Popular Culture Review Volume 30, Number 1, Winter 2019 | Page 79

Popular Culture Review 30.1
numerous best-selling “ Rapattitude ” compilations , which featured the major artists of the day . Saliha later followed up this sort of exposure with a complete album of her own in 1994 . However , following her tepid success , no other woman would attract much interest from record companies or producers in terms of a large commercial perspective . Other artists ( such as Princess Aniès ) occasionally appeared and released albums that featured feminist-empowered lyrics , some of which at times enjoying moderate airplay . That said , a sustainable female presence in the hip-hop game was lacking throughout the 1990s . Regardless of these sorts of challenges , over time things would change as a newer and younger group of women rappers emerged to challenge male dominance in rap music . This fresh group of female artists would eventually start to reverse the misogynistic imagery as presented in hip-hop culture up until that point .
One of things that help expedite the serious arrival and visibility of female rappers in France in the late 1990s was the sudden rise of women in American hip-hop . Artists such as Lauryn Hill and Missy Elliot were breaking sales records and winning multiple Grammy awards as they changed the sound and redirected the landscape of rap music in the United States . The emergence of American female rappers was hardly a new concept , as earlier popular artists paved the way in the late 1980s . Female rappers such as Queen Latifah helped to diversity the genre with empowering songs such as “ Ladies First ,” a track whose lyrics and Afrocentric feminist narrative celebrated the contributions of women in hip-hop and in society , as this example shows ( from Berry : 193 ):
Who said the ladies couldn ’ t make it , you must be blind
If you don ’ t believe , well here , listen to this rhyme
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