Hip-hop feminism is a sub-set of black feminism that centers on intersectional subject positions involving race and gender in a way that acknowledges the contradictions in being a black feminist, such as black women's enjoyment in hip-hop music and culture, rather than simply focusing on the victimization of black women in hip hop culture due to interlocking systems of oppressions involving race, class, and gender.
Definitions The term hip-hop feminism was coined by the American author Joan Morgan in her book When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip Hop Feminist Breaks it Down. Morgan explains that a hip-hop feminist is a self-defined name for black feminists that acknowledges black women's lived experiences as they identify with and enjoy hip-hop culture along with supporting feminist issues and agendas where black women are marginalized by the mainstream feminist movement because of their race or the black antiracist movements due to their gender.
Hip-hop feminism has various definitions and scholarly inventions to help understand how hip-hop sensibilities influence not only music but also different forms of black expressions as well as feminist and anti-racist social justice movements.
In When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks it Down, Morgan explains that she coined the term hip-hop feminism because she was unable to fully identify with feminism without acknowledging and embracing her enjoyment in misogynistic hip-hop music and elements of patriarchy. Morgan explains that the term hip-hop feminism is used to express the ambiguities and contradictions of being a black feminist who still enjoys certain aspects of a patriarchal and misogynistic society, such as enjoying hip-hop music that reaffirms rather than challenges misogyny, which she calls "fucking with the greys."
In The Stage Hip Hop Feminism Built: A New Directions Essay, Aisha Durham, Brittany C. Cooper, and Susana M. Morris define hip-hop feminism as a form of black feminism rooted in the lived experiences of black feminists and members of the African Diaspora along with the political prerogatives and aesthetics of hip hop culture that builds on previous black feminist thought. They also stress the importance of black women and girls as well as women and girls of color remaining central within analyses of hip hop culture.
Hip-hop feminism acknowledges the problematic, misogynist nature of culture and its formative effects on young black women and empowers them by enabling participation, response, and owning self-identification.
Further, it aims to affirm Black women and girls' lived experiences and contributions to hip hop culture, such as Double Dutch, childhood chants, and twerking, that are less culturally recognizable in comparison to more traditional and masculine forms of expression in hip hop culture, such as "emceeing, deejaying, graffiti, and b-boying/b-girling." It can also be used to provide a more gender-inclusive study of Black women and queer folks' involvement and expression in hip hop culture rather than focusing on cisgender Black boys and men as hip hop subjects.
Misogyny and social change
Hip-hop music and music videos, as mediums easily spread through the internet, mass media, and popular culture, are perfect platforms for motivating social change. It can also be used to recognize intersections between communities. Rabaka explains the way in which creative mediums such as hip-hop can be used to wreck the interlocking systems of oppression in America:
"The point is to offer the women of the hip-hop generation feminist and womanist alternatives to the patriarchal (mis)representations of womanhood spewing out of the US. culture industries. Whether they meant to or not, "the women of the hip hop generation have created a body of work that offers up feminist or womanist answers to many of the hip hop generation's most urgent interpersonal, cultural, social, and political issues" and "recent feminist scholarship suggests that in its own controversial and/or contradictory way the hip-hop feminist movement may very well be the most politically polyvocal and socially visible manifestation of the ongoing evolution of the Women's Liberation movement prevalent in contemporary US society".
Hip hop feminism can be situated within Afrofuturism to understand how hip hop feminism operates both within and outside of academia as well as examine and critique the marginalized experiences of Black people throughout time.
In Growing Up Where 'No One Looked Like Me': Gender, Race, Hip Hop and Identity in Vancouver, Gillian Creese uses interviews from second generation African-Canadian men and women in their analysis of how the sociocultural understanding of blackness and hip hop influence the experiences of African-Canadian youth growing up in communities where they are one of the few Black/African children within the community.
Creese found that Black/African-Canadian men's experiences differed from Black/African-Canadian women's experiences because of how hip hop in youth culture allows black men to be seen as "Cool Black" and have an easier time connecting and being popular in school due to the cultural view of Black masculinity as "cool" in comparison to the lack of "Cool Black" femininity in hip hop culture, where culturally Black women are seen as hypersexual, 'exotic,' or 'whitewashed' version of Black femininity.
In 1992, R&B singer Mary J. Blige released What's the 411? on Uptown/MCA Records and was considered the pioneer of hip-hop feminism. In If You Look in My Life: Love, Hip-Hop Soul, and Contemporary African American Womanhood, author Treva B. Lindsey documents Blige's diverse musical influences and claims that, "...these diverse influences sparked a sonic innovation that generated a unique space for African American women's storytelling and narrative (re)articulations of love and contemporary black womanhood."
