Sez who?
The fact that the music industry discriminates against female artists doesn’t change the fact that there are some seriously talented female MCs. Flow isn’t coded in the Y chromosome.
Missy Elliot is who first popped into my head. Her tracks are always trend-setting and she mixes in the best influences, working with Tim, but still, she makes it all hers.
Lauryn Hill never did much for me - I recognize that I should invest more time, but haven’t felt compelled to.
Latifah is a wonderful talent, but, I dunno, just doesn’t have that ground-breaking sound over time - she branched out to singing and movies.
Folks like M.I.A. and Lily Allen are wonderful, but way too new.
When someone asks me who the greatest male hip-hop artist is, I can automatically say Public Enemy / Chuck D - he’s the Bob Dylan of hip hop and Run DMC are the Beatles, IMHO (I guess that makes Sugarhill Gang the Elvis, but Elvis had more substance over time). But I don’t have an automatic “Aretha / Janis” type of pick on the women’s side.
Salt n’ Pepa were hit-makers over a sustained period of time, but their material was so light, it is hard to push them up very high…
Sez don’t ask- I was merely explaining the post.
And seconded!
Can’t pick an all-time greatest (I do have a soft spot for Lil’ Kim and Missy), but MIA is not only a force to be reckoned with but pretty vocal about chauvinism and racism within the music industry. And as new as she is, her songs have staying power. Galang never got old, and I predict Paper Planes will always be a fave.
Personally, though not well-known, I think Jean Grae blows away any artist mentioned so far, lyrically and style-wise. Definitely one to check out.
Also, as happens with every single thread on hip-hop that comes up on this board, I’m heartened to see there are still a couple people who’ll pop up and spout their thinly-veiled racist/sexist views on the form. It’s always nice to see consistency.
Girls - to do the dishes
Girls - to clean up my room
Girls - to do the laundry
Girls - and in the bathroom,
Woody
Nobody’s said anything sexist or racist yet.
Just because you believe that there are no good female hip-hop artists doesn’t make you sexist, it just means that you have a standard of what is “good” that no female has yet touched, not that you don’t think women are capable of doing it.
Before Eminem, it was perfectly legitimate to say “there are no great white rappers” without being racist, because there weren’t. No rapper in the “great” category happened to be white- didn’t mean someone couldn’t do it, just that no one yet had. Why? Because hip-hop has traditionally been black-male-dominated. While males are not black males. Black women are not black males. Thus, there is a mathematically smaller chance of a woman becoming “great.”
In my opinion (and I grew up in the Golden Age of hip-hop) there are no “great” female rappers. My favorite female MC was MC Lyte, but she didn’t even approach Black Sheep in terms of consistent quality, and to compare her to Nice ‘n’ Smooth or Rakim would cause her to come up short.
I don’t see Lauryn Hill as a hip-hop artist simply because her most recognizable hits emphasize singing and not flow.
It’s not that women can’t be great rappers- it’s that no one has yet become one.
Can we just have a little Cafe society subforum entitled “People determined to insult hip-hop no matter what”? It’d make these threads so much more bearable. It’s fucking 2008.
MC Lyte immediately sprang to mine when I saw the thread title. Her performance on In Living Color was the first rap song I ever liked. I’d say Missy, though I have trouble remembering how much of her music was made great by her or by Timbaland.
I’m not Nzinga, but my objection to Missy being the greatest female rapper is, well, she can’t rap. At least not well. She can produce a hit, no question about that, but her rhymes and her flow tend to be pretty simplistic. And yeah, there are male rappers who are similar, who get by on good hooks and simple party rhymes, but I’d never consider any of them the best (male) rapper either. Of popular female rappers, both Foxxy Brown and Lil Kim can rap better than her, IMO, and I’m not much of a fan of either of one. In fact, I like Missy better than them, because I think she often does interesting things with the production of a song and can put a good song together. But that’s different than rapping.
As far as Lauryn Hill, I have to agree that she had skills on the early Fugee albums, but ever since she got popular she’s mostly just sung, so it’s hard to choose her.
