Hip Hop Hooray (Leah)

This past Sunday on my show, inspired by the more than 2.9 million who participated in the Women’s March in Austin and other cites, I played tracks from women in hip-hop. The talented and determined ladies below in some ways represent how all women battle to be heard, both literally and figuratively. While hip hop has come a long way in the last 40 years, it’s still a young genre and it remains steeped in the inherent sexism of our broader culture (haha … “broader culture”) but especially in the machismo and misogyny that’s so prevalent in the sturm and drang of the genre. It’s inching towards becoming the voice of all peoples, and it’s been a great progressive tool in the last several years to assault the forces that keep people down, but the popular side of hop hop – the albums that sell or stream millions – still predominantly portray women as objects.  Well, here are the women in their own voices and words and they are just fucking killing it.

I strongly urge you to listen to – really hear – and patronize these artists and all who are voices that are outside of the mainstream because, hey, the future is female.