Nikki Giovanni probably gets heartburn each time she sees Lil Kim’s pasties. Julia de Burgos’s spirit must rumble in her grave with every mention of Jackie-O or Foxy Brown’s couchies.

Angela Davis, Sonia Sanchez, Celia Cruz, Maya Angelou, Lolita Lebron, strong intelligent women, poets, activists, who have open the paths for hip-hop’s divas, must frown on us each time they hear the words of the women prevalent in our culture. And they should.

Don’t misunderstand; I am not a playa hatin’! (Besides, as Ursula Rucker said, “Playa hatin’ is played out!”) I love the bling-bling of hip-hop’s Lil Kims and the vibes from the Angie Martinezs of the culture, but I just miss the lyrically strong MC Lytes and the powerful femininity of the Salt & Pepas!

With all the trials and challenges that woman face and work hard to overcome daily, we need more positive sources of hip-hop to keep our heads bopping and our spirits strong. I’m not saying we need zealot Tammy Faye emcees, but as female artists we have the responsibility to not only entertain, but to also inspire other women.

Sonia, Lolita and Angela didn’t tear down adversity and oppression for us to forget about the struggles they conquered. These are now our opportunities and we can’t ignore or forget the grandmothers of hip-hop who made our presence in the culture a possibility. We cannot afford to miss out on passing their wisdom and pride to our daughters.

We are the breakdance babies and are responsible for teaching the breakdance granddaughters that there is more to being a woman in hip-hop than the “video ho”, “chickenhead” or “ghetto queen”. Let us give thanks by inspiring self-respect, education, inner light and leading through example just like Nikki and Maya STILL do!

From New York to Los Angeles, Miami to Portland, and every city in between, there is a new issue brewing among the female gender and hip-hop. However, this time the issue doesn’t lie with a Lil’ Kim album cover or the abundance of flesh showing on the females in hip-hop videos. Instead, these things are serving as underlying reasons why, from suburbia to inner-city ghettos, people are questioning the lack of female representation at hip-hop shows.

Let me clarify. I am not speaking of the Jay-Z, Nelly or Eminem concerts. I’m digging a bit deeper to The Little Brother, Roots, or even open mic audiences. If you’ve ever been to any of these events, you can testify that besides the cocktail waitresses, females are scarce and rarely sited. The source of this mystery is birthed from the perception that females have a different interpretation, relationship and exposure to music. Like in any music community, hip-hop especially, females like to dance while the males usually lay back and play it cool.

At underground shows where many women don’t know the majority of songs, they have a tendency to become easily bored. Hearing a familiar mainstream song is more enjoyable, because they can familiarize with it. We want to hear rhythms and beats that we can feel throughout our bodies. Saying that, it’s safe to say that many underground and middle ground hip-hop shows aren’t booty-shakin’ friendly. The majority of hip-hop shows aren’t plagued with catchy, Neptune hooks. While there are a handful of women involved in underground, in observing the audience, it’s obvious to see that we are the minority.

The reflection of hip-hop is a direct image of its key players. Sadly enough, women don’t get the proper respect when it comes to emceeing, break dancing, graffiti writing or DJing. Men tend to dominate each element, and have so since the beginning of culture.

Therefore, hip-hop only has itself to blame for letting the role of women slip through the cracks. Besides the underexposure of women in the culture, we have to pay attention to the ignorance and imagery that is put on the value of a woman. From the videos to the groupies, women tend to be looked at with objectivity. This is a huge turn-off to those of us that wear the culture on our backs. Why should women support hip-hop if they are going to have to deal with the heckling and stereotypes? The marketing and whoring of the hip-hop culture plays a substantial role.

While the females are being fed the 50 Cent club mixes and remixes, the deep, thought – provoking, true hip-hop is marketed and targeted towards males, as if women don’t have the intelligence to be included in this market. Promoters have tried to tackle this problem by offering ladies a discount at certain events. Think that is helping? Think again! While we enjoy free stuff and discounts galore, that’s not enough appeal to get the venue packed with women. How are we going to solve this? The hip-hop culture has along way to go in order to embrace our gender. Perhaps mixing the line-up to include a commercial and underground act, female opening act, or female emcee battle would shift the vibe to a more ambiguous atmosphere. It’s frustrating to see that quality hip-hop of any kind isn’t exposed to females properly, and sadder still to see this being acceptable in the culture. For hip-hop and its intertwining elements to fully grow, it must become more palatable to the female fan. Beginning now.

I feel that it’s safe to say that female rappers/emcees don’t get the respect we deserve. We are still treated like novelties and viewed only as sex objects…and while I can comfortably point my finger at men as the oppressors in this scenario all day long, I won’t.

Instead I will turn my finger all the way around to a most uncomfortable position and blame myself, along with every other female in this industry, who is not doing like Canibus said and ‘taking it by force.’ (The respect we deserve.)

I can’t count how many times I’ve been told, “You’re dope – for a girl.” Or heard dudes say, “Can you believe he got crushed – by a girl? Bwahahaha,” without even thinking twice.

I do understand that women have yet to be viewed equally in society, (we still take on a man’s last names after marriage henceforth becoming property), but that doesn’t make for a good excuse for sexism in Hip-Hop.

If you think about it, none of the melanin-enriched men that dominate in this culture are viewed equally in society either. With Hip-Hop being founded and pioneered by groups of oppressed individuals, then you’d think that this group would be able to understand the perils and the plights of others who are oppressed but this is not so. After all, blatant homophobia still runs rampant in this scene.

When trying to find solutions to this problem (lack of respect) its very easy to jump on pseudo-feminist bandwagons and scream, “MEN SUCK- LET’S KILL THEM!!” or similar rhetoric, but blame can never free anyone. Passion and ACTION can.

Females DO deserve respect in this industry, OF COURSE. But since respect hasn’t automatically been handed to us we need to build ourselves a foundation of respect.

Currently, sexuality dominates in the lyrics of the handful of female rappers readily available to the general public. Now, I am all for aggressive female sexuality but we still have yet to prove that we are dope lyricists. We haven’t yet proven that we can write our own lyrics without the help of Jay-Z. Instead, we have proven that we can look good in tight outfits and buy Burberry gloves. Who really cares about that, male or female? If I want to see a chick with a fat ass I can go to the strip club, if I want to be pounded in the head with name brands I can go shopping, if I want to hear ill metaphors and hardcore delivery I shouldn’t have to seek out a male voice.

I’m not saying that male rappers aren’t overly sexual and materialistic as well, because they are. However, if I want to, I can think of at least 10 dope ass male emcees at any given moment, yet cant do the same when it comes to females. Maybe I could if we all weren’t so dead set on only allowing one female emcee in our lives at a time. Basically, we need more support within ourselves. We need more big ass crews of just females, crews with MORE than 1 female. Fuck this “Only female in my crew” bullshit. We are NOT pitbulls we are HUMAN WOMEN and there’s no reason to piss all over everyone who comes into our territory.

I’ve heard diss songs directed towards other females, why is it never a diss song directed towards a male? At least when we diss we could diss one of the millions of male rappers out there. To me that’s like being one of 2 black people in a racist all-white neighborhood and fighting the other black person on a daily basis. Am I making sense here?

I’ll admit that i have fallen victim to this wack train of thought in the past. I can remember groaning whenever another female hit the scene thinking “Uuugh….now I’ll NEVER get signed!!!”, until one day I finally WOKE THE FUCK UP and realized there’s TONS of male rappers, why cant there be TONS of females?

Unity will gain us respect, not division. For the New Year, let’s get it together and build strong, ya’ll.

by kkarma fashala
Originally published in VERBALISMS Magazine December 2002