The cultured genre of hip-hop, which includes R&B and rap, has a slew of pioneers. Artists from Sugarhill Gang to Run DMC dominated the airwaves. Hip-hop belonged to men. It was their territory. No one had ever even conceived such a notion of an all-girl rap group. That is, until Salt-N-Pepa came into place. Salt-N-Pepa are one of hip-hop's biggest influences for women whom are presently involved in the music industry. They were one of the many women whom lit the torch for women and have passed it down to artists such Nicki Minaj, Kelly Rowland, and many others. Salt-N-Pepa are inspirations for many women around the world.
Cheryl Wray and Sandy Denton, better known as dynamic rap duo, Salt-N-Pepa, from Brooklyn, New York, burst onto the all-male scene of hip hop in the 1980’s as Super Nature with “The Showstopper,” an answer track to Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick’s “The Show.” Since then, the two made remarkably incredible music together. They met at Queensborough College in New York. They were polar opposites. Cheryl (Salt) was the quiet reserved one who always had her nose in a book and Sandy (Pepa) was the loud, outgoing party girl. One day, according to Denton’s autobiography Let’s Talk About Pep, Cheryl floated around the cafeteria handing out applications for positions at her then job at Sears. Denton accepted one, filled it out, and got a job at Sears with James where she met Hurby Azor, Salt-N-Pepa’s future producer, songwriter, and manager. Since the first song, Salt-N-Pepa went on to sell many albums and win plenty of awards. They’ve inspired many women as well as most, if not all, female rap, R&B, and hip-hop artists such as Alicia Keys, Nicki Minaj, and others.
As mentioned before, Salt-N-Pepa weren’t always Salt-N-Pe...
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...e been considered a force to be reckoned with by many critics and reviewers. There are many who want the two to at least record another album, if not get back together, but James, whom has dedicated her life to Christ, says she has moved on from that. Denton, besides doing three reality shows, has written a book, entitled Let’s Talk About Pep, with Karen Hunter. They both claim that they will always be friends and nothing will ever come in between their friendship.
Works Cited
Burns, Kate. Rap Music and Culture. Detroit: Greenhaven Press. 2008
Denton, Sandy "Pepa" with Karen Hunter. Let's Talk About Pep. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.
Jones, Yolanda. "Salt-N-Pepa continue to blaze way for female rappers." The Commercial Appeal. 03 Mar. 2011. 05 Dec. 2013.
Mundy, Chris and Peggy Sirota. "Mamas got a brand new bag." Rolling Stone. 16 Oct. 1997. 05 Dec. 2013.
Rapper Trina’s March 2000 single “Da baddest b*tch”, proclaimed her as the Queen of Hip hop. “Da baddest b*tch” was a controversial song that made way for many criticisms. The rapper’s song endorsed the idea of women referring to themselves as “bad b*tches”, promoted promiscuous behavior and encouraged females both young and old to use men for money.
Queen Latifah played a big role in the hip hop industry as a female MC, and still is relevant to this day. She influenced millions of people especially in the black community for equality between women and men. She’s an American song-writer, actress, fashion producer, model, female MC, feminist, television producer, record producer, and talk show hostess. The Hip-hop culture began around the 1970’s in Bronx, New York and it was mostly amongst the Black and Latino community at that time. Hip Hop emerged out of an atmosphere of disappointment, anger, hate, discrimination, and disillusionment which; made it easy for the audience to comprehend and enjoy the music not as a song, but as a public personal message for each person to understand. Hip-hop was born in numerous places: in the neighborhoods, in the parks, playgrounds, bedrooms, bathrooms, a broken home, and even on the street corners. MC-ing and DJ-ing were at the center of this emerging culture, but hip-hop was always bigger than just the music, it was also break dancing and graffiti. The hip-hop fashion was very popular back then and some materials are coming back in today’s fashion as well: kangol hats, big bright jackets, gold jewelry chains, brand name sneakers like Adidas, established sportswear, tracksuits, large eyeglasses, big waist belts, jumpsuits, and any kind of over-sized clothing. The graffiti was a new form of expression that employed spray paint as a story on walls as the canvas. The police called that vandalism; but the people of hip hop called it art: a form of self-expression. Hip hop has been largely dominated by male artists, but there have been some notable exceptions. Queen Latifah was one of the few early female exponents of the styl...
