https://twitter.com/newyorker/status/1071141710288297984?s=21Rappers like Cardi B are changing a genre that has rarely allowed for more than one female superstar at a time:
nyer.cm/8rrVZIXIs Rap Finally Ready To Embrace Its Women?
By Briana YoungerDecember 7, 2018
?Rappers like Cardi B are changing a genre that has rarely allowed for more than one female superstar at a time, while pitting other women against one another or ignoring them entirely.?
Just a few weeks after its release, ?Twerk,? by City Girls and featuring the superstar rapper Cardi B, entered Billboard?s Hot 100 in the ninety-second slot. The occasion marked a milestone for City Girls, a Florida-based duo made up of the rappers JT and Yung Miami. The pair released their second album of 2018, ?Girl Code,? even though JT is currently sitting in a federal prison in Tallahassee. The ascent of the City Girls is one of the most unlikely success stories of the past months. Last August, they released their very first song, a scathing middle finger aimed at men who don?t bring anything of value to a relationship. By December, they had signed a deal with the formidable label Quality Control Music (home to Migos, Lil Yachty, and, Lil Baby); in May, they released their d?but album, ?Period,? and in June they landed a cameo on Drake?s chart-topping hit ?In My Feelings.? Later that month, JT turned herself in for fraudulent credit-card charges.
This snag could have derailed their momentum, but, instead, ?Twerk? has become their most successful song; with it, they join Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, and, somewhat curiously, Iggy Azalea, as the only women in rap to place their own tracks in the Hot 100 this year. Often, the women who charted were either crossover stars, or white, or both. So it?s nice, if not rare, to see a nascent act like City Girls join their ranks. Hip hop?s youngest generation of women has spent the past few years making captivating, genre-redefining music and not receiving enough attention for it. Just count them: BbyMutha, Leikeli47, CupcakKe, Bali Baby, and Kodie Shane all released projects recently. If you open it up to include loose songs, artists like Cardi B, Dej Loaf, Rapsody, Megan Thee Stallion, and Little Simz join the mix. These women, who hail from cities as disparate as Chattanooga, Chicago, Houston, New York, and London, are part of a movement of rappers that is changing an industry and a genre that has kept women at bay, never allowing for more than one female superstar at a time while treating the other women as incidental, pitting them against one another, or ignoring them entirely.
This breaker of chains.
