Other Hip-Hop Trends and Figures 2
While it is readily apparent that hip-hop has become a competitive force in popular music and popular culture, there is no denying that it has lost the diversity of female representation in the process. From the late 1980s to the late 1990s, women in the rap music world reflected various facets of contemporary [Black] women's lifestyle via their rhymes and performances. For example, the Queen Mother prototype as well as Afrocentric feminism was reflected in the performances of Queen Latifah, Nefertiti, Lauryn Hill, Medusa, and Yo-Yo. The latter also displayed aspects of the Fly Girl image reflected in the independent erotic hip-hop female acts of Salt-N-Pepa, Missy Elliott, and TLC. The "sista with attitude" and the no-nonsense, hardcore-laden MC types included Roxanne Shanté, MC Lyte, Eve, Mia-X, Lil' Kim, and Foxy Brown. These last two also shared characteristics with the Fly Girl category. Queen Pen (see Keyes 2002, 186-209) represented the "lesbian" who was uninhibited in rhyming about women loving women.
By the year 2000, the number of diverse voices and rosters of female hip-hop acts had plummeted, only to be replaced by more alluring, less representative female rap acts or by women seen as extras in male hip-hop videos. Much of the blame for the misrepresentation and lack of diversity in terms of women's presence and voices in hip-hop is due to a music industry dominated by male executives and constantly yielding to the pressure and demand for male artists to use hip-hop as a lens through which to demean or objectify women. This lack of diverse representation led to a flurry of critical writing to address what had become a growing void in hip-hop culture. Works from hip-hop feminists included:
- Joan Morgan's When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip-Hop Feminist (1999)
- Gwendolyn Pough's Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere (2004)
- Kyra Gaunt's The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop (2006)
- T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting's Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip-Hop's Hold on Young Black Women (2007)
- The compilation Home Girl Makes Some Noise: Hip-Hop Feminist Anthology, edited by Gwendolyn Pugh (2007)
These works led the way for vital discussion regarding the objectification of women in hip-hop in general. Black Entertainment Television (BET) presented a similar debate about the representation of female MCs in the network's first music documentary entitled My Mic Sounds Nice: The Truth About Women and Hip Hop, directed by Ava Duvernay (2010). The cadre of female hip-hop MCs who candidly shared poignant views about the pressures and expectations of women by a male-dominated music industry included MC Lyte, Missy Elliott, Eve, Rah Digga, Yo-Yo, and Lady of Rage.
