You Can’t Play with My Yo-Yo — Yo-Yo
#365Songs: February 12
Rap aficionados credit MC Lyte as being ground zero for female hip-hop pioneers. (She, in turn, gives credit for her career to MC Sha Rock.) As the first female solo emcee to deliver a full-length LP and the first to deliver a Gold single (“Ruffneck”), she rightfully deserves her place in the pantheon, paving the way for the immediate crossover success of acts like Queen Latifah and Salt-n-Pepa.
Her scorched-earth mentality on the microphone gave no fucks. (This is still FUCKING 90s WEEK and therefore more 90s and more “fucks.”) Her refusal to sublimate herself to the rap industry’s patriarchy made her few friends, and she’s been very candid about her experiences with promoters who frequently pushed her down bill behind lesser acts.
I saw MC Lyte perform in October of 1992. She opened for Kris Kross at the Fox Theatre in Detroit, MI. She hadn’t yet released “Ruffneck” and Kris Kross had become one of the biggest rap acts on the planet, so while it’s easy to dismiss this as another one of those sexist down-tickets, we’ll just have to recognize that she wasn’t the draw in 1992 because we Detroit teens were totally fucking krossed out.
Since the #365Songs collective selected “Ruffneck” for our prior playlist, I opted to highlight the undersung feminist rap pioneer and Ice Cube protégé, Yo-Yo, aka Yolanda Whitaker. Despite releasing four strong records between 1991 and 1996, appearing in films like Boyz n the Hood (1991), Menace II Society (1993), Who’s the Man? (1993), and Sister Act II: Back in the Habit (1993), receiving Grammy and MTV Music Award nominations, and even voicing a character in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004), she’s been relegated to a footnote in the chapter about Women in Hip-Hop.
Hell, she was also in a relationship with Tupac Shakur and was one of the last people to visit him in the hospital before he died from gunshot wounds. She’s wound in and around the history of hip-hop and black representation in television and movies and yet… where’s her place in the pantheon?
Her debut album, Make Way For the Motherlode, opens with a minute-long introduction called “Stand Up for Your Rights,” which mixes a DJ monologue with Yo-Yo repeating the phrase “Stand up for yours because you’re black and you’re intelligent” and introduces the concept of the IBWC, the Intelligent Black Women’s Coalition.
Her lyrics always skewed towards positive messaging and empowerment, a stark contrast to the gangster rap that had become the dominant style in the early part of the decade. Anyone with a creative delivery about non-violence became “alternative rap,” a group among which she also didn’t exactly belong.
Ice Cube introduces her breakout single (which he also produced with Sir Jinx), “You Can’t Play with My Yo-Yo,” returning the favor after she appeared on his acclaimed Amerikkka’s Most Wanted (1990).
And then Yo-Yo enters with a fury.
It’s me, the brand new intelligent black woman Y-O-Y-O
Which is Yo-Yo, but I’m not to be played like I was made by Mattel.
But this Yo-Yo is made by woman and male
I rhyme about uprising, uplifting the woman
for they are superior to handle any male
Any time, any rhyme, any flow, and any show
And if you ask my producers, they’ll reply “No…”
The track loops a clever sample of Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Devotion” that provides the song’s background texture supporting the emcee’s lyrical volleys — aggressive, but not militant, angry, but not vengeful.
Like many of her songs, they’re a warning to those that might challenge her or her fellow members of the IBWC that they’re likely regret it — the final verse highlights her mission and singular method of delivery.
It only takes one punch to drop ya
And then the I.B.W.C. will come mob ya
But no, I’m not living like that verse
Although I pack a real small Gat in my purse (right, right)
But no, it’s not to cause corruptions
Just to fight back on destruction
Despite the not-so-veiled threat to those who might try to demean or mistreat her, she’s still playful, her intonation infectious. Her flow stood out among her contemporaries, rivaling some of the best rappers of the early 1990s, proving she was more than just Ice Cube’s lady rapper. She married Cube’s bluster with Phife Dawg’s all-purpose agility.
Unfortunately, she never duplicated the commercial success of this single. Subsequent albums failed to register as highly on the charts — perhaps due to the growing gangster rap domination, perhaps due to her status as a female emcee, perhaps just because the patriarchal rap industry pushed her further towards the margins. Maybe a slice of all of the above.
If you search “Yo-Yo rap” on Amazon, you get mixture of physical toy yo-yos and her albums, all of which (except for Make Way for the Motherlode) are unavailable on Spotify. That means that finding and fucking listening to the rest of her deserving catalog rests with you, reader and listener. I recommend 1993’s You Better Ask Somebody, if you need a good starter.
Ice Cube also appears on the track “West Side Story,” the third track on You Better Ask Somebody, but Yo-Yo’s prowess eclipses her mentor. She’s the attraction. Even Entertainment Weekly celebrated this album in its contemporaneous review, calling her the “Cleopatra Jones” of hard beats and funk samples.
If she managed to catch the ear of a mainstream rag like EW, how is it possible that we completely stopped talking about Yo-Yo?
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