Femme rappers are such a major part of my life really, at this point -- I listen to them every day, during the happiest parts of my day-- that you think I would be able to write of them all day long, with ease, just like I'm often able to do with old rock and roll stars that, yes, I listened to in great depth years ago, but now hardly listen to at all. Yet, again, it seems impossible at times, and I suppose the main reason, in truth, is because of the oh so obvious fact: Femme rappers are simply too new, it would seem, to write deeply about.
There is only so much to say about them, just like there is only so much to hear from them. Most of them, especially my true favorites, seem to only have a small handful of tunes for me to sift through, sometimes they only have one or two. There is one woman, for example, one small little black woman, who literally only has one verse in one mere track with only 12,000 views. I have watched her one mysterious verse --her name is Solette -- repeatedly. She spits the rap wearing a fur coat in a city that looks half destroyed, snow falling down all around her. I have seen it in dreams. I have searched, in total vain, through all corners of this blasted Internet, looking for more of this Solette. She is no where to be found. No where at all. She is like some strange phantom who has only appeeranced once, for just a minute and a half, and never more, never more.
This is very different, you can imagine, for a white boy who is accustomed to sifting through an artist like Bob Dylan's catalogue -- where I have literally decades worth of material...and well over 700 originally composed songs. Not to mention all the great big books I can--and have--read about him, and others like him.
What on Earth is a white boy to do with his newfound love of da femme rap? What am I to do? I so desperately want to scribble about them, and make a great story of them, but I just...never know.... again...where to begin! Can a white boy like me even begin to write about this muzak?
I also, I feel,when I do get in these moods, never know quite which femme rapper to truly give all my love and focus to. Certainly, I say, one of these girls has to get all my focus, but who? This is another thing that is very different for me, since in the rock world my allegiances were always, for so long, very clear to me from the starting gate. Indeed, in rock n roll, I was alwys able to choose my favorites with absolute ease. I loved Dylan, Keith Richards, Jack White, and someone like Robert Plant -- of Led Zeppelin-- with undying admiration (they were soomething like Gods of my bedroom) and , at the same time as that, I often despised acts like Motley Crue, Queen, Van Halen, and Metallica with a fervor like you have never known.
Those I loved andthose I hated have always been easy to see in the rock world; I know immedaitely what I am looking at, and I am never at risk for making a fool of myself. After all, most of the stories have been written in full. Ozzy Osbourne, for example, doesn't seem like he can do that much to pull the rug out from under me now. He's a safe bet. I can hang Ozzy's poster in my room and let my friends think of me as a fan and nothing bad will come of it. But what about these girls who are, oftentimes, even younger than I am (by just a few years, I'm elated to tell you)? Why, anything is possible with them! Anything at all. They could wind up.... as anyone! They're in their prime. Some of them might never even really and truly make it. This is tough! What if I pick a bad horse, man? What if my female rapper doesn't win the prize? Not to mention the other dilemma I'm sometimes encountering: What if I choose one who is the enemy of the other!? I have never felt such confusion!
Again and again though, I always come back, initially, to the same question, whenever I start to think about these femme rappers: Just what is it that has drawn me into their world, after living so long in the apparently "masculine" world of what many people actually now call (white) "dad rock"? How did I go, for example,just last night, from listening to "Houses of the Holy" by Led Zeppelin, to a song like "Real Ting" by Stefflon Don? How did I go from wanting a poster of Joan Jett and Lou Reed and Jagger above my computer, to now wishing - so badly - that I could have one of the Da Brat --if only I could find one? How has this happened? Especially when you think that, as a boy, I pretty much always -more or less- did all I could to avoid that horrific "male rap". I mean, growing up in the ciudad in a barrio, I of course knew all the big male hip hoppers--and I suppose I found some of them vaguely intriguing---but, for the most part, I never really liked them, past a certain point. They made me feel uncomfortable, and often I found them insidiously obnoxious. They were too simple minded for my elegant tastes, I you see.
I was reading HG Wells and Jules Verne by the time I was 12: Male rap was simply not something I wanted to be involved with or known for liking. They looked, as I always say, like a bunch of cats from the misogynistic, homophobic, straight laced 1950s. Nothing worse to me. Nothing worse. All the male rappers -- white or black-- always seem to have crew cuts. I was raised with an enforced crew cut as a young boy; but, gleefully, at the age of 12, I demanded, with a picture of Kurt Cobain in hand, that I be allowed to grow my hair out. Hence, 9/10 of those male rappers always just came off looking boring and bland to me. Like marines, I always say. And I sure as hell ain't lookin' to be no marine, momma. Na, homie, no way!
