Black Female Identity and Sexuality

When we talk about Hip-Hop we go back to South Bronx during 1970s. As Hip-hop rises with the years and its popularity expends through commercialization, so do black female rappers become more recognized. Female rappers start being noticed around 1980s and as commercialization increased today female rappers/hip hop artist have the same about of success as male artist. Female rappers had harder time to break in to the industry than male rappers did. As female rappers become more recognized, their way of expressiveness grows as well. Female rappers expressed themselves more freely about their body and sexuality through their lyrics and image. Hip-Hop uses categories to describe what kind of singer black female represent. In 1980s -1990s, four categories emerged; “Queen Mother,” “Fly Girl,” “Sista with Attitude,” and “Lesbian.”

Male rappers were free to express themselves as they pleased through their music, but woman expression broke through the trio black women group named T.LC. T.L.C lyrics about their sexuality “serves as a powerful, liberating assertion of black women's economic, psychological, emotional and sexual independent” (Nataki, 1994.) their lyrics may have been sexual but never gender oriented. Not only they expressed themselves through lyrics, but also the way they dressed they challenged the norms of how African American woman should look dress or talk. MC Lyte was one of the artists who started her carrier wearing sweat suits, sneakers and big chains. In a male dominant rap industry, female had to take a stand in order to be strong and overcome all the sexual harassment and the hardship the industry of rap and the cultural concept of black woman offered.

As media become more involved in Hip-Hop music and MTV was vied more, the images, voices and life style of African American women become more noticeable and four categories where created: “Queen Mother,” “Fly Girl,” “Sista with Attitude,” and “Lesbian.” Each artist with fit on one of those categories, but they could shift to anyone of them during their crier. Queen Mother described female rappers that through way of dressing they represented themselves as African-Centered icon. Queen mother classification is associated with African traditions and culture. The way the artist dressed the songs they raped represented the traditional caring and loving African women. Fly girl described the chic, fashionable girl who wore fashionable clothes, jewelry, cosmetics, high hills, and mini dresses. They showed more skin and where proud and comfortable in their bodies. Sista with Attitude was the aggressive, arrogant defiant, empower black woman. In this category the word bitch was viewed as a positive rather that word to describe powerful independent women. Last but not least, Lesbians refer to the lesbian life style from a Black artist perception.

To this day female rappers always straggle to break through in to the music industry and commercialize of their music. From the beginning of rap till today black women have expressed themselves differently than man through their sexuality, the way they dress, their attitude and most important their lyrics. Those image project to the consumer especially you black woman and can become a negative or positive role model for them. African American woman have found a lot of straggles with their identify but many of them have become a very successful woman in rap industry.

Goodall, Nataki. 1994. Depend on Myself: T.L.C. and the Evolution of Black Female Rap. Journal of Negro History Vol. 79, No. 1: pp. 85-93