, women and human beings in general, happy and successful. "The J.Lo is this icon. It's a character. I feel that Jennifer Lopez is a human being. She's so smart to have done what she's done. But this caricature of J.Lo as the light-skinned sex goddess Latina needs to also be looked at because we're more than that."
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