Every once in a while, when I’m already a little depressed by some sort of injustice or annoyance, I torture myself by thinking about the state of female MCs in hip hop. If there’s an ounce of happiness hanging out somewhere in the back of my little Proper heart, it fizzles away when I take a gander back at the history of women in hip hop and think about where they are (and aren’t) now.

 

Don’t get me wrong, from time to time a woman still pops up to reignite my hope of a return of the female MC (Jean Grae, Kid Sister, Santogold in her own wonderfully eclectic way), but my hope usually turns into fatigue when I have to go on a google stalking mission just to hear the latest single off their indefinitely-postponed album. 

 

But there was a period of time when I had one female MC I could count on, a name to throw out to my guy friends when they scoffed that a female rapper is an oxymoron. Her name was Eve. She was blond. And she was gangster.

 

 

 

 

Eve is a fascinating character. Former scrippa turned Ruff Ryder first lady, turned cover girl, turned unsuccesful fashion mogul, turned TV star, Eve managed to navigate the world of bravado and bullshit that is hip hop for several albums without going bonkers like my beloved Lauryn or inexplicably reverting to bad weaves like Trina. She was a pit bull in a skirt and I dug her, even though she  seemed to be nothing like me, just as tons of nerdy dudes love the thuggiest of ”thug” rappers (Rick Ross, anyone?).

 

Many have hurled insults Eve’s way (she was a stripper, after all), and when a woman rapper is half-decent, the world is quick to cast them aside as ghost-written parrots who are only tight cause Jay-Z or somesuch wrote their lyrics. As if male rappers have never been rumored to use ghostwriters. The most desperate insult has to be the lesbian angle (If she is a lesbian, so what? Dont hella rappers claim to like that anyway??). Nevertheless Eve managed to shake it all off and put out music that didn’t require me to check my ovaries (or sense of decency) at the door.

 

In November I ran across a piece about female MC’s by Jonah Weiner on Slate, and while I strongly disagreed with Weiner’s omission of L Boogie (how could you omit The Score?) when discussing ’90s “femcees,” I was intrigued by his analysis of the categories that female mc’s are pushed into:

 

If the pervasive spirit of female rap’s early days was defiance, the mid-’90s gave rise to a sort of radical compliance. In their porno-grade raps, Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown, and Trina offered themselves up almost as grotesques, inhabiting lewd sexual fantasies almost to the point of caricature. [...]

Hip-hop femininity is often described in binary: Women are either “independent”—they pay their own bills and, conveniently, ask men for nothing—or they are hos. Lil’ Kim made the case for the independent ho. (Sometimes another option, cited in the case of confident female rappers, appears: lesbian.)

 

Weiner likely overlooked Eve because she didn’t fit the “porno-grade” ’90s female hip hop world he was trying to create, nor the pop-driven world of Missy and MIA; Eve was sexy, but she wasn’t a slore, and she’s still a Philly Jawn under the MAC lip gloss. I also challenge his assertion that Lil Kim was the end-all, be-all of the female rap game in the mid-to-late 90’s — Eve’s debut reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 while Kim’s only reached No 11 – perhaps Kim commanded more male attention, but both had their share of sales.

 

I say all this because I basically want Eve to come back, but correct, por favor. “Tambourine” was alright, but she can do better, so I’m not mad that her latest album Here I Am was pushed back more times than Brandy’s hairline (told you I had a bad day). Perhaps more than Swizz Beats and Dre are needed to get her back on the charts, as long as there’s no autotune involved I’m wit it. In the meantime, here’s “Gotta Man,” off 1999’s “Ruff Ryders First Lady:”

 

 

Tags: Eve, Female Emcee's, Jonah Weiner, Lauryn Hill, Lil Kim, Proper Song of the Day, Ruff Ryders First Lady, The Score, Trina