Where are all the Females MCS?
Hip-hop has always been a man's game. Since the early days hip hop has always been a male-dominated genre. However, female rappers have proved to be fearless and strong especially when when they become unified.
Rappers such as Queen Latifah , MC Lyte, Lil Kim, and Da Brat just to name few, can be considered to have shattered the glass ceiling, and can be considered to be legends in their own right. However, outside of Nicki Minaj, we have yet to see another Queen claim the crown. However, we are wondering when and if someone, can knock her off her high horse, and prove that she is not the only female rapper that has bars.
When will the resurgence of femecee begin? We don't know. While there are plenty of talented women rapping today, you'd would have a hard time naming them since the record industry runs off of radio rotations, music videos, and Billboard CHARTS. Women outside of Nicki, and shall I dare say Iggy, are just not getting the radio spins, club spins, press or promotoion needed to sell records.
Case and point, when Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday was certified platinum at the end of 2010, it was the first solo album by a FEMALE MC to reach that milestone in eight long years. Minaj went platinum again in 2012 with Pink Friday: Roman RELOADED, but her commercial success over the last decade has stood as an exception to the unwritten rule that women rappers no longer have a place among elite artists.
We cant escape the fact that rap has always been dominated by men. However, It wasn't always like this. Once upon a time, women were a far more significant presence. Consider, for example, the decade leading up to 2003, the last year a female artist (Lil' Kim) had a platinum album before Nicki Minaj. In that time, a NUMBER of women went platinum, including Salt-n-Pepa, Da Brat, Foxy Brown, Eve, Lauryn Hill and industry powerhouse Missy Elliott.
Brown, Eve, Lauryn Hill and industry powerhouse Missy Elliott.
Alongside these artists, critically acclaimed performers like MC Lyte and Queen Latifah were also releasing albums on major labels, often achieving commercial success in the process. And many of the major crews had a woman artist (even if just one): Death Row had Lady of Rage, Flipmode Squad had Rah Digga, Native Tongues had Monie Love (and Latifah) and so on. There were enough women recording, touring, and getting radio airplay that, in 2003, the Grammys took notice and created a new category for Best Female Rap Solo Performance.
Just two years later, however, that category was eliminated, with Grammy representatives citing a precipitous decline in the number of FEMALE artists in the industry who could compete for the award. BET and VH1 made similar arguments for dumping female categories from their hip-hop awards shows as well.
While cutting these awards undoubtedly exacerbated the decline in the years to follow, there's little doubt that women were indeed vanishing from mainstream hip-hop. According to Ana DuVernay, who directed the 2010 documentary My Mic Sounds Nice: The Truth About Women in Hip Hop, the NUMBERS tell it all: Whereas in the late 1980s and early 1990s there were more than 40 women signed to major labels, in 2010 there were just three.
With the emergence of several new artists — including Angel Haze, Iggy Azalea, and Azealia BANKS, Dej Loaf— things are certainly looking up, but the long-term prospects for women artists are still precarious. Recently, I spoke with hip-hop pioneer MC Lyte, who in 1988 was the first woman to release a solo rap album with a major label, and she expressed genuine concern with the state of women in hip-hop today.