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Naturally, her work and her success could not remain unmarked and in December 2004 she was inducted as an honorary member into Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority Inc. In such a way, MC Lyte contributed greatly to the development of black female rappers and achieved great results at the very young age.
As for her collaborator, Missy Elliott, she was also a very significant personality in the black female rapper music. Actually, she is one of the first female hip hop superstars. Among her hits may be named “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)”, “She’s a Bitch”, “Get UR Freak On”, “Lose Control”, and “Work It”. Quite remarkably she started as a singer and songwriter in an R&B group called Sista though it should be emphasised that her friend Timothy “DJ Timmy Tim”, the producer of her group produced a significant impact on her creative work and her image. Than she continued her career cooperating with Swing Mob, and later Timbaland. Elliot and Timbaland crafted hit singles for a number of artists between 1995-1997.
As a solo rapper, Elliott began her career as a featured vocalist on Gina Thompson’s “The Things You Do” and MC Lyte’s 1996 single “Cold Rock a Party”. Her debut album was released in 1997, was Supa Dupa Fly, a blockbuster hit that established Missy Ellitott as a major force in popular music. It is very important that Supa Dupa Fly was accepted positively by critics though some critics commented that “the album tracks, some of which sampled Missy/Mosley hits such as “Can We” and “One in a Million”, were far inferior to the singles” (Sexton 1995, 257). 1997 was marked by Elliott perform on Lil Kim’s girl-power anthem, a hit remix of her song, “Not Tonight” that obviously underlined her music work as a black female rapper. The next year, she continued her successful music career by writing and producing Total’s single “Trippin”.
Missy Elliott’s second album, Da Real World (1999) was just as successful as the first as well as Miss E… So Addictive in 2001. In fact she is very productive and among the albums which were successful may be also named Under Construction (2002), This Is Not a Test (2003), The Cookbook (2005) and she still remains to be popular so that “Missy Elliott is still as widely recognised and respected by her peers, mainstream, and underground as ever” (Cheney 2005, 410). Moreover, her achievements and success were rewarded and in November 2005, Missy Elliott won Best Female Hip Hop Artist at the 2005 American Music Awards, defeating, by the way, Lil Kim, another famous black female rapper.
However, her success was great, but the quality of her work was probably sacrificed for the sake of commercial success. In such a way commerce has started to prevail over the message the black female rapper, namely Missy Elliott, conveyed to the audience.
This trend has become even more obvious in the creative work of Lil Kim who was probably the most commercially successful of all females in the rap industry. On the other hand, Lil Kim was the best at selling the sex image. It is very important to underline that she was introduced to the hip-hop community via the all male crew Junior Mafia and “with a successful introduction in place and her mentor/lover The Notorious B.I.G. right behind her, Kim locked down the rap world from many (female) competitors for a very long time” (Evans 1994, 216). On analysing her work, it is easy to realise that Lil Kim exploited sexuality to create an image of sweetheart that was to a significant extent the result of her personal need to be loved. It is a well known fact that Kim left home too soon and this is why she had to hustle men in order to support herself. “’At that time I always had a man to take care of me’ she remembers. ‘Sometimes, if I thought I could get some money out of a guy, I’d sleep with. And I got kinda caught in that mentality’” (Hip Hop Divas 2001, 133). Soon she starts “transporting drugs, lives to boyfriend to boyfriend, learning hard lessons, getting betrayed” (Hip Hop Divas 2001, 133). Naturally all these facts from her biography reflected in her creative work and her image where sexuality was particularly significant, while morality obviously played a secondary role after commercial success.
Despite this fact, she was very popular and her debut on Junior Mafia’s “Player’s Anthem” left many rap fans captivated with her raw style and lyrical abilities. When her first album was released she was characterised as “the dopest female MC that’s coming out ever” (Hip Hop Divas 2001, 134). It is very important that, being an outstanding black female rapper, Lil Kim was supported by her boyfriend and male rapper Biggie who gave her a lot of help, though mainly at the beginning of her career. But even though his role has started to decline, when the real success has come, the death of Biggie produced a very serious impact on her creative work and she delayed the release of her second album The Notorious for three years. These facts underline the role of male in the progress of black female rappers career and the emphasis on sexuality in Lil Kim’s career and her image are extremely contrasting to what Queen Latifah’s promotion of black female independence and freedom from stereotypes.
Nonetheless, Lil Kim is unique and there has been no female solo artists before as successful as Kim in being raw and doing exactly what male rappers have done to be successful. At the same time, she revealed that black female rappers tend to give the audience the image which is to a significant extent stereotyped and black female independence promoted in 1980s is gradually replaced by striving for commercial success by all means.
In such a way, black female rappers being significantly similar to each other possess their unique characteristics and in general they played an important role in the development of rap music though their image as well as the message they convey to the audience were and remain to be quite controversial.
3、Feminist’s discourse in rap music说唱音乐中的女性主义的话语
To fully realise the controversial character of black female rappers it is necessary to analyse in details their messages and their feminist’s discourse, which they represent in their creative work.
In fact there may be singled out two main trends in the image and style of black female rappers. On the one hand, there are female rappers which attempt to imitate their male counterparts they just tend to be like male rappers, wearing similar clothes, using similar language and style. On the other hand, there are black female rappers which are sometimes defined as a ‘fly-girl’ leading a very sexually active lifestyle and promoting this image, which becomes their second nature, to the audience. Among such black female rappers may be named MC Lyte and Lil Kim.
It should be underlined that often, especially in 1980s, black female rappers were playing in the sexist arena but the promotion of a black female as an independent female who can live her own way without male’s influence and support was quite rare and sometimes resulted in discussions concerning sexual orientation of a rapper as it was in the case of Queen Latifah described above. In contrast, many black female rappers were often harsher to one another than to male rappers that naturally did not contributed to the promotion of a positive image of black female rappers at large.
Furthermore, an important role for black female rappers played the female audience because, as one of the rappers singled out “women will be your worst critics, but also your biggest fans. The first group of people you gotta get are the women. You can’t do that by dissing’em, and you can’t do it by threatening them” (Hip Hop Divas 2001, 34). In such a situation, it was strategically important to gain respect and popularity among female audience first that cannot be fully done by black female rappers through dissing one another.
These were the trends that were typical for 1980s though present in 1990s but what has really become the main trend during 1990s was the increased role of commercial success, which overshadowed all other aspects of black female rappers creative work. In such a situation “’get rich’ mentality that has begun to dominate rap music, many artists loose consciousness of the art and will sell garbage in exchange for money” (Collins 2000, 348). Unfortunately, many black female rappers simply forgot what their life was like before success had come.
As a result the negative image of black female image was promoted by black female rappers and the situation has hardly changed since 1980s when the black female rappers movement got started to be particularly significant. Moreover, in 1990s the situation became even worse. The primary concern they were contributing to and continue to do so is making money regardless moral aspects, ideas and messages they convey to their audience through their work and their image.
Such a situation is particularly dramatic because many black female rappers exploit sexuality and sexual image and often these females “possess good rhyming skills that were hidden behind pornographic talk because this is what their mentors were producing” (Evans 1994, 303). |
