Truth Hurts; Women Are Running Rap Right Now
Disclaimer: There will be some explicit language used in this piece.
Men are classically the dominant force in Hip Hop, with only minor moments when women have been at the forefront.
I remember seeing the cover of Hardcore by Lil Kim for the first time and feeling so many things. It was daring and super sexy, and I felt the immediate guilt of a young Caribbean boy raised in a wonderful Christian family. I was sure it was pornographic based on how my friends hid away to listen to it.
Not only was Kimberly out here detailing the most graphic sexual exploits, but she was talking about pimping, tricking, scamming and dope dealing. And to top it all off, she was great at rapping too? The audacity.
On ‘Not Tonight’ Kim raps, “He used to pass me bricks, credit cards and sh**, Suck him to sleep. I took the keys to the jeep.”
I had rarely, if ever, heard a woman so gloriously talk about the wonders of her sexual prowess and the ability it had to make men do many things.
Eventually my shock and guilt subsided and Hardcore became a staple for my earlobes and the path to understanding the importance and relevance in how women talked about their sexuality on hip hop records.
Maybe it was easier coming from the Caribbean where women like Lady Saw and Patra had easily used similar tones and themes of sex and gender power to push themselves to prominent positions in their own respective genres.
On ‘Sycamore Tree’ Lady Saw asserts her power by denying a man fellatio; “Call Me old fashioned, I know everything me like, Me a gal wi ride pun your big ninja bike, Run any marathon inna mi sight, but the only Mic me a chat pun is a studio Mic.”
Coming up listening to these songs caused far less shock and dismay than the likes of Lil Kim and Foxy Brown.
So imagine my surprise when I heard men were up in arms over women rapping about their bodies, tricking, pimping, scamming and robbing in 2019.
Why on earth is this being met with consternation and disdain now?
Hadn’t we accepted this when Lil Kim, Foxy, Missy and Trina were out taking agency for themselves in their raps and images?
No, we hadn’t.
The truth is we never did.
And by “we” I mostly mean black men. It didn’t matter that we had already existed in a world where women were already talking about themselves with the same agency men have for decades, we were just never comfortable with it; mostly because it made us feel objectified and inferior. Which is crazy when you think about it, since most rap is so focused on objectifying Black women? We now get a glimpse of what the looking glass is like for black women in hip hop.
When Lizzo says “Why’re Men great til they gotta be great?” on ‘Truth Hurts’ or when City Girls echo their lack of need for men on the beginning of ‘Act Up’, and these songs become anthems for women everywhere, it resonates negatively with many of the traditional male oriented Hip Hop Audience who has always felt safe in the embrace of lines like “F*** B******, Get Money”.
We get so scared that we lash out in order to diminish it, but who does that help? Not the incredible talent that struggles to get to the surface, and it damn sure doesn’t help black men. It just makes us look dumb and overly sensitive.
Instead, we constantly embolden the voices of those who tell women what to do, who to be and what they should look like to be acceptable, and never notice how much of that is abusing these women and holding them back. While constantly asserting that all women in the genre do is talk about sex now when we have had Missy Elliott, Salt-N-Pepa, Lil Kim and Foxy Brown openly talking about sex for years in their songs.
“I’d like to get to know ya, so I could show ya. Put the p**** on ya like I told ya.” Missy Elliott — ‘Work It’
If we can listen to men rap endlessly about drinking lean, getting women, selling dope and lying about how great they are in bed, then why can’t we listen to women rap about the same things? And if you don’t like it, you can just find one of the myriad of rappers who don’t talk about any of those things and support them.
Or maybe that’s too difficult?
“Yall can have the Bars N****, I spit hard Metal Gates.” Rapsody — ‘NINA
Regardless, Lizzo is still dominating her no genre push. It’s still a Hot Girl Summer. City Girls are still telling every woman to rob and scam. And Cardi B is still out here talking about her vagina on records.
My advice here may be overly simplistic, but it goes like this; Get over it or change the channel.
These women are not going away or changing because we as Black Men feel uncomfortable with a narrative that now says “F*** N*****, Get Money”.
We have to come to terms with the fact that this era no longer needs men to validate women in Rap Music.