These collaborations showed that women in hip-hop could be sexy, stylish, and fierce on the microphone. Their explicit lyrics also pushed the limits of the space women took in hip-hop to the point of The Source magazine pondering: Harlots or Heroines? As much controversy as Lil Kim and Foxy created, their style made fashion designers flock to help them blend their highly sexual style with luxury pieces. Lil Kim and Foxy Brown declined to adopt masculine-inspired attire instead, they played up their femininity and sexuality in luxurious furs, colorful wigs, bikinis, high heels, pencil-thin brows, and dark lipstick. Their candid lyrics were open about their pleasure and relationships, and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes wore a condom in the frame of her glasses to promote safe sex.īy the mid to late 90s, women in hip-hop pushed the line even further. Taking a cue from Salt-N-Pepa’s frank discussion of sex and sexuality in singles like “Whatta Man” and “Let’s Talk About Sex,” TLC burst onto the scene with midriff-baring tops and baggy pants. The hybrid hip-hop/R&B group TLC courted controversy in their sound, fashion, and message. But in music, the mainstreaming of hip-hop and the rise of New Jack Swing-which combined the sound of sultry R&B with hip-hop braggadocio-provided a new path for them to enter hip-hop in a unique way. These shows tended to blend more traditional 90s style with touches of hip-hop style in women's clothes. The rise of hip-hop-inspired entertainment, such as In Living Color, Def Comedy Jam, New York Undercover, Living Single, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and more, brought streetwear into the homes of millions of Americans every week. The Afrocentric trend also remained, with Queen Latifah using this imagery as a nod to her positioning herself as queen, while also connecting to the shared heritage of men in hip-hop.
Women rappers like Queen Latifah, Da Brat, and MC Lyte continued to draw on elements of masculine styles, such as Da Brat’s mini twists tied with colorful elastics. Their rhymes matched their style, with frank lyrics about sex and men and a playfulness about both topics that demanded everyone dismantle stereotypes about Black women.ĭuring the early 90s, hip-hop style still held remnants of the decade before. Instead of adopting the more androgynous style of previous female MCs, Salt, Pepa, and DJ Spinderella announced their presence in sequined jackets, big hats, ripped jeans, and later in loud colors and Afrocentric patterns, spandex, and teased blonde hair. The emergence of Salt-N-Pepa, the first all-female rap group, provided a new template for women in hip-hop. In a nod to the soon-to-be ubiquitous melding of R&B and hip-hop, and the bold bombast of female rappers in the 90s, the singer Millie Jackson, whose songs often featured talking/rapping sections, kneels in the middle of the group with her arms raised.īy the end of the decade, women had begun to make space for themselves in the still male-dominated genre. Melodie, Synquis, Roxanne Shante, and Finesse. MC Lyte is flanked by several pioneers: Sparky D, Sweet Tee, MC Peaches, Yvette Money, Ms. This is most present in the Female Rappers, Class of ’88 photograph.
Though MC Lyte and other women rappers of her generation wore streetwear that was almost unisex in fashion, the addition of large earrings, neatly pressed or crimped hair (often dyed a bold shade of auburn), and pastel colors to their sartorial repertoire marked a striving towards a specific expression of womanhood in hip-hop. She expressed her authority in both her seminal single “Paper Thin”-about a philandering boyfriend-and her style in the music video-tracksuit, varsity jacket, sneakers, and turtleneck, with doorknocker earrings swinging as she confronts said boyfriend on the New York subway with his arms around big haired, acrylic wearing women. MC Lyte (aka Lana Michele Moorer) is considered a pioneer in women in hip-hop. The earliest women in hip-hop adopted the swagger and baggy clothes of their male counterparts, not only for protection from harm but to establish their equality on the mic. Because of these harmful stereotypes, women had double the struggle to assert their voices into the conversation and earn respect. The abandonment of cities to housing projects inhabited by African Americans-known as “white flight”-and the crack-cocaine epidemic of America’s inner cities were the backdrop against which hip-hop artists detailed the divestment, crime, and oppression of city life. By the 1980s, these stereotypes and assumptions developed in continued harmful ways, sparked by the Moynihan Report, a government publication released in 1965 that placed the ills of the African American community on its women. Black women have historically contended with stereotypes and assumptions about their womanhood and sexuality.
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