The High Bar for Women in Rap Part 1: A Historical Perspective
by Lily Hartenstein
Patriarchy is embedded in all aspects of American structure and business, and the music industry is certainly no exception to the rampant misogyny ingrained in our culture. All genres mistreat women in some shape or form, but one particularly prevalent case can be seen in hip hop. Throughout the entire history of the genre, women have been diminished and degraded.
Hip-hop, as we know it today, originated in black communities living in cities in the 1970s and 80s. It’s hard to track women’s places in these early stages, as it was before the genre was on the map and was more about a certain party culture that spawned the type of music we listen to now. We know that groups of women rose in these party scenes, such as the Mercedes Ladies.
MC Sha Rock, the only woman in the rap group the Funky Four Plus One, was one of the first female rappers to gain a mainstream listenership. Their group was one of the first groups to appear on national broadcast TV when they performed on Saturday Night Live in 1981.
The first woman to really break out as an artist, however, was MC Lyte. She was the first female emcee to sell singles and albums in the millions, and she was also the first female rapper to have a record go gold, perform at Carnegie Hall, and be nominated for a Grammy. MC Lyte helped shift hip-hop out of a pigeonholed party-sound into a form that could reflect real cultural issues. Her work confronted racism and sexism, among other issues plaguing her community in Brooklyn. The Smithsonian added her diaries and turntable to their rap and hip-hop ephemera collection, which really goes to show the extent of her impact on the early days of the genre.
As was, and is, a problem in all genres, men still dominated hip hop in the late 1980s, but after MC Lyte, more and more women entered the rap game. By the late ‘90s women took up a significant space of the popular rap scene. Salt-n-Pepa, Da Brat, Foxy Brown, Lauryn Hill, and Missy Elliot all went platinum within the decade. However, this newfound era of female representation in an increasingly popular music scene was short lived. Lil’ Kim went platinum in 2003, the last female rapper to do so until Nicki Minaj in 2010. Somewhere in between that time, women in rap seemingly disappeared from mainstream consumption.
In the ‘90s, there were over 40 women signed to major hip-hop labels. By 2010, that number dropped to just three. The Grammy’s highlights this stark drop: In 2003, they added the Best Female Rap Solo Performance, but took that category down just two years later. Representatives claimed a precipitous decline in the number of female artists in the industry who could compete for the award led to its removal. Other music awards shows soon followed. The question is: where did all the female rappers go?
Obviously, there’s no direct answer to this. Erik Nielson, an assistant professor at the University of Richmond, who teaches classes on hip-hop culture and African American literature, examined this question in-depth. He found that one answer, given by many in the industry, is that women are “too expensive”, as in addition to regular artist fees, they need to pay for hair, makeup, and outfits.
“While I have doubts about this to begin with — are we really supposed to believe that the crushing cost of hair and make-up has pushed a multibillion dollar hip-hop industry away from women? — it does reveal a disturbing assumption about women in hip-hop: that what they look like is at least as important as their musical talent,” Nielson writes.
This “disturbing assumption” certainly seems prevalent in hip-hop today. Just compare the aesthetics of Post Malone to Cardi B, or any other large male figure in hip-hop to a female figure. Yo-yo and Da Brat, both female rappers, recently explained this standard in an interview with E! News. “You have to constantly stay hot or they move on to someone else,” Yo-yo said. They both noted that men they worked with never had to bother with maintaining their sex appeal.
Beyond this demeaning standard that women must place as much, if not more, emphasis on their appearance as their hip-hop prowess , which is incredibly damaging in itself, the industry is simply hostile towards women, which discourages new talent from joining the scene. MC Lyte argues that hip-hop has continuously disrespected women to the point it has created an environment designed to keep women from succeeding, and a market that is equally as imperceptive to their voice. "It has gotten to the point that we have been subjected to such harsh verbal treatment — assassinated even — who would want to listen?” she said.
“After years of this, when do we concede that mainstream hip-hop has become largely defined by the negation of female voice and perspective?” Nielson asks.
Unfortunately, the mistreatment is not something of the past. All the factors that explain the mid-2000s disappearance of women in rap, all this negation that Nielson described, are still prevalent today. The industry still largely equates women’s appearances to their musical ability. It pits women against each other. It tries to separate women in rap from men in rap, posing it as a distinct genre of it’s own. The way that hip-hop has forced women out is unsurprising, given the way America treats women and black women specifically, but it’s still deeply deplorable. Yet female hip-hop artists are rising in the charts, despite all the barriers. It is an incredibly inspiring show of power, and frankly, more people should be giving credit to the amazing women who are pushing the boundaries of both hip-hop and societal expectations.