Songs such as “Monie In The Middle” and “RU Single” both slyly and cleverly struck back at expectations and assumptions about black women in relationships without sacrificing the flow. Love eventually joined Native Tongues in New York, where she collaborated with Latifah on “Ladies First,” and released her own album, produced by Afrika Baby Bam. One of the only other female rappers in Native Tongues, Monie Love and Queen Latifah struck up a fast friendship after Latifah and Native Tongues traveled to the UK, where, at a show, they met the British rapper, who had been making noise in the underground scene there for years. There may have been setbacks but I never let them get to me.” But none of it affected me to a degree to where it mattered. In a line-up, they didn’t want to put me where my songs warranted me going. “There may have been times when promoters didn’t want to pay me what I deserved. She has described the scene in its early days as competitive and skill-based, but not without a gender bias. Lyte’s flow, lyrical precision, and refusal to self-censor gained her industry attention quickly. The first solo rapper to release her own, full-length album, MC Lyte’s Lyte As A Rock dropped in 1988.
They all had distinct variations in style, flow, and lyrical content, but what each woman had in common was a fiercely independent voice and the power to remain consistently and resoundingly herself. But in the early days of the genre, while critics were still deriding hip-hop as a passing fad, female rappers were beginning to make up a formidable piece of the genre’s biology, unapologetically detailing their interpretations and experiences of the world they lived in.
Braggadocious lyrics about violence, sex, swagger, and masculinity reign in a space where women, in most cases, are cast as either conquests or a faceless Greek chorus, their own stories largely ignored. The 80s and 90s saw the best male and female rappers alike used wordplay, repetition, and extended metaphor to relate experiences that were dark, violent, romantic, or hopeful, casting themselves as hero, witness, or seer.īut given the music industry’s history of marginalizing the contributions of women, it’s easy to see hip-hop as a boys’ club. Just as the sound of the movement was created by the creative repurposing of music that already existed, the success of the genre’s MCs was based on their willingness to shatter old forms and wield the shards to create a new style of self-expression. From the start, hip-hop was about storytelling.
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