Annotating and updating Tricia Rose
YouTube addendum to Tricia Rose’s “Never Trust A Big Butt And A Smile” from Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader, 1990.
Women rappers employ many of the aesthetic and culturally specific elements present in male rap lyrics while offering an alternative vision of similar social conditions. Raps written by women which specifically concern male/female relationships almost always confront the tension between trust and savvy, between vulnerability and control. Women rappers celebrate their sisters for ‘getting over’ on men. Some raps by women such as Icey Jaye’s ‘It’s a Girl Thang’ mock the men who fall for their tricks. But for the most part, women rappers promote self-reliance and challenge the depictions of women in male raps, addressing the fears about male dishonesty and infidelity that most women share.
Icey Jaye, “It Takes A Real Man”, 1988. (Response to Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock’s “It Takes Two”. Insanely hi-energy track sullied by unfortunate homophobia.)
Raps written and performed by women regarding male/female relationships can be divided into at least three categories:
(1) raps that challenge male dominance over women within the sexual arena
(2) raps, that by virtue of their authoritative stance, challenge men as representatives of Hip Hop, and
Antoinete, “Who’s The Boss”, 1989.
Queen Latifah ft. Monie Love, “Ladies First”, 1989.
(3) raps that explicity discuss women’s identity and celebrate women’s physical and sexual power.
Salt’N'Pepa, “Shake Your Thang”, 1988.
In the full text of Rose’s essay, she carves up critics for a “consistent coding of rap music as male” resulting in an on-going “marginalization, deletion, and mischaracterization” of Black women from the history of African-American popular music. In her close readings of each of these videos, she demonstrates the “dialogic” character of rap among fans and music producers and makes a powerful argument for the strength of female voices to create a “culturally reflexive public space” for questioning traditional gender roles in the community.
Fast forward to 2008.
From the comments section to “Ladies First”:
Qiuera91 (1 month ago)
Hell yeah I loved this video!!! GO Queen!! Go Monie…ugh Female Rap is not the same anymore….we got trina Lil kim and LIl MAma!? Ugh!! Queen Take em back!!!
OK. I’ll take the bait. Using Rose’s frame work and the artists suggested by Qiuera91, let’s see what I can dig up:
(1) raps that challenge male dominance over women within the sexual arena
Lil Kim, “How Many Licks”, 2000.
(2) raps, that by virtue of their authoritative stance, challenge men as representatives of Hip Hop, and
Lil Mama, “No Music”, 2006.
(3) raps that explicity discuss women’s identity and celebrate women’s physical and sexual power.
Trina, “Pull Over”, 2000.
How many more female rappers can we identify with hits in the last few years? Remy Ma, Missy, Diamond and Princess, Foxy Brown, Jean Grae, … Lady Sov? The range is diverse but the names are few. Hip-hop is bigger than ever yet the gender ratio seems to have slipped precipitously from the days of “Ladies First”.
In 1990, Rose’s contemporaries worried that the mainstreaming of hip-hop would ruin the artform. Looking back, what could they say about the continued marginalization of female MCs? What is missing from this picture? Why do so many female MCs remain just below the radar?
Tags
feminism, gender, hiphop, musicvideo, theory
Tags: feminism, gender, hiphop, musicvideo, theory
April 3rd, 2008 at 13:24:21 (PDT -04:00)
Hey Kevin, nice post. A few thoughts: Most music production is male-dominated, especially the more technological it gets (Rose discusses this as well if I recall), but women are more likely to participate in youth cultures through things like dance and fashion, which tend to get marginalized by critics and academics (who are also largely male). I think it’s also worth considering expanding the definition of “hip hop” in this case to include popular R&B, much of which is hip hop in style, but doesn’t necessarily include rapping. You could include Beyonce, Brandy, Keisha Cole, Mariah, Alicia Keys, Mary J, Erykah Badu… not all of those are exactly breaking the mold of femininity of course.
April 3rd, 2008 at 14:49:06 (PDT -04:00)
All that you say about R&B / hip-hop is true. I had to go out of my way NOT to conflate them in this post. Missy is a great example of someone with participation in many hybrid forms.
I’m not concerned as much with breaking any molds but with simply being VISIBLE as an active participant, rather than a collection of body parts or the object.
I haven’t sorted out my thoughts on this but in the time that it seems the female rapper crowd was limited, there was an attendant rise in the visibility of the “video girl” role. Without creating a hierarchy among “video girls” and “female rappers”, I wonder if any of the video girls wouldn’t prefer being rappers/singers?