Women in Hiphop
janell hobson and r. dianne bartlow
Introduction
Representin’: Women, Hip-Hop, and Popular Music
As coeditors of this special issue of Meridians, we set out to provide a forum to enrich, challenge, and expand the present discourse regarding the representation of women in contemporary popular music, and particularly in hip-hop. This issue’s three organizing themes—“Hip-Hop (and) Feminism”; “Sight and Sound”; and “Rage against the Machine”—address the debates and intergenerational tensions regarding the liberatory potential of hip-hop, the global significance and transnational expression of popular music, and the implications of hip-hop as both a hegemonic (successful corporate commodity) and counter-hegemonic (“street” subculture) phenomenon, respectively. Taken together and placed in conversation with different musical genres, performances, and cultural practices, the works assembled here attempt a broadening and deepening of our knowledge of women’s roles and representations as they engage in music-making and image-shaping in lucrative and marginalized markets. An important goal for this issue is the expansion of critical lenses often used to study the complex category of women and music. Feminist musicologists who began to excavate the history of women composers and musicians in the early 1970s in the wake of the women’s movement were initially viewed with scorn in a discipline that had privileged male musical genius (McClary 1991). Moreover, other musical elements, such as women’s
[Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 2008, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1–14] © 2008 by Smith College. All rights reserved.
vocal music and song lyrics, often ranked lower in scholarly and social prestige than men’s instrumental music skills (Becker 1990). Questions of artistic genius posed by feminists in the realm of music (McClary 1991; Citron 2000), art (Nochlin 1971; Wallace 1998), or literature (Woolf 1929; Lorde 1984; Walker 1984), remind us of material
Introduction
Representin’: Women, Hip-Hop, and Popular Music
As coeditors of this special issue of Meridians, we set out to provide a forum to enrich, challenge, and expand the present discourse regarding the representation of women in contemporary popular music, and particularly in hip-hop. This issue’s three organizing themes—“Hip-Hop (and) Feminism”; “Sight and Sound”; and “Rage against the Machine”—address the debates and intergenerational tensions regarding the liberatory potential of hip-hop, the global significance and transnational expression of popular music, and the implications of hip-hop as both a hegemonic (successful corporate commodity) and counter-hegemonic (“street” subculture) phenomenon, respectively. Taken together and placed in conversation with different musical genres, performances, and cultural practices, the works assembled here attempt a broadening and deepening of our knowledge of women’s roles and representations as they engage in music-making and image-shaping in lucrative and marginalized markets. An important goal for this issue is the expansion of critical lenses often used to study the complex category of women and music. Feminist musicologists who began to excavate the history of women composers and musicians in the early 1970s in the wake of the women’s movement were initially viewed with scorn in a discipline that had privileged male musical genius (McClary 1991). Moreover, other musical elements, such as women’s
[Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 2008, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1–14] © 2008 by Smith College. All rights reserved.
vocal music and song lyrics, often ranked lower in scholarly and social prestige than men’s instrumental music skills (Becker 1990). Questions of artistic genius posed by feminists in the realm of music (McClary 1991; Citron 2000), art (Nochlin 1971; Wallace 1998), or literature (Woolf 1929; Lorde 1984; Walker 1984), remind us of material