| Hip-hop turned 50 this month and while much of the surrounding conversation has focused on celebrating rap’s past (how a Bronx “back-to-school jam” exploded into a cultural juggernaut) and its future (it is indeed very much female), writer and culture critic Shamira Ibrahim is spending the present excavating the losses and sacrifices that bridge the two. “Hip-hop cannot tell the story of its journey from subculture to monoculture without reckoning with its fraught relationship with gender,” she writes in this essay, “having capitalized on misogyny while being propelled forward by the innovations of women.” Shamira examines the ingrained challenges — ideas around “respectability,” allegations of ghostwriting, institutional neglect — that have held female creators back and down even as they continue to break ground. This is more than a reckoning, it’s an act of preservation for the future to come. As she writes, “The industry’s acknowledgement of these oversights won’t kick the doors wide open, nor will it eliminate the structural problems that women face, but would certainly be a step forward for the next 50 years.” |
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