Women’s Contributions to the Female Narrative in Hip Hop

Gregory Cortorreal

Women’s Contributions to the Female Narrative in Hip Hop

Source: Nelly ft. St Lunatics - Tip Drill Remix

            It goes without saying that Hip Hop music is laden with glaring patriarchy, machismo, misogyny and sexism. However, to be fair, this is only a partial description of the gender dynamics reflected in Hip Hop. In this male dominated genre there is some positivity towards women reflected in songs promoting messages of loyalty, respect and appreciation towards. Yet even when positively addressed women are only superficially recognized as equals. The ideals of virtue and being a ‘ride or die’ implied in songs like Outcast’s Jazzy Belle or Jay Z’s 03 Bonnie and Clyde celebrate women as upstanding equals while ironically subjecting them to unfair moral double standards around sexuality, or inherently subservient roles in which they magnanimously amplify men.  This is only the male representation of women. Although a minority in Hip Hop, women also play their own roles in perpetuating both positive and negative female narratives and stereotypes. The varying nature of women’s contributions to their narratives in Hip Hop have created contention over the characteristics of their role as either complicit in unfair portrayals or empowering via the art as a platform. Interestingly the arguments of either side are premised by differing attributions of agency onto women.

Take for instance Oneka La Bennet’s (2009) observation of Latina women using Hip Hop as tool of entitlement and self-determinism whereby the embracement of the culture is an overt simultaneous embracement of Black identity running opposite to hegemonic ideals of Eurocentric beauty. In this telling, women are empowered by Hip Hop to embrace themselves and their female perspectives by making space for themselves in the art. There is a need to recognize that women are limited to “self-destructive and spiritually under nourishing” roles while simultaneously conforming to “misogynistic masculinity” (Dyson & Hurst, 2012). The feminist rhetoric of a victimization binary often ignores complicity (Morgan, 2012). When Margaret Hunter (2011) implies women’s passivity in the reduction of their contemporary roles to sexualized video dancers she is taking agency away from women and surrendering it to men. Her work ultimately presents men as the sole perpetrators in the promotion of material and sexual consumption. Contrast this rhetoric on contemporary roles with Cheryl Keyes talk of empowerment through identity and space making in the listener perceived female rapper categories of the early 90’s (Keyes, 2012).

Is this difference in the way scholars address women’s roles in Hip Hop indicative of any objective changes in the industry over the last two decades of women’s access to representation in Hip Hop? Anecdotally speaking contemporary acts like Dej Loaf, Nicki Minaj, Iggy Azelia, Remy Ma and Lil Kim suggest women can still be content producers. The question becomes: what barriers exist and how do they compare to the 90s female golden age of rap? Furthermore, how do these real barriers justify scholarly attribution of agency towards women in Hip Hop?  As Robin Kelley would agree social scientists tend to distorts ideas of the subjects studied based on preconceptions (Kelley, 2012). It would be interesting to study how this holds true in the context of women’s roles in female narrative creation within Hip Hop as they relate to any real or imagined agency.

Works Cited

Dyson, M.E. & Hurt, B. (2012). Cover Your Eyes as I Describe a Scene so Violent’: Violence, Machismo, Sexism, and Homophobia. In M. Forman & M.A. Neal (Eds.), That’s The Joint! (pp. 358-369). New York, NY: Routledge.

Hunter, M. (2011). Shake It, Baby, Shake It: Consumption and the New Gender Relation in Hip-Hop. Sociological Perspectives, 54(1), 15–36. http://doi.org/10.1525/sop.2011.54.1.15

Keyes, C.L. (2012). Empowering Self, Making Choices, Creating Spaces: Black Female Identity via Rap Music Performance. In M. Forman & M.A. Neal (Eds.), That’s The Joint! (pp. 399-412). New York, NY: Routledge.

Kelley, R.D.G. (2012). Lookin’ for the ‘Real’ Nigga: Social Scientists Construct the Ghetto. In M. Forman & M.A. Neal (Eds.), That’s The Joint! (pp. 153-163). New York, NY: Routledge.

LaBennett, O. (2009). Histories and “her stories” from the Bronx: excavating hidden hip hop narratives. Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, 33(2), 109.

Morgan, J. (2012). Hip Hop Feminist. In M. Forman & M.A. Neal (Eds.), That’s The Joint! (pp. 413-418). New York, NY: Routledge.