While I don’t think we can ever exhaust the feminist music criticism cannon, my column is supposed to be about pop music, and there are plenty of men doing that well too these days. (Frank Ocean won a Grammy! Justin Timberlake has a new song that sounds like an old R. Kelly song!)
With that said, there’s something more important in my life I need to talk about, and it’s all about pussy.
“PU$$Y P0PPIN” is the name of a radio show on KSDT that I’m co-hosting with my friend Mina. We go by the names DJ Minamator and DJ Ari$ha, and play nothing but female hip hop from 4 to 5 p.m. every Friday.
Mina approached me with the idea for the show over winter break, and I couldn’t resist immediately making a sprawling Spotify playlist of lady MCs and agreeing to the gig. Since then, I’ve discovered more incredible artists than I could have possibly imagined. Last week’s theme of “up and comers” and this week’s theme of “female rappers from around the world,” forced me to delve deep into the pockets of the Internet to pull out women that I probably wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise.
I see plenty of people who claim to be fans of rap who don’t listen to a single female, and those that do often pit them against each other, sexualize them or treat them like a gimmick. Let the following artists be a taste of what female rappers really have to offer, and listen to PU$$Y P0PPIN every Friday for even more girl power.
Kitty (formerly Kitty Pryde)
On her new release “D.A.I.S.Y. Rage,” Kitty goes where few female MCs have gone before, rapping about wetting the bed, her relationship with her mother and even twisting Wu Tang’s C.R.E.A.M. into a confessional about anxiety rashes. Unlike artists of the old guard like Lil Kim and Foxy Brown, sex isn’t her central premise. Kitty doesn’t shy away from the topic either, but it’s merely one facet of her complicated experience as a teenage girl — a group that ordinarily gets objectified by the mainstream media.
The 19-year-old’s delivery is subversive by traditional hip hop standards. As she giggles mid song, and delivers her rhymes like a truth or dare confession, it’s easy to see why a hip hop traditionalist might write her off as a disrespectful wannabe. Admittedly, the Kitty Pryde project did start as a bored joke on Kathryn Beckwith’s laptop, but once she found fame with her video for “Okay Cupid” there was no turning back. Pretentious (male) hip hop heads shouldn’t discount her merely for speaking in a voice they can’t relate to.
The U.K. Ladies
For years, British hip-hop and its dark, twisted child, grime, have been completely dominated by men like Tinie Tempah and Dizzee Rascal, with the most successful women (such as Lady Sovereign), falling by the wayside almost as soon as they appear. Fortunately, there’s now a group of badass ladies leading the charge in the UK, including Lady Leshurr, Amplify Dot, No Lay and Shystie.
Lady Leshurr has an intricate, lightning-quick delivery reminiscent of Busta Rhymes. To start, listen to her vocal gymnastics on the title track of Orbital’s comeback album, “Wonky.” Meanwhile, London’s Amplify Dot drops punch line verses over maniacal club bangers with vocals that are indisputably hard. Give her glitchy throwdown “Semantics” a spin at the gym. Fellow Londoner No Lay falls on the grimier side of the spectrum, with a delivery that’s sometimes reminiscent of the wild tone changes of Nicki Minaj in her prime. (Check “Below Zero” for the best example.) Finally, Shystie is probably the most similar to the Queen, Missy Elliot, toting the same high-throttle energy and shout-along choruses. (“Feel It” sounds alarmingly like “Work It”-era Missy.)
Salome MC
Salome MC is the first female hip hop artist in Iran, which denounced the genre back in 2007. Despite the evident restrictions of a regime that controls the release and performance of music, Salome hasn’t been discouraged from recording tracks privately in her bedroom and releasing them online. The poetic nature of Farsi, coupled with her forceful delivery, makes for an instantly compelling sound — even if you can’t understand a word that she’s saying.
Fortunately, the Internet can help.
“I haven’t seen the revolution, but my rap is revolutionary; This pen is my weapon, and I got my burial shroud in my backpack,” reads the translation of a verse in last year’s single “Drunk Shah, Drunk Elder.”
Now, if that’s not badass enough to pique your interest, you don’t deserve to be graced by the PU$$Y.
