Women in Hip-Hop

I want to do something with the progression of women in the music industry, especially in R&B which has some ties to Hip-Hop today as R&B has become a little less popular. At this point, I have been looking at biases against hip-hop in the past in general, how women got involved in hip-hop, the biases against women in hip-hop, and how hip-hop is viewed today. 

So far, I have come up with hip-hop being unpopular at first because it was mostly recorded and produced by African Americans. Also the lyrics, like the lyrics we listened to in the early blues music, were considered inappropriate for mass audiences. However, like early blues music, the lyrics were things that most African Americans could relate to and understand. The songs were about things that a good portion of people in that culture had in common.

As far as how hip-hop is viewed today, I have seen mixed feelings. As it has become more popular, artists are able to be more lenient with lyrics in a sense. As our culture progresses, it seems that lyrics of hip-hop songs are becoming more and more offensive. Yet on the other hand, there are still many artists who write and sing about everyday things that are not necessarily offensive, but paint a realistic picture of what many people deal with on a daily basis. I came across an article that talked about how many of the hip-hop songs that are popular today are basically twerk anthems, not songs that actually say anything meaningful in them. Many of these popular songs are written by male artists who talk about partying, drugs, and sex, all of which often degrade women. Because female artists obviously are not going to write songs that degrade their gender, the space for women in hip-hip is getting smaller. I would like to look at what makes songs that are so offensive so much more popular than songs that have meaning such as the song Eve released right before the 2014 BET awards about domestic violence that almost no one even knew existed. There are a lot of female artists still making great hip hop songs, but people don’t seem to be listening to them, and I would like to figure out why in my project. 

Side note. There is also a big buzz around Iggy Azalea because she is a white rapper and won a lot of music awards in the past few years when in the past very few hip-hop and rap artists got large amounts of awards other than in hip-hop specific categories which I find kind of interesting as well.