As the most popular genre today, hip hop has huge potential for promoting social change in the current culture. Female hip hop artists like Cardi B are vocal on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter about women’s rights and feminism. Aisha Durham et al. acknowledge that, “It is hip-hop feminism that is uniquely able to move women from the sidelines of the stages we built, and from the cheering section of audiences that our public pedagogies have made space for, to claim an unapologetic place at the center as knowledge makers and culture creators” (734). Feminists in hip hop use their platform to empower women and other marginalized communities, flipping the popular narrative of hip hop as an exclusively heteronormative and misogynistic genre.
Women in hip hop often face criticism of their personalities and professional merit. For example, Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, and cupcakKe are often provocative in their performance styles and not taken as seriously in the hip hop community as their male counterparts, which encourages the hypersexualized slutty rapper narrative. In the Kanye West song, Monster, Nicki Minaj directly addressed this, rapping, “So let me get this straight, wait, I’m the rookie? / But my features and my shows ten times your pay? / 50K for a verse, no album out”.
Additionally, when these artists experiment musically, it is not accepted. Jennifer Lena describes this criticism, “Musicians often do not want to be confined by genre boundaries, but their freedom of expression is necessarily bounded by the expectations of the other performers, audience members, critics, and the diverse others whose work is necessary to making, distributing, and consuming symbolic goods” (7). Though Beyoncé raps on many of her (and other artists’) songs, it took years for the hip hop community to see her as more than a girl group R&B singer. Hip hop feminism is a platform with the power to change the world, especially via the fanbase, but takes longer to reach the general hip hop community because female artists are not taken seriously in their artistry.
Related Songs:
The songs below include contributions from underrepresented minorities within the rap community (transgender, female, hispanic) and how their identities and beliefs affect how they interact with society.
Wish You Would (feat. Princess Nokia) – Mykki Blanco
LGBT – cupcakKe
Brujas – Princess Nokia
Durham, Aisha, et al. “The Stage Hip-Hop Feminism Built: A New Directions Essay.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 38, no. 3, 2013, pp. 721–737., doi:10.1086/668843.
Lena, Jennifer. “Music Genres”. Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music, pp. 1–26.
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