Maybe if I pushed my titties up I’d sell a couple records
Or stick my booty out/ Then I’d probably do even better
Cause that’s the way the game goes
It doesn’t matter how nice you rhyme or sing
It’s bi*** take off your clothes.

And look how many do!!! 

That’s the first four bars of one of my rhymes but it’s also the truth.  Trust me, I know!  Folks wonder where all the female emcees went? I’ll tell you, NOWHERE. Unlike the Dinosaurs we were not wiped off the planet by a theory that has yet to be proven.  Nevertheless, I must admit our presence has diminished greatly.  Because it’s easier to fill the quota of femininity with women that will take orders and follow a script than those that can think AND write for themselves. Shortly after the emergence of gangsta rap, things started changing.  Gender roles specifically started becoming very defined in hip-hop music and as the dollars kept rolling in, the rhetoric took deeper root.  With every “bitch,” “hoe,” “trick” etc. that was said a little bit of the female emcee’s piece of the pie was taken until we were completely ousted from the table.  It got to the point where nearly all commercially successful women on the mic were all playing the shadow to a more commercially successful man.  And though they might have gotten props for being able to “rhyme like a dude” be it their flow or the subject matter, they were never fully accepted as an emcee in their own right and welcomed to the table. Nevertheless, it is a man’s world, and it’s common knowledge that it’s nothing without a woman.  So not surprisingly there is no lacking of women in hip hop these days.  I’d actually say there’s more on television than have ever been.  But they’re silent.  They’re there to fill that visual quota of eye candy and the allure of femininity.  The new role of the woman in hip-hop has become widely accepted as that of being a “background chick” or a “down ass chick.”  The days of seeing women standing independently of a dude and holding their own on the mic have long gone as they’ve been replaced by a bevy of broads ready and willing to simply stand by and hold the dude’s mic *wink to get their shine.    (I ain’t holding sh** but a goal in my mind and determination in my gut.) 

You see the norm for women in hip hop these days has become that you can never be too sexy, but you can be too assertive.  You can never be too cute, but you can definitely be too frank.  And you can never have too fat of an a** but you can always be too smart.  Fact is the majority of the men who hold the pen to sign women who rhyme to the same lucrative deals as all the brothas out here simply don’t want to have to deal with the ego check of dealing with assertive, smart, frank women.  So they write us off as difficult, bitchy, and stank at the same time applauding men who exhibit the same traits as focused, savvy, and having vision.  Because in this man’s world when a man steps to another man with a bottom line, it’s business.  When a woman steps to a man with the same bottom line, it’s attitude.

Well, then like Antoinette once said, “I GOT AN ATTITUDE” and after hosting the Black Lily Fim & Music Festival’s Finale Show in Philly this weekend I saw a number of women from all over the nation who do too.  There always be women willing to take the low road but it’s time for the return of the woman with a plan, a voice, and a presence.  And though it seems as though it will always be a man’s world, with the recent advancements in digital technology us ladies who would rather have our clothes on, our eyes open and be labeled as “divas” than be half naked, mouths open, and accepted, as toys can finally create our own settings at the table as not just independent women, but independent artists who have just as much to say as the next man!

–AMANDA DIVA

Fresh off her tour with Lupe Fiasco, Amanda Diva has just released her new single, “Windows Over Harlem,” from her debut EP, “Life Experience.” 

TAGS: Amanda Diva, feminism, women

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