::HEADPHONE JUNKIE:: THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN HIP HOP

::HEADPHONE JUNKIE:: THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN HIP HOP
by Dereck Rodriguez

Music serves as a catalyst of experience and awareness. Each piece of music is the cultural, spiritual, shadow of the people. This intimate marriage of sound and sentence presents the identity and soul of the people. Hip Hop not only serves as a medium to communicate the complexities of black life but also to reconcile relationship between blacks and white supremacy. 

Unlike other contemporary form of music, Hip Hop is a culture of its own. Hip Hop was a primary mode of deciphering and expressing the crippling state of black communities due to the crack epidemic, depleted neighborhoods and a severe lack of employment opportunities. In its early years, Hip Hop engaged topics relevant to the complexities of black life along with party music expressing a joy and zeal for life itself. There was freedom in content and execution. It is this passion of life and love that informed the culture of Hip Hop.

Women within Hip Hop serve the same role women have served in all movements concerning the welfare of black people. Women serve as the guiding force to establish clarity and direction of the movement as a whole. Acts such as The Sequence and MC Sha Rock offered innovative funk rhythms coupled with dynamic singing and catchy wordplay that helped guide the sound of Hip Hop. Founder of Sugar Hill Records, Sylvia Robinson, aided in progressing the music with finding the band Sugar Hill Gang.   

During the 70s and late 80s there was variety of artistic and lyrical approach to rap music. Ranging from themes concerning black nationalism,  inner city life, dancing, and partying. There were no limits on what the music could sound like. Artists such as Salt N’ Pepa appealed to the party scene with their sexually empowering approach to the music. "Push It" was a defining song of the dance music scene. 

On the other hand Queen Latifah focused on discussing black empowerment. "U.N.I.T.Y" addressed the lack of unity within the black community and its crippling affects on black people. Rappers during Hip Hop's "Golden Era" seldom used derogatory words such as “Bitch” because of the presence of rappers like Queen Latifah. 

During the late 1990s, rap began to transform and become less socially aware and empowering.   Rappers such as Lil Kim, Foxy Brown, and Trina willfully projected a sexualized image of women. Male chauvinistic validation along with female MC approval created a further desire to sexualized black women. The sexual objectification of women became ingrained in the culture of Hip-Hop thus, the music we hear today.

Black Women have always been the guiding force of the black community. There needs to be unity and cohesion among the black family unit in order to sustain progression among the black race.    When this intimate connection is compromised only confusion and estrangement from the self can exist. Black women and men must exist as proponents of each other’s success and spiritual welfare.