What's the 411? Was ground-breaking given its success and permitted Blige's entry into a musical arena almost entirely regulated and mediated by men. Lindsey further claims that by crafting woman-authored narratives and performing "woman-centered hip-hop era storytelling" artists such as Blige prove, "...that the voices of black women hip-hop soul singers create a distinctively hip-hop feminist space within a male-dominated soundscape." Such artists created a distinct space within hip-hop for explorations of African American womanhood and dynamically brought light to issues of representation in narratives and stories in hip-hop—opening doors for rising women hip-hop artists.
Behind Queen Latifah came hip-hop artist Lauryn Hill who became the best example of hip-hop feminism with record-breaking worldwide sales of her album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and has won five Grammy awards in 1998. Artists such as Latifah and Hill mimicked the hip hop rhetoric of males in the scene and generated a massive amount of attention. Missy Elliott was often seen dressed similar to male hip-hop artists and utilized the same body language and aggressive delivery of her lyrics as a means of protest, while still preserving her femininity. Even after losing weight over the years, she made sure that while performing videos the camera were faced to her face and her dancing.
These artists have carved out a new politically conscious identity in Hip-hop for women. Artists such as Nicki Minaj have changed the way fashion and sexuality is viewed in hip-hop. She uses the way in which she expresses herself through her body to send a message that being comfortable in your skin and with your sexuality is okay. These issues don't only affect the United States, as hip-hop has traveled and inspired movements beyond American borders. In Cuba, a hip-hop trio group known as Las Krudas Cubensi rap about commonly overlooked challenges that people of color, specifically women of color, face.
In the 2010s, hip-hop feminists moved past the male rhetoric and doused the genre in feminine prose. For example, many modern hip-hop feminists utilize their voluptuous figures in a commanding manner rather than adopting male rapper outfitting and lyric style. Aisha Durham writes that hip hop aided in creating a style icon out of the female black body. Durham also stated a solution to the problem of patriarchy, homophobia, misogyny, et cetera that is present in hip-hop: hip-hop feminism. She stated, "[Hip hop feminists] are moving and mobilizing and rescuing ourselves from virtual action blocks ... Hip-hop feminism is the answer (to) rap."
Rihanna is another mainstream hip-hop feminist. In her most recent album "Anti," her lyrics assert black female independence. Given Rihanna's past, the hip-hop feminist scene looked to her as a role model to stand up for domestic violence against the black female body. Also available via the publisher's website. Many women artists have played a big role in how hip hop has evolved.
Hip hop feminist scholars In the foundational text When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip Hop Feminist Breaks it Down, Joan Morgan coined the term hip hop feminism to discuss how black feminists can enjoy hip hop culture but still support feminist and antiracist movements despite the misogynistic elements of hip hop, which acknowledges the "grays" of social life because we can enjoy these "problematic" cultural artifacts and continue to support social change.
Msia Clark Msia Clark's Hip Hop and Africa: Prophets of the City and Dustyfoot Philosophers, explores Hip Hop culture in Africa specifically focusing on women within African hop. In addition to Hip Hop and Africa she has published various academic articles that explore the experiences of women within the African Hip Hop scene. In her work, Clark looks to understand Hip Hop as a method of protest and challenging of social norms. Her article Feminisms in African Hip Hop dissects the intricacies of being a woman within African Hip Hop. She explains the ways in which an artist's country shapes the content of their music, highlighting artists such as Dope Saint Jude from South Africa who challenge notions of partiarchy, heteronormativity, and misogynoir. Much of her works also address the relationship and discourse between feminist activists, scholars, and rappers. Clark is currently a professor at Howard University where she teaches the course Black Women and Pop.
Seth Cosimini Seth Cosimini's analysis of the performativity and self-presentation of Nicki Minaj articulates how women in hip-hop culture may simultaneously challenge and conform to stereotypical representations of femininity. As explained by Cosimini, Minaj uses contradictory public personas in order to construct a hip-hop identity that recognizes the social oppression driven by race, gender, and sexuality within and beyond hip-hop culture. Cosimini's contributions to hip-hop feminist scholarship have offered a unique perspective on the role of self-presentation in identity construction for women in hip-hop.
Murali Balaji Murali Balaji has contributed to existing research on the roles of "video vixens" in hip-hop. Balaji argues that hip-hop music video models have the opportunity to utilize a sense of agency in order to negotiate their positions within hip-hop culture. Through an analysis of Melyssa Ford's music video career, Balaji highlights how it is possible for women in hip-hop to harness their sexuality as a form of political resistance. By way of carefully calculated self-presentation, video vixens are given the chance to subvert objectification and benefit from their own commodification.
Reiland Rabaka