![]() Lauryn Hill is a renaissance woman, easily able to shift between jaw-dropping raps and the sweetest R&B. “I’m always going to fight for myself, I’m always going to stand up for myself,” she has said. “But like, when we first met I feel like we was both like, ‘We good?! Everything OK?’” Acknowledging that the best female rappers have to stick together in a male-dominated industry, Megan picks her battles, most of which are with record companies rather than other women. “I love her, she was so easy to work with,” Megan has said of Cardi B, with whom she collaborated on the unstoppable 2020 single WAP. ![]() As uncompromising as her raps are, she has spoken from the heart about how she wishes there wasn’t so much bad blood between female rappers, reflecting that spats and beefs on the internet can set women against one another before they even meet. “I just signed my first major deal, it’s over.” However, she worked through it and emerged stronger, with her second album, 777, released in 2022, indicating that she will be a major force in the future.Ī fierce, belligerent Texan, Megan Thee Stallion gained attention by posting her freestyles on social media, and was able to develop her vicious flow in her own time while studying for a degree in health administration. ![]() She made no secret as to how she felt: “I got discouraged so many times just because I felt like the world was over,” she says of that period. One of the best female rappers of recent years, Latto almost got knocked off-course by the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit just as she was beginning to break through. When I saw her do it, I’m like, Oh, I can do this, for real”), and Minaj’s spirit is there in Latto’s no-fucks-given style. She was inspired by Nicki Minaj (“When Nicki came out, she touched me. One of the most exciting rappers to emerge in the past few years, Latto won the 2016 series of TV’s The Rap Game at the age of 16 – only to reject the prize of a record deal in favour of becoming an independent artist. So, when it comes to women, I’ve always come up in that uplifting environment.” “That’s all I saw, all day, every day, girls getting their hair done. “My mom opened a beauty salon, so I grew up around women,” Trina said in 2022, revealing her inspirations. Along with Foxy Brown and the legendary Lil’ Kim, Trina was part of a wave of women unafraid to express their sexual desires and disappointments in verse, putting forward an openly female perspective on modern relationships. ![]() She was working as a real-estate agent when she made her rap debut in 1998, guesting on a Trick Daddy track, and it kicked off her controversial career. The defiant Katrina “Trina” Laverne Taylor was born and raised in Miami, Florida. Listen to the Hip-Hop At Fifty: The Past, Present, Future Is Female playlist here, and check out our best female rappers, below. Here, then, is a celebration of what these artists have achieved, and an invitation to dig deeper into their catalogues. The diversity of styles, subject matter, flows, subgenres and characters of those in this list of the best female rappers – along with how successful they have been – proves the dial has shifted. In the past 20 years, things have undoubtably improved in terms of industry sexism. Sadly, the first two decades of hip-hop are littered with stories like these, of deeply unfair treatment – from shelved albums to rigged rap contests. The women of Nobody Knows My Name (including independent rappers Medusa and T-Love) were disheartened by the enormous barriers they had to overcome if they wanted to be recognised as females in hip-hop – including the expectation to be highly sexualised in order to gain attention. Made by filmmaker Rachel Raimist, it was about women in hip-hop – the female rappers, turntablists, organisers and B-girls who struggled to be heard and seen. How many “best rappers” lists only contain one woman? This all serves to prevent women and trans or non-binary rappers getting their due credit.īack in the year 2000, an independent film was released called Nobody Knows My Name. However – and very unfortunately – “rapper” is still too often seen as being synonymous with “male” (and sometimes with machismo). ![]() As Little Simz said in 2016: “Why does it always have to be about my gender? Why can’t I just do what I want freely without feeling like people are trying to put me in a box all the time? Do you know how annoying that is?” While most of the artists on this list of the best female rappers of all time have explicitly or implicitly expressed solidarity with their sisters and foremothers in the rap game, they would also likely reject the tag of “female rapper”. When it comes to skill and spirit, gender in hip-hop absolutely makes no difference. ![]()
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