The World of Female Rap

These past couple of years have seen the commendable growth of the amount of women in the rap industry. I really began to take notice when Nicki Manaj started showing up on several of Young Money’s more popular tracks such as “Bed Rock” and Lil Wayne’s “Knockout.” This was a lot of talent and exposure for someone who hadn’t even released her own album yet. Not long after Nicki’s fame began to spread followed a handful of other young women who, little by little, started venturing into this male dominated music genre. Up until this point, the category of female rap had been a mostly one woman at a time kind of thing. Lil Kim and Missy Elliott were sort of the household names in female rap when I was coming into appreciation of the genre, and even then I mostly heard them on other (male) artist’s tracks.

When Nicki Manaj came along, there was a glimmer of hope that the exclusivity of the male rap world was opening up a door to women. Unfortunately, Nicki Manaj has had to forfeit a lot of her natural talent in order to fit into the pop world (the genre where women are allowed to flourish). Her gritty, risqué, and clever verses of her earlier days had to be sacrificed to mould her into the sexy, colorful, ideal of femininity that pop culture constantly produces and reproduces. Though the lure of pop fame is hard to resist, this did not hush the other female rappers out there searching to get their name out into the rap world. Not much later, Kreayshawn dropped her “Gucci Gucci,” Azealia Banks’ “212” blew up, and now we finally have Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” playing on top 40 radio. I’m not saying I love all of these songs, I don’t, but it’s about time women were allowed to break the stigma that the genre of pop is the only place for female artists to find success. This means more than just rap. Blues, alternative, and punk/hardcore are all traditionally male dominated music genres. I commend all the women who have broken into the boys club that is subculture musical genres, such as “Queen of the Blues,” Koko Taylor and pop-punk lead vocalist of Tonight Alive, Jenna McDougall.

Unfortunately, it’s still hard for society to except more than one female and the media is pitting these artists against one another as if there can be only one, for example, female rapper. It’s that kind of logic that keeps carbon copies of the same girl circulating through the mass media. So, I task you this Summer to get out there and support female artists. Not one, not two, not as a feature in some male artist’s song, but as talented and diverse wealth of untapped talent.