Hip hop is a form of art that African Americans have been using to get away from oppressions in their lives and allowed their voices to be heard in some type of way. As soon as big corporations seen the attention hip hop brought to the scene, they wanted to capitalize on it. These corporations picked specific types of attributes that some hip hop artists had and allowed it to flourish. The attributes that these artists carried were hypermasculinity, homophobia, violence and sexism. In the book, Hip Hop Wars by Tricia Rose discusses some of these specific attributes. One of the most damaging attribute is when hip hop is used to sexualize and demean everything about being a woman. Tricia Rose writes about this issue in chapter 5 of her book
In other words, through music, men are retaining the line that separates them from women by fortifying male supremacy. The inferior roles that were given to women have been internalized by adolescents, which studies have found to be affecting their interaction styles as well as their beliefs of gender limitations. According to the study conducted by Ter Bogt et al. (2010), women were more inclined to listen to R&B/Hip-Hop music which reinforces the idea that female adolescents are more often exposed to the normalized stereotypical gender roles in music lyrics. Although many of the modern R&B/Hip-Hop music by male artist stigmatize women, there were some that actually put forth the effort to uplift them. Wale, a well-known Nigerian-American rapper, used his lyrical creativity in “PYT” to change the standard course of hip-hop music. In the lines, “I just wanna see you shine/ nothing makes a man feel better than a woman/ Queen with the crown…” Wale talks about a woman who he labels as a Queen with her own spotlight. In this particular line, Wale goes against the norm of male-dominance and male-hierarchy as a step towards building gender equality. Within in R&B/Hip-Hop community, there seems to be an ongoing lyrical battle between actions towards retaining the norms and actions towards
Johnson, Freddie Lee, and Tayannah Lee McQuillar. Tupac Shakur: The Life and Times of an
Rap artists’ using women in an offensive way in the lyrics and videos is something that has recently been taking affect. Many decades ago, rappers did not rap about women the way rappers
These lyrics from one of the first hip hop women band in United State introduce clearly our subject. Usually when the people think about women in Hip Hop culture, they think about sex, they think about women half nude in music videos, we just have to remember the conteoversial music video of Nelly for his song Tip Drill (2003). Women's studies students protest against misogyny in this video who shows women as sexuel object simulating sexuel acts and men throwing money on women's breats. This case is common in Hip Hop culture, specially in Gangsta Rap in videos of 2pac, Notorious Big, 50 Cents, etc. Patricia Hill Collins, Tricia Rose and bell hooks (Hill Collins Patricia : 1991, Rose Tricia : 1994, hell hooks : 2003) spoke about the perverse effect of women's nudity in Hip Hop culture and compare Hip Hop to pronography. They all agree to say that the Hip Hop culture is a male and machist world, where women are used to reinforce the apparent masculinity of rappers. These authors studie rap music through the gender and the race in United State, because women in video music are always black, almost the same happens in France not really with rap but R&B which is a part of the Hip Hop Culture. All the singers of R&B in France have arabian origins, whereas american R&B is more heterogenic. The quetsion is why all the women are black in american video rap music ? And why all the R&B french singers are arabian ? Can we see a postolonial and esclavagist heritage ? These two image, black female seen as a "bitch" and the arabian woman called the "beurette" in France show two different feminities, but how these "myths" involved in the development of a group identity? And what they reveal about the society ?
Throughout the human existence people have always made art to express themselves and convey a message. Whether it be from: performing arts, visual arts, or acoustic arts, one subgenre stands out to most, Music. This subgenre has an outstanding amount of different types of music. However, one type that has been exponentially growing with the growing culture is Hip Hop. As an aspiring music producer and an avid supporter of music, I've been introduced to this new wave of Hip Hop. As Hip Hop is nearing its fiftieth year since its creation and introduction into the music scene I will share with you How Hip Hop was created and what made it transcended into a worldwide phenomenon.
Hunter, Margaret. "Shake It, Baby, Shake It: Consumption and the New Gender Relation in Hip-Hop." Sociological Perspectives 54.1 (2011): 15-36. JSTOR. Web. 2 May 2014.
Nowadays, rappers became more popular because of visualization; it's not because of the music anymore. They used beautiful women and most of the time it was African women that would dance in music videos. The rappers would make the woman see that every woman with a good body can have everything in life and dancing was provocative. According to Sebastian, "As a Hip hop purist, I’ve always hated the fact that most commercial rap music promotes negative images and messages. Having used Hip Hop culture as a medium to empower youth for the last 15 years I’ve seen firsthand how mainstream rap impacts young impressionable minds." This quote states all people hear about hip hop is a negative impression of rap music because of the language and the image of women they produce in their videos. Music Rap was promoted to motive and influence positive
However others female hip-hop artist, such as Lil Kim or Rihanna, have decided to provide no resistance towards the deleterious depictions of women in their music and in turn sometimes exploit themselves. Due to her extreme fame, success,
The 1970s and 1980s was a pivotal time in hip hop history this period of time laid the ground work for modern hip hop and culture today. “In the early '70s, when I was about 13 or 14 and disco was monopolizing the mainstream airwaves, the rap movement was just being born” (The hip hop network). Early hip hop artist started making their way from the underground. Each artist made themselves stand out because their ability to relate to others. “In the early 80s, rappers began appearing on MTV and gained greater exposure. Run-DMC crossed over in mid-decade and the genre began appearing on the charts. In the early 1970s and 1980s hip hop music was used
not take her long to become well-known and one of the top female rappers of all time. According
On the 11th annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Mariah Carey was given the chance to induct Gladys Knight and the Pips who were a soul and R&B family group into this Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She gave a heartwarming speech on how Ms. Knight was a huge impact. Some words she said were, “ thank you so much for being a constant influence on me.” Mariah Carey was also inspired by different genres of music like Jazz, Gospel, R&B, Soul, Pop, Dance, soft rock, hip hop, and country. To add on, Mariah Carey was blessed with the opportunity to perform with the queen of soul, Aretha Franklin. They performed on live television singing Aretha Franklin’s hit song, “Chain of Fools.” Aretha and her met at the Grammy’s and became good friends. Mariah Carey is often referred to as our generation Aretha Franklin and is often compared to Whitney Houston and Celine
...onsidered miniscule today, they were the foundation for every form of rapping that is present today. People were amazed by Hollywood because prior to him nobody thought of creating rhyme schemes that were performed over entire songs. Other cultural aspects of hip-hop, to the ignorance of most people, can be contributed to the Nation of Gods and Earths. They were a cultural organization that developed their ideas after their founder, Clarence 13X, left the Nation of Islam. They are responsible for things such as the “b-boy stance”, which was a pose where one stands with their feet shoulder width apart and their arms crosses. They also pioneered several phrases that are indicative with the hip hop culture; for example, “What’s up G(shortened for of God) and “Peace.” They have a major role in establishing the hip-hop aesthetic, at least that of the late 70’s and 80’s.