We all love hip hop.
Well, I do. But I also try to strike a balance between listening to man rappers and lady rappers - because sometimes I feel a bit weird doing housework to guilty-pleasure-songs with lyrics like this.
(Plus, female hip hop artists receive significantly less attention and exposure than their male counterparts - despite their immense contributions to the genre - which is another reason I like to seek them out.)
It's a bit of a conundrum for me, though. Often, the rappers producing the highest quality rap music also have distorted ideas about women, which is a HUGE shame. (Here's an interesting essay on that topic from The Journal of Black Studies.) Misogyny in music isn't solely relegated to rap, of course - rock music has been criticised for exactly the same thing - but there's an undeniably overt trend in urban music to reduce women to the sum of their sexual parts. Not to mention the common themes of violence and distrust.
Anyway, good news: 2012 is being heralded as the year of the female rapper, thanks to a raft of distinctive new artists gaining global traction at lightening speed. For your interest I've listed six of them of below, but please note: talent is really why you should listen - not (just) gender parity.
