With 2012 upon us, we wanna encourage folks to seriously take some time to invest and make room in the cypher and at the proverbial Hip Hop roundtable table for our sistas who hold it down on the mic. There have been far too many discussions about where are the female emcees and why don’t we see and hear more of them, when in reality they are all around us..
Its up to each of us within Hip Hop to insist that promoters make sure that women are included in their line up.. We’re not talking about a token opening act, but a fair amount woven in the main line up.. Its up to us to insist that radio deejays including myself are consistently playing women emcees in our offerings. Male emcess…How about inviting more females to spit a hot 16 on an epic song?
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It’s up to each of us who claim to love Hip Hop to be familiar above and beyond a casual name drop. We should know folk’s music. We should know the release date of albums. We should know when and where folks are touring. They should be apart of our discussions and debates. We should allow room for the diversity of expressions and not fall back on the tired stereotype of all female emcees sounding the same. We should also follow the leads of our sisters understanding there is much we can learn from them and whole lot of flava we can soak up to improve help improve ourselves.
As males within Hip Hop we should not limit our attraction or engagement to female emcees based on overt displays of sex. yes we know there are the Lil Kims and Foxy Browns who made their mark going that route, but just like we’ve had male groups like 2Live Crew who brought that to the table, we dont limit the male experience within rap to that group, hence whey should we limit our sistas?
Below are 3 great websites that’ll hopefully get people familiar with female emcees in 2012. One of them, Hip Hop Sisters is run by Hip Hop legend MC Lyte. The other one Femmixx focuses on female Hip Hop producers as well as deejays and emcees.. That’s run by Tachelle Wilkes.
Another site The Illest Female Rappers, focuses on independent female rappers..while the Womyns Hip Hop Movement focuses on a soon to be released compilation put together by DJ Kuttin Kandi dedicated to ending domestic violence..
Folks should be familiar with Momma’s Hip Hop Kitchen which focuses on Health, Nutrition and Physical Activity using Hip Hop Culture.. They are celebrating their 5th year and currently they’re looking for artists to be down with their upcoming Be The Cure event in march.
Since Hip Hop has as its 5th Element Knowledge, we urge folks to get familiar with http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/ They bring attention to a lot of issues that are of importance to the Hip Hop Generation coming from an unapologetic, uncompromised feminist perspective. They dont take no mess from nobody..
Over the holidays I put together a youtube playlist that has over 100 female emcees. Its by no means a definitive list, but hopefully it’ll turn folks on to some artists they can add to their repartoir. You can access that playlist below or by clicking this link
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4DA130E1819B4915
In 2012 lets push the envelop, do some serious crate digging and be the change we say we want….
The worst advice you could give any young person is to follow the lead of anything “hiphop” or affiliated with it. This crap is a sick joke on young people.
Follow the lead of people who have their lives together, not dumb rappers.
Appreciate your commitment to equality and justice, Davey D. You influence many with your known integrity. Rare and more men must rise to the occasion as well. So many women are being abused these days it is staggering. May their voices be heard and the spectrum of true diversity inspire all.
Sistas to the front this is just what the game needs right now thanks Davey