Where are all the women in hip-hop?

With hip hop, as a genre and a culture, passing its 40th anniversary in recent years, a female presence is as absent as ever. This is, of course, not for a lack of talent. Ignoring some examples like Iggy Azalea and Kreayshawn, there is a lot of female talent to be found in the realm of hip hop music. But when I go onto the featured rap artist page on Spotify I only see two women (Missy Elliot and MC Lyte) and around 60 men. As someone who wants to see more Lauryn Hills in the world, I really have to question why this is.

The obvious answer ties into ideas of masculinity. Traditionally, hip-hop music is synonymous with ideas of toughness, bravado and the ‘alpha male’. This creates a culture where any aspiring female MC must be a “boss ass bitch” in order to be taken seriously. This is true for gangster rap anyways. As for the mainstream, any women that do make it big are often hypersexualised in an effort to appeal the average male hip hop fan. One need only look to the career trajectory of Nicki Minaj from ‘Playtime is Over’ to ‘Anaconda’ to see how this ‘sex sells’ ideology ends up shaping the output of the majority of female MCs.

Ultimately, whilst the topic of sex is something which features heavily in the lyrics of a lot of male rappers, the way it is approached here is totally different. With a few notable exceptions (e.g. Missy Elliot’s ‘Work It’) the way in which most female MCs talk about sex just shows us men’s sexual fantasies from the other side. Female rappers rarely talk about sex from any position of power. “You can fuck my girls too, daddy I’m-a condone it” and “yes you be the boss, and yes I be respecting” are literal Nicki Minaj lyrics. It’s a world away from her verse on ‘Monster’ isn’t it?

This masculine culture is shaped by both the artists and the fans. The success of rap songs nowadays is largely determined by internet communities mostly made up of young males. These groups are perhaps not the most open to listening to female MCs. As a result of this, hip-hop culture remains very accepting of a lot of misogynistic language and ideas. In the end, asking why there aren’t more women in hip hop seems to be comparable to asking why there aren’t more black country singers. I think there is hope though; perhaps with a progressive movement away from the ‘gangster rap’ culture of the past towards the sound and philosophies of rappers like Chance the Rapper, Lupe Fiasco and J. Cole we’ll see more women come up. I hope so anyway.