Total Refinement of the Female Emcee Prototype

In 1984, when Roxanne Shante first came out with the song “Roxanne’s Revenge,” (in response to the hit song on the radio “Roxanne Roxanne”) she dissed the whole UTFO crew, while simultaneously sending the message to other female emcees interested in making a name for themselves that now was the time to step their game up and enter the world of hip-hop. While the eighties seemed to represent an emergence of females in the culture, the nineties proved to be an explosion, with as many as forty-plus female emcees saturating the market at one time. Fast-forward to 2011, and the amount of female emcees has dwindled to a mere fraction of what it used to be, with only one major commercial female emcee to speak of. Enter Nicki Minaj: a five-foot-three-inch, hyper-sexualized, self-proclaimed black Barbie doll, with a wild persona, over-the-top outfits, back-and-forth-between-orgasmic-and-schizophrenic facial expressions, and curves for days (measurements 34-26-45). The fact that she, with her many hypocritical facets- from interview stance, to rap content, to her physical image, remains the only face of the commercially exposed female emcee doesn’t exactly send a positive message. One has to wonder: how did this happen and why is this important to hip-hop and not only future female emcees, but also particularly to young women of color? Recounting the careers of various relevant female emcees, as well as changes in the criteria set forth by major record labels, it becomes apparent that when the societal obsession of hyper-sexualized imagery and capitalism are linked together with an influential art form such as hip-hop, it’s not only detrimental to the movement itself, but especially to young men and women of color as well.

Michael Benabib’s compilation hip-hop photos book entitled, In Ya Grill: The Faces of Hip-Hop, has an extremely tiny section warranted to female emcees, in which the introduction states, “There are times when the world of rap seems about as