Women & Hip-Hop: Assuming Positions of Power

A hip-hop dancer walks into his opponent’s face, clutching his crotch in a exhibition of supremacy, exaggerating his simulated sexual intercourse, tracing the body outline of the female prize in front of him (LaBoskey, 2001/2002, pp. 116-117). That situation illustrates how hip-hop accentuates women’s delineation as the weaker sex. However, for generations, women have been fighting against the patriarchal system via different mediums, including that of music. What is interesting is that the roots of hip-hop in particular lie in “voic[ing] dissent against forces of oppression” (Hobson & Bartlow, 2008, p. 7), and are closely related to the elements of gaining power and respect. These features make hip-hop a popular medium of choice for women to recast their portrayals as objects, using the same vehicle which oppressed them, to battle their own oppressors

However, women face many barriers to their goals of achieving power. This paper identifies two major obstacles: (a) hip-hop’s origination as a predominantly male arena, (b) women’s portrayal as hypersexualized and subordinated objects within the music and hip-hop industry (Hobson & Bartlow, 2008; LaBoskey, 2001/2002). When faced with these obstacles, female hip-hop artistes have exercised two options to assume positions of power: either align themselves to male power, or adopt traditional feminine traits. Yet as Kruse and Prettyman (2008) have explained, each option has its own limitations to female power. This paper will discuss the relationship between women’s two obstacles and their two options.

Firstly, men’s domination of hip-hop hinders women’s attempts to enter this particular music genre, as women face inevitable male resistance. Hip-hop stemmed from hip-hop dance, and LaBoskey (2001/2002) observed that while females occasionally participate in hip-hop dance competition, their male counterparts frequently prohibit them from doing so because they regarded competing to be “unfeminine” (p. 114). When women did eventually venture into the realm of hip-hop, Rose and Pough noted that women did not initially express their own beliefs (as cited in Hobson & Bartlow, 2008). Instead, female rappers like Roxanne Shante and Salt-N-Pepa produced tracks responding to male artistes’ successful hip-hop records such as UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne” (1984) and Doug E. Fresh’s and Slick Rick’s “The Show” (1985). In my opinion, these examples demonstrate how female hip-hop artistes had to firstly acknowledge men’s domineering authority, and then use men’s authority as an avenue to enter the field of hip-hop. One reason for female artistes’ such acknowledgment was underlined