Hip Hop Divas - Softcover

Vibe Magazine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0609808362 ISBN 13: 9780609808368

Publisher: Three Rivers Press, 2001

Synopsis

It’s time to stand up, take notice, and give props to the women who have made their mark on hip hop culture. Although superstars like Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, and TLC are some of the most popular entertainers in the world today—each having sold some 20 million albums apiece—the dramatic rise of women to the top of the hip hop industry has never been chronicled before. The revolution was decades in the making, with the female pioneers fighting for a place in the hip hop boy’s club, confronting sexist attitudes, and grabbing their piece of the commercial pie while taking hip hop to new creative heights. Now VIBE, the preeminent hip hop magazine, celebrates this pop culture explosion with a book of thoughtful essays, stunning photographs, and informative timelines and sidebars.

Some of the best writers on hip hop profile the grassroots efforts of hip hop’s first ladies to the hottest stars of the moment. Emil Wilbekin, editor in chief of VIBE, Mimi Valdés, Danyel Smith, dream hampton, Greg Tate, Sacha Jenkins, Harry Allen, Selwyn Hinds, Cristina Verán, and many others come together to reveal how these women continue to play a powerful and integral role in the hip hop world.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

THROWDOWN. By Dream Hampton
I remember getting jumped at the skating rink, by, like, eight girls. It started on the carpet, where you walk on the bumper part of your skates, but quickly spilled onto the rink's slippery floor. At first it was Alexis, a pretty dark-skinned girl with breasts (I had none; still don't). She grabbed one of my two French braids and spun me toward her screaming, "Yellow bitch!"

She swung. I stepped back. She missed. Her girl Tanyetta didn't, though; she punched me dead in the eye. Terrified, I still managed to bust her lip. The 15-year-old girl, who said she was Alexis's cousin and complained in the girls' bathroom that she'd had an abortion the Friday before, hit me in the back of the head with a skate and opened my scalp. Blood poured into my eye, down my cheek, into my mouth. I was on the ground now and being stomped. My pretend cousins, my real best friend Marqueila, and Skateland's security broke through the circle and peeled my battered and bruised 11-year-old self from the floor. But it was way too late.

I knew it was coming. Andre, this beautiful ninth-grader from Detroit's Martin Luther King homes, had spent the past three Saturdays trying to teach me to skate backwards. He had expensive skates and long pretty Jheri curls. I helped him write his book reports and he told me stories of all the girls he "messed with." He'd point them out while we were skating. "See that girl with the big ass?" (I didn't have one; still don't.) "She sucked my dick last night." Andre didn't turn me on; he couldn't even spell. I just wanted to be held up while I learned how to skate backwards. I was still playing with Barbies. I'm still mad at these bitches. When I cut my hair short, there is the raised scar at the crown of my skull from that skate.

I had another friend, Darius, who also had a long Carefree Curl, and used to drive a cherry-red moped. He was murdered in 1986. He would strap a giant boombox to his bike and give me rides to and from the arcade. His mother's boyfriend was from Harlem and he'd bring mix tapes of rap music back to Detroit for Darius's box. I remember the morning he came over with this "battle rap" between Sparky D and Roxanne Shanté. They sounded as if they were in the same room but Sparky D called Shanté a crab-ass bum and accused her of giving her man fleas and gonorrhea. Shanté called her half-ass white, fat, and accused her of having a pussy that was "through" and getting fucked in the ass. Sparky came back with rhymes about Shanté being too damn black with hair that would never grow.

The girls on my block, some of whom had stepped to my defense at Skateland, loved Darius's new jam. They dubbed it and played it over and over again. Sometimes a dis from the song would make its way into our neighborhood arguments, like the time Stephanie called Naomi a crab-ass bum. One time India told me to "shut the fuck up, you half-ass white." I couldn't call her too damn black with hair that would never grow. I didn't even choke on the comeback-it never came.

I hated the way my girlfriends talked to each other, even then. In John Hughes movies the girls were scheming and cruel, but they had nothing on my friends. We were violent and abusive with one another, our deep self-hatred as visible as the tribal identification marks of a far-flung clan. We all, each and every one of us, learned to hang with boys instead, to say things like "girls ain't shit"; "you can't trust 'em." Some of us came back to our preadolescent selves, to become loving and trusting women. Some of us didn't.

SHOW STOPPA
Because they wore coordinating outfits three to four times a week for four straight years, Kenya and Shannon had to split the "Best Dressed" award in twelfth grade. In the back of the high school yearbook they are wearing twin outfits and posing in lunge positions with their hands on their hips. They're each wearing gold chains that spell the other's name. They didn't know each other before freshman year, but they sort of fell in love in Spanish class and have been best friends ever since.

When U of M turned Kenya down, Shannon forfeited her own admission and they both went to Spelman. Shannon's mom was so pissed. They pledged Delta together but their line was all fucked up when this girl died from a car crash. The school blamed it on relentless rushing. Kenya met this Morehouse boy from Queens and fell deeply in love. He spray-painted his tag on her dorm wall, then went to jail for two days when the campus guards caught him trying to sneak out of Kenya and Shannon's room with Krylon and dirty fingers.
On a trip to Lenox Mall Shannon saw Kenya's boyfriend from Queens kissing this girl from Texas and walked right up to them both and slapped the shit out of the girl. Kenya dropped the boy two hours later. They had each other's back like that.

When they attended the Al B. Sure! concert Al himself had arena security invite them backstage. He asked Shannon straight out if she wanted to fuck and she really wanted to, but Kenya gave her a look that said, "We would be so over-so very over-if you played yourself right now." They had each other's back like that.
Before graduating they organized a talent bazaar/charity event for a shelter that housed runaway girls. They performed "Push It" and wore matching unitards and slid under each other's legs just like Salt-N-Pepa did in their video. Shannon went to Parson's School of Design in New York for graduate school and because Kenya was unsure of her plans, she followed Shannon.

Kenya married a guy who played for the NBA a year later and Shannon designed fur coats for rappers and ball players. When Kenya's husband got some cheerleader pregnant just three weeks before she was to deliver their first baby, Shannon drove to Jersey, packed her best friend's things and moved her and her soon-come infant daughter into her one bedroom. They have each other's back like that.

From Booklist

As a single source on distaff purveyors of "thick, syrupy bass lines and Jeep-rocking hip hop beats," this set of Vibe magazine profiles is hard to beat. Written in streetwise and therefore YA-friendly language, it covers such stars as Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, and Lil' Kim and caps the performer profiles with a "Hip-Hop Herstory" and two think pieces on women, hip-hop, and women and hip-hop. This is all positive stuff by writers who are mostly down with their subjects, and those who see these young women and their music as sorry signs of the times probably won't care for it. Still, the book provides insightful backgrounding on some of the most vital pop-music voices around. Take Yo Yo. Important enough from working with Ice Cube, she is celebrated here for involvement with the "famous IBWC, or Intelligent Black Women's Coalition" and the strong feminist message of lyrics like "No, Yo Yo's not a 'ho' or a whore / and if that's what you're here for / exit through the door." Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Three Rivers Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0609808362
• ISBN 13: 9780609808368
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224