Ladies First: A Story Of Women In Hip-Hop

[DanaK]

Netflix 4-episode doc series that premieres August 9

Quote

This timely limited doc series recontextualizes the role the irrepressible women of hip hop played throughout the revolutionary genre’s 50 years by reinserting them into the canon where they belong: at the center, from day one to present day.

 

[Bastet]

Sounds good.  I recently watched the PBS documentary series Fight the Power: How Hip-Hop Changed the World, and one of the episodes included a segment on the emergence of female stars in the '90s.  Four episodes all about the women is right up my alley.

[Adgirl]

This was so fantastic! So glad someone finally told this story. It did change the way I feel about the Bridge is Over. I don't think I'll be singing along with that song with the same enthusiasm anymore.

 

[Bastet]

Damn, this was good.  Really getting down into the ways hip hop would never have existed, let alone thrived, without women, yet the popular narrative is that successful female artists are an anomaly (and successful female producers don't even exist).  It was great to give some of those forgotten women their due!

And to give Dee Barnes another platform to talk about her erased role in the genre, because that is as sadly unsurprising as it is fucked up -- Dr. Dre beat her up, and because she didn't just take it and keep quiet, her career ended and he's got a fucking Grammy award named after his abusive ass (she is not the only woman he has physically harmed -- and in an interview at the time the award was named after him, Barnes fabulously equated it to calling it the Ike Turner Award).

I loved all the expressions of sisterhood, that no matter how much people try to act like there can only be one, so all the women are in constant competition with each other, that's simply not true -- there are individual beefs just like in any other community, but a success for one is a success for all.

I also liked the balanced treatment given to women displaying a particular, overt, explicit type of sexuality -- men who talk the exact same way in their rhymes will call the women out for it (I see you, Snoop), and that's bullshit, but we also can't allow that type of presentation of sexuality - which, while self-instigated and self-owned, is still male gaze-y - to be expected of women.  Also with cultural appropriation, spelling out that of course an homage is nice if you're giving credit, but all this shit of white women putting it out there like its their own, and then getting all kinds of credit for it while the Black women they stole it from were called ghetto for it is not okay.

Another highlight was the segment on how differently incarceration affects these women than it does their male counterparts -- it's part of their industry credit if the guy does time, but let her get locked up and she may not be able to rebuild a career.

Bless dream Hampton for the writing she's been doing on these issues, and now to help pull together this documentary, which did a fantastic job of celebrating hip hop and expressing love for it, but refusing to sweep under the rug its sexism problem. 

You don't even need to be a fan of the genre to get a lot out of this, so I recommend it to anyone considering watching.

[topanga]

I've started watching this. It's very good so far