The Tricky Crown of “The Best Female Rapper”
Doja Cat is now the second most followed female rapper on Spotify and hip hop has found itself a new princess. Since 2014, Remy Ma, Nicki Minaj, and along the way, Cardi B fans & stans have been going back and forth for days on the internet. At the time, I bet none of them could have imagined the world where female rap planted a seed that would be able grow outside of itself. In fact, this month, Doja Cat is not only the second most followed female rapper on Spotify, but surpassed 30 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
The only 3 female rappers to achieve that are her, Cardi B, and Nicki Minaj.
Not unlike any Greek life organization, hip hop is full of bigs and littles.
But when it comes to this new sorority of women, it seems like black female rappers often hesitate before taking these connections on. Nicki Minaj still has the most listeners on Spotify, more than any other female rapper today. She could be dubbed the First Lady of Rap, and she supports these women, of course, but being a sister and being a big are two different responsibilities.
Amalaratna Dlamini, better known as Doja Cat, was born October 21, 1995 to an artistic California family with a South African father, Jewish mother, and a rapping big brother. After the release of some of her music on Soundcloud, she signed to RCA Records a joint venture deal with Kemosabe Records in early 2014. At the time, Vibe, a culture magazine, called her “an 18-year-old psychedelic prodigy.”
Fast forward to 2020, and everyone with an iPhone or who has seen a Tik Tok has heard a Doja Cat song. Following the release of Hot Pink, it became clear that a rap princess had emerged while everyone was fighting about who was the queen.
In rap and hip hop, the new is able to stand just as tall as the old, not because it’s better, but simply because it is fresh.
The seed is able to say to the roots, “I don’t need your shoulder quite yet.”
After all, Nicki is constantly talking about how hard it is taking care of her sons.
In her 1999 autobiography, Ladies First: Revelations of a Strong Woman, Queen Latifah, a pioneer for women in hip hop, stated, “I’m not an expert on life. What I am is a young Black woman from the inner city who is making it, despite the odds, despite the obstacles I’ve had to face in the lifetimes that have come my way.”
To be a black woman in the music industry, wherever you fit and whatever your lived experience as a black woman is, has strings. To do what you love is to have to be your own best advocate.
Take note from earlier this year, when fellow hip hop princess, Megan thee Stallion had to take her record label to court in order to release long awaited music and visuals.
Belonging to a group requires work let alone leading one. Especially one that is predominantly made of marginalized bodies.
Chronologically speaking, sure, Queen Latifah might have paved the way for Remy Ma and Lil Kim who might have paved the way for Nicki Minaj, and then later on Cardi B, but there is still a hierarchy for some that needs to be discussed. This hierarchy doesn’t even begin to include the amount of women who supported Latifah, who consumed her work, who helped produce her work, who kept her going when nights get tough.
The conversation bears no fruit for 2 simple reasons. First, no one in this scenario will stand to be doubted. And secondly, money and fame are only two aspects of success, not all.
Who is someone to say that if another woman disappeared out of history that one would or would not make it? None of these women’s male counterparts would ever accept being challenged that way. As hip hop turns 50 in the next decade, don’t expect any of them to start.
That cyclical viewpoint that encompasses “best female rapper” debates completely goes against feminist and hip hop’s own values. Hip hop should tell you to care for the community, but hip hop’s first lesson is always to fight for, depend and rely on yourself and to never put down anybody else for doing the same thing. That’s how you build a community with spirit, not just money.
Another one of the greatest values of hip hop is its freedom. The creative space hip hop provides that can help young people deal with the complex inner workings of their environment without being consumed by it, means that in turn, we can open up the conversation on important socio-political issues.
Women and those who exist outside of the binary, can attest to this freedom.
These issues have always and will always include the representation of hip hop’s women, especially black women and sex workers, within their own community. Hip hop as a genre has always been for the voices of the oppressed and the marginalized, to be able to voice their frustrations towards systems and structures that just don’t care about them.
To be clear, hip hop is femme. Black women helped make hip hop what it is. Sex workers and strip club culture have and will continue to help make hip hop what it is. Queerness helps to construct a hip hop reality too. Yeah, all your favorite rappers wear gay designers. So in short, respect the elders by allowing them multiplicity and room for growth.
Black men in hip hop culture have been suffering greatly, and not just with the recent deaths of Pop Smoke, X, Juice WRLD, Mac Miller, Kobe Bryant, etc. There is the distinct taste of grief in the air, making transformation the only way out. According to Level, “Today’s hip-hop is vulnerable and emotional, like [the late] Pop Smoke’s introspective track “PTSD” where he gets real and honest about his mental health or [the late] Juice WRLD’s “Lucid Dreams.”
Not only do black women take in and internalize these changes, but they are punished and compared at every turn under the industry’s microscope at almost every angle. For black women in hip hop, today’s vulnerability is hard won in a culture that mimics and enacts violence for profit. Accidental victimhood is constant and tempting. And with grief comes more complicated emotions as well, different stages and phases for fans to go through and misdirection becomes easier. Not only do these women take on the pressure of an entire industry with their public image, but they face condemnation by the internet with misogynistic remarks, as seen below. Those remarks have very little to do with the progress or shaping of the community they critique.
Men who have no idea how to produce a beat, write song, hold a note, write and memorize lines, etc. love to speak loudly and incorrectly on women who put their lives on the line for the love of the mic. But to be fair, men who do know the music industry also love to disparage these women as well. They get attacked at all sides. For most, it deepens their resolve. That resolve is what motivates these women to continue, as they have accepted perfection is something they will never know about. Men in hip hop remained weighted by their narcissism.
The best news is that real life isn’t a reality show. And hip hop is about authenticity and knowledge. The difference for this generation of women in hip hop is that America now knows it doesn’t have to pick only one female rapper, just to replace one that is older. What is most exciting moving forward for the hip hop generation is that for the women who do exist on the scene, there is more options than ever about their capacity.
Artists are not pairs of shoes. Dried flowers are just as beautiful as the fresh and serve different purposes. To reseed and create more gardens.
The freshness in the sound of the next generation of female rap artists such as Doja Cat, Flo Milli, the City Girls, Megan thee Stallion, Kodie Shane, Young M.A., Dreezy, Rico Nasty, Noname, Princess Nokia, Azaelia Banks, Tierra Whack, Saweetie, & more can also come from the fact that the field has now accepted many women at once and it remained wide open for more. Last November, DJBooth reminded hip hop heads that “Black women should be able to breathe without being analyzed for perfection, without people deeming every annoyance as an “attitude problem. They should be allowed to make choices that serve only themselves…”
Finally, there is room for everyone.
