Music I Like – Women of Hip Hop

I hardly ever write about hip hop because I can’t listen to it most of the time. Rap is too verbal for me to listen to when I’m working. I end up transcribing lyrics into whatever I’m writing. But I do like rap, and it’s often on in my house after-hours. My husband is into it more than I am, and I usually end up listening to whatever he’s into. But sometimes I discover new hip hop on my own, and when I do, the rappers are usually women.

Missy Elliott

I think Missy Elliott was the first woman rapper I ever heard (not counting Lauryn Hill, who transcends genre). I had just moved into a house with cable and had access to MTV for the first and only time in my life. “Get Your Freak On” and “One Minute Man” were on high rotation. At the time, I said I didn’t like it. But there was something about it that I couldn’t tune out, and even at the time I had to admit no one else sounded like her. What a happy coincidence that she dropped comeback EP Iconology just as I was working on this post.

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Eve

Like most people at the turn of the century, I dug No Doubt. So although I don’t really remember, I’m pretty sure that the Eve/Gwen Stefani collab video “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” introduced me to Eve. In any case, I bought Eve’s CD Scorpion, and listened the hell out of it. I still love every track on Scorpion.

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THEE Satisfaction

THEE Satisfaction was the first concert I ever took my girls to see. Cat and Stas performed a Saturday morning family show in the basement of some community center/town hall kind of venue. But don’t let the context fool you. These queens know their business and while they were together made the most avant garde hip hop inflected by ’60’s girl group harmonies. I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction for my little girls to live music. Their last album was Earthee, but the one that got the most play at my house was AwE NaturalE.

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Reykjavíkurdætur

I discovered Reykjavíkurdætur (Daughters of Reykjavik) at the heavy metal festival Eistnaflug in 2014. At that time they were a loose collective of basically every woman in the Reykjavik area who wanted to make rap music. I think something like 18 of them were on stage the day I saw them. They drew a crowd at a heavy metal festival in the middle of the afternoon.

It was the first time I heard rap in Icelandic, and even without understanding the words, I could tell from audience reaction that what they were saying was good, and funny, and a little bit shocking. How do you shock notoriously down-to-earth Icelanders? Rap about anal sex is apparently one way.

Among those on stage, there were at least a dozen different rapping styles – many of them directly traceable to well-known American acts – and a wide range of skill levels. They didn’t have a cohesive look or sound. Everyone was just there supporting each other in doing their own thing, and there were enough of them to bypass the entire male-dominated hip hop scene in Iceland and create their own. Many of the women I saw that day have gone on to form their own groups or record solo albums.

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The Sorority

I discovered The Sorority through a track on Snotty Nose Rez Kids‘ Trapline. Like Reykjavíkurdætur, they are a collective of rappers with very distinctive styles and listening to them together is the aural equivalent of a good jambalaya.

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Sonita

I discovered Sonita while exploring the music of MIYAVI. Aesthetics aside, protest songs about child marriage and refugee rights rapped by a woman from Afghanistan would be music I like. But Sonita sounds pretty good, too.

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Rapsody

I’m embarrassed to admit that I lost track of Eve after Scorpion. But when I saw Rapsody‘s new album Eve in a Brooklyn Vegan essential release list, I wondered if the title was a nod to the rapper or the Biblical character. So I gave it a listen. Soundwise, she reminds me most of Lauryn Hill (who should also have been on this list but it’s getting mighty long). Hill’s music is perhaps more interesting, although Rapsody’s use of Peter Gabriel samples is priceless. But they have a similar cadence, and both of them are all about the message. These are women with something to say, and we would all be wise to listen.