From the lack of award nominations, content about women in rap, and the lack of creative opportunities given to female rappers. In 2017 Rick Ross (who has an arsenal of rap labels such as Atlanta Records, Def Jam Records, Epic Records, Poe Boy Entertainment, and many many more) claimed he didn’t sign female rappers out of fear that he might feel compelled to have sex with them, “You know, I never did it because I always thought, like, I would end up fucking a female rapper and fucking the business up… I’m so focused on my business. I just, I gotta be honest with you. You know, she looking good. I’m spending so much money on her photo shoots. I gotta fuck a couple times.”
In 2019 Cardi B made history as the first black woman to win Best Rap Album. Prior to this award, a Black woman had not won any Grammy within the Rap categories since 2006. Nicki Minaj, colloquially known as ‘the queen of rap’, has been nominated for 10 Grammys but has yet to win. Could this all be a coincidence? Hell no.
Who are people listening to?
Ranker is a website where people are invited to vote in polls to determine a list of the best of the best. In a poll from February 2022, of the top 100 rappers of all time, only 2 women made the list. Nicki Minaj at 27 and Missy Elliot at 71. While I am not super into rap even I am aghast at some women who have been clearly snubbed. Rico Nasty, Megan Thee Stallion, CupcakKe, Lil Kim, and Doja Cat didn’t make the cut but G-Eazy and DaBaby did? The only explanation can be racism and sexism, or maybe mass lead poisoning amongst the 575,000 voters.
If we look at purely Spotify monthly listeners Doja Cat wipes the floor with the all men listed, even Eminem who was voted #1 greatest of all time. I am not trying to disrespect Eminem or his talent, I don’t think anyone wins 15 Grammys by accident. I am trying to create a connection between popularity and legacy. More food for thought: if you had to guess which artist has a male-dominated following and which has a female-dominated following
And then do you think that could be part of why these female rappers aren’t considered among the greatest of all time? Because I do. I think that so much that fangirls and pop culture might be an upcoming blog post.
Content
Ishika Sachdeva summed up the problematic content in her UC Berkley opinion post, “The question then remains, in a male-dominated industry, where the so-called “greatest rappers of all time” are 97 percent men, why do so many rap songs sexualize women? Rap lyrics offensively and derogatorily call women “bitches,” “sluts,” “hoes,” “females” and romanticize a woman’s attraction to a lavish lifestyle, portraying wealth as a universal sex language.” Derogatory language towards women is an issue outside of rap (spoiler alert: another upcoming blog post.) All rap does not contain language like this. Some rappers even use their platform to speak out against societal issues like the objectification of women like in Kendrick Lamar’s Kiesha’s Song (Her Pain). However, there is an overarching theme of degrading women in many popular rap songs that reflects stereotypes about women.
The consequences
Two studies pre-2010 both investigated if there is a correlation between violent and misogynistic rap leading to violent and misogynistic thoughts or actions against women. While there was not a strong enough correlation between rap and misogynistic attitudes to give a definitive yes or no, it did highlight a slight positive trend, “The researchers found that listening to Eminem did in fact increase participants’ negative attitudes towards women. In addition, the study found a relationship between listening to rap music, whether or not it was misogynistic, and more negative attitudes towards women – particularly among male participants. Out of fairness, the statistical effects were weak but nonetheless significant.”
The more definitive finding of these studies is the rate of racial stereotyping and rap music. In the 2007 study, Implicit and Explicit Consequences of Exposure to Violent and Misogynous Rap Music researchers found, “Experiment 1 showed that violent and misogynistic rap music increased the automatic associations underlying evaluative racial stereotypes in high and low prejudiced subjects alike…In Experiment 2, the priming manipulation was followed by a seemingly unrelated person perception task in which subjects rated Black or White targets described as behaving ambiguously. As expected, primed subjects judged a Black target less favorably than a White target. By contrast, control subjects rated Black and White targets similarly.”
Conclusion
Black women are consistently shut out of the room where creative choices are made. They are not given the same opportunities to flourish due to sexist monopolies in rap record labels like Rick Ross. Furthermore, derogatory rap furthers ideas that women are ‘sluts’ ‘bitches’ or at best ‘gold diggers’. While it has been a long time coming, Black women are making their voices heard in the rap scene and their boldness will only bring forth more women that deserve to be platformed.
Your homework for today is to go listen to some rap written and or produced by black women I’ll even give you a cheat sheet to make it easier to get started.
