Fake For Real

This is an implicit law in rap music: at one step or another of its career, any major collective must integrate a female member. One of these crews, however – and not the least – was an exception for quite a long time: Gucci Mane's 1017 Records. It took them a decade, no less, to have a femcee. The chosen one was Misharron Allen, a Dallas rapper better known as Asian Doll - though she is not an Asiatic. Her first project, Da Rise of Barbie Doll Gang Empire, was released in 2015, but it was with another one, a year later, that the Texan lady started making noise: Drippin' in Glo. After this album, she would feature with PnB Rock and Famous Dex – her lover, according to rumors – and she would be praised by Nicki Minaj.

This is a new trend with today's rappers: they want to be rock stars. Though their subject matters – sex, drug and money – remain pretty much the same, their nihilist attitudes and imageries are heavily influenced by hardcore punk. See Playboi Carti's Die Lit cover art, for example. And the same goes with Rico Nasty on her latest mixtape, the first since she joined a major label. Nasty, indeed, his full of angry songs, blended with abrasive voices and furious guitars, like "Trust Issues", "In the Air", and the one summarizing it all: the outstanding "Rage".

At first glance, this mixtape was some pure Los Angeles material. A few local rappers featured on it, like YG, Problem, and Joe Moses, and it was produced by the D.R.U.G.S. crew, later known through its association with Ty Dolla $ign. But its main player rapped with an accent and a style originated from the Dirty South. Iggy Azalea, though, was neither from California, nor from Georgia. She was even not an African-American, but a white, blonde and Australian lady. Fascinated by US rap music since she fell in love with 2Pac, Amethyst Kelly had flown before the age of 16 to the country of her idols. She had lived in Miami, Houston, and Atlanta, before relocating to the West Coast, per her label's recommendation.

The new fad with silly rappers; the weirdness of artsy hip-hop, mixed with the most extreme offenses of gangsta rap; the confessions, the vulnerability, the thugs with bleeding hearts; the confusion between mixtapes and regular albums; web marketing, and its role in the advent of new talents; and the atmospheric sounds tagged as cloud rap. These trends have defined rap music, in the 2010's. And one man, in the late 2000's, heralded all of them; or at least, he represented them. This man, was Brandon McCartney, a.k.a. the BasedGod, a.k.a. Lil B.

Jeezy's glory days happened by 2005, no doubt. During that year, indeed, he released his (classic) mixtape Trap or Die, a record from his band, Boyz n da Hood, and also his (classic, again) solo album, Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101. By then, he was just the most important rapper on Earth, period. But the following years have been good ones as well, especially when, from 2009 through 2012, from Trap or Die Part 2 to It's Tha World, he released some of his best mixtapes. Among those, the two editions of The Real Is Back, released respectively in May and September 2011, and produced essentially by Lil Lody, deserve to be mentioned. Originally aimed at heralding a new album, Hustlerz Ambition, the last of the Thug Motivation trilogy, they proved, over time, to be significantly better.

There's always a time, for any kind of music, when people get conscious about their heritage, and when everything needs to be defined relative to the past. As far as rap music is concerned, this phenomenon is far from new, but it got amplified when, by the beginning of the 2010's, a new generation took control; when, for the first time, rap had no competition anymore, and was delivered by people whose parents themselves were fan of the music. One of the best illustration of this new era was the revivalism promoted by the Raider Klan. The only female rapper in that crew, Amber Linwood, a.k.a. Amber London - or Vmber London, per the singular calligraphy these guys opted for - demonstrated that on her 1994 EP.

MikeWiLLBeenTrill was not the first mixtape from Mike Will Made It. In the two years before, he had released all three volumes of his Est. in 1989 series. But in 2013, the Atlanta producer was at the apex of his fame; he was now notorious much beyond the (t)rap universe he had originated from. Around a dozen of that year's hit singles, were produced by him. And a few weeks before this new release, he had executively produced Miley Cyrus' Bangerz album, and signed a large part of its music. While the Disney star collaborated with this beakmaker from Atlanta's trap music scene and turned into a nasty girl, Mike Will expanded his aura to a large audience. As a matter of fact, more than his previous releases, MikeWiLLBeenTrill demonstrated that his collaborators were getting more diverse.

On the west side of the US, is the West Coast. But further west, there is Hawaii. Laura Yang, a.k.a. Neila, is from there. Nevertheless, it is actually the Californian rap scene, she is associated with; or more precisely its underground subset the rapper, DJ, producer and activist Deeskee organized around his LA2theBay website. Neila made a first appearance in his entourage, when she contributed to the best song on his Blacklight Sessions album, the nice "The Dream". And since then, she never stopped releasing music, until her recent Analog Jewelery in 2017.

When people who experienced the beginnings of rap, in the late 70's and early 80's, are asked about them, many confess that they hadn't realized, at first, that this was a brand new kind of music. What they heard sounded like a declination of funk, or disco, not a musical genre per se. And nowadays, it seems that rap itself has reached the same point. Now that it is giving way to sing-song, especially in Atlanta, its current capital city, some wonder if rap should still be called the same. Listening to artists like ILoveMakonnen, indeed, this question sounds legitimate.

It's never been easy for a woman to find her way into the rap game. First, she had to fight hard to become an equal to the frequently sexist male rappers. And then, she had to deal with her rivals; the audience, or the industry, curiously, always wanted just one female star per generation. And then, once all of this is achieved, any female rapper needed to position herself against the many stereotypes about her kind. She had to decide if she was a tomboy, or a bad bitch, or an R&B sentimentalist. Despite these many obstacles, however, many made it. Females matter, in hip-hop, as demonstrated by our selection of outstanding projects.