Hip Hop Her-ay

A YouTube playlist accompanies this post

The ‘Political hip hop’ Wikipedia page does not reference feminism. It does reference 33 other topics including Marxism, Zoroastrianism, Maoism, climate change, police brutality, government corruption, COVID, and the flat earth conspiracy.¹ 

I mean really? I am used to the absence of women’s issues, histories and achievements in lists of ‘important’ things, but even for patriarchy this is a pretty fucking glaring omission. 

Wikipedia does not even include ‘Ladies First’ in its list of ‘significant political rap songs’ and ‘Ladies First’ is ALWAYS included in these kinds of things. This song by Queen Latifah and Monie Love got to number 5 on the Billboard charts, raised public awareness, spawned a mainstream pop culture Afrocentric feminist discourse, and forced a generation of male rappers to take a good hard look at themselves. Its track list is even held by the Smithsonian! 

^{'Ladies First' - Queen Latifah & Monie Love}

‘Ladies First’ is a mighty feminist hip hop song but it’s far from the only one. There are many and I listen to a lot of them.² In these feminism is expressed in lots of different ways and that’s what this post actually is; a collection of feminist stuff as it appears in a bunch of different rap songs.³ 

First a couple of necessary definitions,

Feminismin - in this post my definition is low-key and loose, ignoring all the big ideological movements. Generally, by ‘feminism’ I mean ideas or strategies that seek to empower, express or affirm in some way the lives and rights of women. Mostly I’ll show how these manifest via lyrics.⁴

Rap - I’m also defining ‘rap’ pretty broadly. With it I’m referring to any kind of song I think's predominantly ‘talky’ rather than ‘singy’. It might be from a traditional hip-hop context or it might not.

And I just want to say that this post is in no way intended to be any kind of history or survey or ranking of female rap artists and their songs. It’s just a selection of what I know, like and listen to.

Here we go, in table form for your convenience:

^{'Game Over' - Female Takeover}

'Imam Cobain' - Silvana Imam

^{'Kongo Rikishi Statues' - Wednesdays Campanella}

^{'Ni Una Menos' - Rebeca Lane}

^{'Your Nemesis' - Nemesis (Ill Semantics)}

^{'Cailin Rua' - Temper-Mental MissElayneous}

Footnotes:

^1.  The full list - Marxism, Zoroastrianism, Maoism, climate change, police brutality, COVID, government corruption, economics, Black empowerment, class struggles, poverty, education, social apathy, the environment, war, specific political parties and individuals, the democratic process, human rights violations, Afro-American Nationalism, Islam, activism and activists, conspiracy theories generally and the flat earth conspiracy specifically, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Zionism, colonialism, identity, and inequality.

^2.  I am a white, middle-aged woman but hopefully way less cringe in my fandom than Gwenyth Paltrow 

^3. I just like collecting stuff 

^4.  I don’t personally subscribe to all the feminisms I discuss  but I do think they can all legitimately be included under the term. And I like the tunes.