Battle Rhymes
& Posse Cuts (Fat Beats & Brastraps: Women of Hip-Hop)
by Super Nature, et al
Mama Said Knock You Out
Two decades of sisters doing it for themselves.
by Douglas Wolk
 Women rappers
haven't turned up much in the hip-hop mainstream, and their back catalogs tend to be a
little dodgy--there are some major holes in the discography these days. That's a pity
because there's been some great hip-hop by women: Since they generally work outside their
male counterparts' lyrical culture of violence, they have had plenty of impetus and
opportunity to do interesting, original work.
The best survey of women in hip-hop is the three-volume Rhino anthology series Fat
Beats & Bra Straps--it's uneven and curiously selective, but frequently surprising and
packed with great, lost wonders. And, since a lot of the great women of hip-hop have been
one-hit wonders, it's a valuable resource: Having "Roxanne's Revenge," "The
Real Roxanne" and "Sparky's Turn" all together on the Battle Rhymes
and Posse Cuts volume is a trip for anyone who was paying attention to boomboxes
at the beginning of 1985. Of course, aside from the Sequence (a few of whose sides are on
the Sugar Hill Records box set), there weren't too many women rapping in the early
days--other than Paulett & Tanya Winley's corny "Rhymin' and Rappin'," from
1979. Fat Beats picks up in 1984, when U.T.F.O.'s "Roxanne, Roxanne"
opened the door for any MC who could claim they were talking about her, and runs from
there.
There are some significant omissions in the series, but fortunately most of them have
albums in print. At the top of the unmissable list: the brilliant, merciless M.C. Lyte,
who recently crossed over to pop with "Cold Rock a Party," but had been rocking
the underground with a steel-hard flow for years before that. (Try her rough, rasping Lyte As a
Rock, or Eyes on This).
Salt 'N Pepa have never been what you'd call hardcore, but they've been turning out
likeable, sassy pop rap for a decade--go for their charming, groovy debut Hot, Cool
& Vicious. They turn up on the Battle Rhymes
volume of Fat Beats with "The Show Stoppa," an answer to Doug E. Fresh's
"The Show" that they recorded back when they were called Super Nature. Yo Yo has
sometimes cleaved a little too closely to her mentor Ice Cube's path, though You Better
Ask Somebody is worth a listen. And the terrific, rapid-fire MC Monie Love has
never quite made a great record of her own: Her best moments are her guest shots on other
people's discs (like "Ladies First," her ecstatic duet on Queen Latifah's All Hail the
Queen).
On the other hand, it's very hard to overrepresent Roxanne Shanté who gets five tracks
between the Fat Beats volumes Classics
and Battle
Rhymes (all of which also appear on her solid Greatest Hits),
and could easily have gotten more. Shanté was a hysterical, nasty-mouthed smartass when
she started out, and just got funnier, nastier and smarter-assed with time. Case in point:
the unbelievably mean-spirited (and hilarious) "Big Mama." After establishing
her credentials, Shanté gleefully eviscerates Latifah ("sold the f--- out, tryna go
R&B"), Monie Love ("your album cold garbage/had one good jam, now you think
you a star, bitch"), Yo Yo ("instead of stompin' to the 90s, use your brain/And
stomp your ass down to Jack LaLanne") and Lyte (pretty much unprintable).
The Classics
disc of Fat Beats is a winner in the mindless fun department. You've heard L.L. Cool J
"Doin' It" with LeShaun (and if you haven't, it gives the title of Posse Cuts
a whole different meaning), but she first did her thing over that groove on 2 Much's 1988
"Wild Thang," which turns out to be even hotter. (LeShaun went on to record
"Wide Open," still available as a CD single,
one of the most infectiously nasty hip-hop numbers ever.) M.C. Hammer's protegés Oaktown
3-5-7 have been lost to time for fairly obvious reasons, but their summer-bikini 1989 hit
"Juicy Gotcha Crazy" deserves to live on. Even The Real Roxanne, never any great
shakes as a rapper, gets some charming, bouncy records reprised here--"Bang Zoom
(Let's Go-Go)" is eight kinds of novelty, and it still kicks butt.
New
MCs surveys up-and-coming hip-hop women of the '90s--at least the ones who didn't
make their name as members of groups, like Lauryn Hill, who gave the Fugees a huge hit
with her cover of "Killing Me Softly" (on The Score),
Digable Planets' Ladybug. Once again, it collects some one-shot delights (including
a track pulled from Sha-Key's nifty, slipped-between-the-cracks album, and Bo$$'s killer
"Deeper"), amid some lesser lights and failed experiments. Still, the
underground stuff is pretty surprising--a West Coast posse cut called "Heavyweights
Round 2," by a bunch of MCs associated with the Project Blowed organization, has not
a single familiar name on it, and it's an exuberant, spazzy marvel, with everybody
tripping over themselves to cram in as many words as they can. And while it overlooks some
of the recent women on the charts, including Foxy Brown, Da Brat, and Missy
"Misdemeanor" Elliott, they're rarely--with the exception of the immensely
talented Elliott--missed.
Douglas Wolk is a freelance writer who lives in Queens, New York, with several
hundred thousand dust mites. His life was changed forever by Magic Mike's Rap Attack
Vol. 2.
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