Large and in charge - women and rap

Interview, May, 1999 by Julia Chaplin

Women have been trying to slip through or kick down hip-hop's clubhouse door for years. It's finally happened

In rapper Foxy Brown's self-directed video "Hot Spot," the nineteen-year-old sex gladiator fronts a booty chorus line in a tiny metal bikini. The camera pans her every jiggling crevice like a triple-X Imax. But below her smooth thighs where the Gucci stilettos might logically slink are instead knee pads, a pair of sneakers and, uh, tube socks.

It's as if the video has caught Brown's body torn between the two images of women in rap: showgirl sex objects and tomboy action heroes. Having figured out on her hit 1996 debut, III Na Na, how well the first sells, Brown is tapping into the power of the second for her followup, Chyna Doll, released in January. Her dishiness and daring have put her at the forefront of a movement that almost amounts to a coup: the transformation of women from silent, bouncing, spandex-clad extras in videos to chart-dominating and Grammy-grabbing stars.

Some of the first female rappers, such as Queen Latifah and MC Lyte, rhymed empowering confrontational lyrics - remember "Wrath of My Madness" (1989) and "Ruffneck" (1993)? - but they couldn't compete with their brothers at the bank. It took Latifah years before she went gold, while Hill's five-time Grammy-winning The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998) and Foxy Brown's Chyna Doll (1999) debuted at the top of the charts.

"For a long time young men were the primary consumers of rap," says Nelson George, the author of Hip Hop America (1998). "The last thing they wanted to listen to was some girl in a head wrap and baggy jeans preaching girl power." It wasn't until R&B, whose audience was largely female, mixed with hip-hop that rap opened up on a commercial level to women. "Women have become more powerful due to R&B divas like Toni Braxton, Mariah Carey, and TLC," says George. "These women began collaborating with rappers and integrating rap into their sound. What we're seeing now is the hip-hop corollary to that."

Foxy Brown and Lil' Kim's overt sexuality was also a liberating force, a dirty-talkin' backlash to gangsta rap's oft-repeated mantra that "if a girl prowls after sex, talks about dick, and sports a too-short miniskirt, then she must be a hoe." When Lil' Kim paraded in minks and G-strings on her 1996 debut, Hard Core, fans followed suit, letting their hair down from under their baseball hats and allowing their femininity to flow. But Lil' Kim and Brown were at least as much products of male fantasies as responses to it. Rapper Jay-Z wrote and produced heady all of III Na Na, and the Notorious B.I.G. did the same for his girlfriend Lil' Kim. (One wonders if B.I.G. penned the rhymes about "lickie, lickie" and "pussy eatin'.")

Regardless of who their mentors were, it's amazing what platinum-plus record sales will do for personal expression. Not long after her chart conquest, Lil' Kim started to look less and less like a Victoria's Secret sex kitten and more like a she-pimp, sporting felt fedoras, queen bee-size blonde wigs, and enough Chanel and Versace to sink a debtor in the East River. "I'm not gonna totally change on my next album," Kim said of her anticipated summer release in a recent interview. "I'm gonna still be talking about sexual things, but it'll be deeper."

On Chyna Doll, Foxy Brown sounds less like Debbie Does Dallas than Debbie Owns Dallas. That could be because, as Brown recently told a reporter, "On the last album . . . I had all these men running my career and telling me, Do this, do that. This album I was able to do it myself." On her Lauryn Hill-esque confessional "My Life" she points out that when women demand to get paid the same as men, they're called whores: "Double standards / Call him a mack / Call me a hoe / Say I'm in it for the dough / What the fuck he in it for?" In a similar vein, Missy Elliott plans to call her follow-up to 1997's hit Supa Dupa Fly, due out in June, She's a Bitch because that's what women get called when they demand control. "I'm a bitch in power and I think this is gonna be the year of the bitches," she said recently.

The next chapter could only be the rise of the female megamogul. Lil' Kim, Elliott, Brown, and Hill have all inked deals for their own record labels. Elliott, a deft producer, has already signed and produced several artists, including female rappers Nicole and Mocha. Hill has also started a film production company (she's looking into sci-fi pictures) and produced tracks for Aretha Franklin, the rapper Common, and Carlos Santana.

And the women may even succeed in taking rap where few men have wanted to go before. On her song "Superstar," Hill chides male rappers for their "tired" cookie-cutter rhymes: "Music is supposed to inspire / How come we ain't gettin' no higher?." Now that "higher" (i.e., honest and righteous)is the next big thing, there's no shortage of entrepreneurs who are willing to step up to Hill's challenge and take a chance on female tappers, especially if they can tap into the five million people who bought The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.