Our Position is Positive; We Come in Peace

   Women are here, and they're here to stay. Undeniably women's representation in Hip Hop historically has been dismal at best. Even women's role and representation seems to be constantly changing. It seems that initially, within the frame of Hip Hop, women were always seen to share the stage with men, but they've never truly held the stage all their own, not until now. 

     Cheryl Keyes (2000) lays out for us the four categories that women in hip hop largely fell into during the time frame 1993-1996 in her article, Empowering Self, Making Choices, Creating Spaces: Black Female Identity via Rap Music Performance, these categories being "Queen Mother," "Fly Chick," “Sistas With Attitude" and "Lesbian". (p. 256) The distinction of these categories and the development made an impact on Hip Hop and society that can still be measured and felt. These categories were the groundwork for archetypes that women began to fall into, whether it was by choice or not. Women still fall into these categories, as in-organic as they are, and because of sociopolitical positions women have always found themselves in. 

     First let’s take a look at American culture, and how it's changed to enable this mass consumption of women, especially of women's bodies. Over the past 15 years the rise in strip clubs popularity and all things pornographic has risen dramatically. The 'elites' have massively contributed to this. The elites are the major name celebrities that not only play on public forums but also have capitalized on making commercial products for consumption. These types of items vary from clothing lines all the way to personal lines of alcohol. Margaret Hunter (2011) says it best in her article entitled SHAKE IT, BABY, SHAKE IT: CONSUMPTION AND THE NEW GENDER RELATION IN HIP-HOP when she says, "Hip-hop’s recent focus on entrepreneurship and marketing has created a culture where hip-hop is experienced primarily through consumption rather than production." (p.15-16) Women’s bodies have been no exception to that rule. The marketplace has been getting increasingly more gender focused, with large emphasis on women’s bodies and the contribution it might have, with little to no concern for how else those women could contribute. Even as women were seemingly sharing the stage with their male counterparts in the early 90's, being the 'Video Vixen' or the 'Fly Chick' it seems that they were really nothing more than commodities in a war of Capitalism. Music videos catapulted this phenomenon forward by not only giving this commercialism of products a visage but by also allowing these rap god moguls a platform to sell other products. Surely, music videos have become more commercials than anything.

Where has women's voices gone though, with all this stage sharing? What was their story, what were they trying to get out there on their shared platform? If these women had a narrative, what was it? The development of a very real Feminist Hip Hop Agenda, you could say, has been the aftermath of such cultural neglect. It’s evident that African American culture sells, and even more abhorrently evident that where an African American female rapper does not sell, an African American dancer does sell. The role of the Feminist Hip Hop agenda then is one built to shake the very foundation of misogyny and patriarchy. They hope to do this through questioning and tirelessly provoking the production, marketing and consumption of the Hip Hop culture for all of these things in America are gendered and products of a hetero-normative social construct. Women in Hip Hop and rap are here and they’re making a voice for themselves now more than ever. What’s their new message? Partially their new mission is the same as the old, but there’s a new fire in the younger generation of women, African American women and in Hip Hop in general. These new feminist also fight classism, sexism, and racism all while focusing on a new wave of uplifting. There’s a huge need to uplift this new younger generation of African American women, especially if we’re to ensure they understand that it’s not through societal fetishes that they will be looked at any longer, but rather by their individualistic production of their art, contributions to society and how they carry themselves individually that truly matters. This is a woman’s story, this is part of their narrative, and I believe that it’s artists like Lauryn Hill, LilyFangz or even Angel Haze that see this as their goal, for all of these woman share a common plight through society.  

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Hunter, M. (2011). Shake It, Baby, Shake It: Consumption and the New Gender Relation in Hip-Hop. Sage Publications, 15-36. Retrieved March 21, 2016, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/sop.2011.54.1.15

Keyes, C. L. (2000). Empowering Self, Making Choices, Creating Spaces: Black Female Identity via Rap Music Performance. The Journal of American Folklore, 113(449), 255-269. Retrieved March 21, 2016, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/542102

(Photographer: Unknown) (Date Created Unknown)  Power and Equality [digital image]. Retrieved from http://feministhiphop-blog.tumblr.com/