LADIES LAST, WHY HAS HIP-HOP GIVEN FEMALE RAPPERS THE BOOT?
By TERESA WILTZ, The Washington Post

It was 1989. Kente cloth and door-knocker earrings were the couture du jour. And flickering on your BET — MTV was just getting hip to black folks — was Queen Latifah, looking every inch the Afrocentric diva, posing against a backdrop of warrior women: Harriet Tubman. Sojourner Truth. Winnie Mandela. Angela Davis.

She was trading lines with her partner in rhyme, Brit rapper Monie Love, in “Ladies First”:

The ladies will kick it, the rhyme it is wicked

Those who don't know how to be pros get evicted

A woman can bear you, break you, take you

Now it's time to rhyme, can you relate to

A sister dope enough to make you holler and scream?


Back then, the Ladies claimed their place: Roxanne Shante, MC Lyte, Yo-Yo, Sister Souljah, Salt-N-Pepa, Neneh Cherry, Oaktown's 357 ...

Compare and contrast with today. In this year's Grammys, to be broadcast in February, only one female rapper has been nominated: Remy Martin.

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