For more obscure choices, I do like Ladybug, who a couple people mentioned. But I think I’m going to have to go with Bahamadia.
Well, yeah, but the question is not who is the best female rapper, it’s who is the best female hip hop artist. Taken as a whole package, it’s Missy in a walk.
Well, the answer could also be “None of them really distinguish themselves from the other;” which is what gets my vote.
Yeah, I was looking at the OP where it says “greatest rapper” and forgot about the title of the thread which says “hip-hop artist”. To me that’s not the same; the best female rapper would be the best woman on the mic, while the best female hip-hop artist would be the woman who has the most good hip-hop songs under her belt. I can see Missy as the latter (and there’s no question she’s the most popular), but not the former.
Let me add my voice to the MC Lyte crowd.
I would say it has to be Lauren Hill or Missy Elliot.
No mention of Salt N’ Peppa though? Li’l Kim? Does Nelly Furtado count since Timbaland turned her all gangsta-bitch?
Nope.
He doesn’t like rap/hip-hop, doesn’t think it’s music, so on and so forth. You cannot start a thread on the SDMB about anything to do with such music without someone shitting all over the thread with an “it’s not really music” type post. It’s like some sort of rule of nature.
As to the OP, I’d say Lauryn Hill, too. Yes, she did kind of go nuts and hasn’t done anything of note in some time, but her work with the Fugees and as a solo artist is some of the best music anyone was making in ANY genre at the time.
I’m curious, though, as to those who discount Hill’s work as a singer: why would singing disqualify her as a hip-hop artist? Music doesn’t have to have nothing but rap to be hip hop, and there’s elements of rap throughout her singing. It’s akin to saying the Beatles stop being a rock band when they used any instruments other than guitars and drums; innovation in their arrangements ADDED to rock music, it didn’t disqualify them. That Lauryn Hill combined artiful, talented singing with the other elements of hip hop doesn’t take her out of the equation; it’s one of the things that made her work so great.
The only problem with naming her as the best ever is that she just didn’t last long. Unless she mounts a comeback - certainly possible - her career was remarkably short; the Fugees started in high school, made popular music from 1994-1997 or so, and she released “The Miseducation of…” in 1998 at the age of 23. She was gone for four years, released a less-than-hugely-successful album in 2002, and that’s more or less it: three albums of great work and one that was so-so in six total years of productivity. So if you want to argue for Missy, you’d have a case, I guess.
Lauryn Hill is now apparently doing a much less publicized Britney Spears.
I saw her at Jones Beach in 2002 or so on a bill with Outkast and The Roots- she came out and did a bewildering 15 minutes of angry militant weirdness, none of the hits. Still had a great voice, but a clear waste of potential.
Grrr. I hope someone mentions a good female artist that I haven’t heard of real soon. Cause this thread is making me wanna cry. At least finding a new artist I like will have made it all worth it.
Lauryn Hill is a lyrical goddess. She really is. Her time in the Fugees produced classic lyrics and it is well known that Wyclef and Prag couldn’t touch her.
She chose to switch over to R&B, and she blew the hell up on the commercial circuit, but none of that takes from her skills, and to this day, she is the only female artist that I have heard heartily praised by the male hip-hop artists that I admire most.
Missy is fun, original and great. But my criteria for a great MC (Master of Ceremonies, Mic Controller) is pure lyrical prowess, and homegirl just aint got it.
Whoever was writing MC Lyte’s rhymes would eat Nice and Smooth’s food in any battle, any time. They can’t touch her stuff. (and I am a Nice and Smooth fan. MC Lyte did get really corny right about the time of “Rough Neck”. my theory is that she began writing her own rhymes at that time.)
Anyone that states that no female rapper is great, I have two things to say.
- I agree that it is slim pickin’s. That’s a fact
- I would like to see your top three male picks, so i can know whence this opinion comes!
One more thing. A pox on anyone who mentions the god that is Rakim in the same breath as Nice 'n Smooth without mentioning that they are not fit to hold his mic cord. glares at Happy
See my post #22…
Yes yes yes! One of my perennial faves is How to Break Up With Your Girl. It’s brilliant.