But oh holy day! The day I remembered, about four years ago now, that female rap was also someting which existed, but which was never spoken of! Oh holy day that grandiose evening when I remembered that there are not just one, but two genders, that walk God's earth, and thus two genders that are capable of spittin' mean raps, and so I began to poke around and look. And I came, much to my surprise, to find some of the most moving music I have ever, in my life, heard. Music that I now keep trying to write about (the essays are piling up on my hard drive) but never can quite get started saying anything about...as I stress....
Alas, it is a music that I have so many ideas myself as an artist for, but music which I myself can, literally, have nothing at all to do with! It is for this reason,I think, that I really do find it intriguing in some weird light: The world of the femme rapper, especially the black femme rapper, is a world in which I can never hope to be a part of. I cannot truly cover the songs these girls give me, like I was able to do with every Dylan or Rolling Stones song Iever heard. I cannot do much of anything with them -- besides listen. In fact, much to my chagrin, mostly due to financial purposes,I cannot even take inpiration from them in my manner of dress. Here I am , a poor white boy, trapped with this lousy beard (can't always afford razors) and these old, dusty hoodies, with a pair of 10 year old black motorcycle boots.
In the world of rock, my outfit permits me some entry: I tie a quick scarf around my head, and I make my long black hair a bit messy, and I am in. But in this world of femme rap? Who in hell am I *there*? Why, I am just about the mangiest scrub who has ever lived is what I am. I have no place in that world; though God knows I wish I did. One must think: As a boy, I am a reject to the female rappers because I have next to nothing fancy to offer them; as a girl, or a "trans", or a "crossdresser", I also, basically, come up empty handed, because my outfits cannot compete with theirs. Not at all. Stefflon Don wears some of the greatest big pink fur coats I have ever in my life seen; all that I wear when I want to be feminine is an old purple flannel with no sleeves. And sometimes I draw girly designs on my arms with markers...as I listen to Stefflon blaring. Oh and...before I forget...don't even dare mention the cosmetics department of these great, inspirational women. I don't even know where on Earth to begin when it comes to that blasted area! You are talking to a boy whose hand begins to shake the moment I uncap one tiny bottle of Wet n'Wild black eyeliner. I have no idea how to apply it, though of course I wish I did, just like lipstick, and rouge, and everything...so that I could be like Stefflon or Azealia, etc! But...what was I saying again? I lose myself in my heat.
I think I was talking about participation or something along those lines, right? Yayayaya, I was saying how I can dream of being a rock god, maybe, because I can play all those diddies on my piano and my geetar, but with femme rap, I'm just a nobody. I can't even, basically, *dream* of being a femme rapper. I can't even really take inspiration from it as a potential performer myself! For how can I hope to write lyrics that are anything like the ones I love most from these women? Take this quick fragment from that Stefflon tune I mentioned before, "Real Ting":
If him cheat, yo the pussy cock up
But when me click me finger like Erup
A cocky fi ah send up in that pussy 'til it buck
Cocky fi ah send up in that pussy 'til it buck
Pussy it 'til it buck, pussy 'til it buck
Take the trash out, let a real nigga in, yeah
They ain't fucking with the kid
Labels on my back 'cause they know I'm gonna win
I cannot even imagine the elation I would feel, if I could get dressed like my femme rapping heroes get a chance to dress, and then get up on a stage & shake my big booty just like they do, and sing lyrics just like they do, etcetc. It would be the show of a lifetime; in fact, I already even have a name -- a few of them -- picked out. Care to know one of them, diligent reader? Here it is: Keyshia Rose. What do you think? No bueno? Bueno? Or what about something like Taccarra Kim? Yes that one is pretty cool, no? Taccarra Kim...an epic first name, but also with an obvious homage to my idol Lil Kim. Would Taccarra make it past one mixtape release? Would she get the chance to film a proper rap video? Would she ever perform, like Queen Azealia Banks now has, in Poland and Texas and everywhere in between? Would she get to make a film, like Banks also now has, called Love Beats Rhymes? What would Taccarra's fate be? Who would she date -- if anyone? Would she marry and then divorce, like the Georgia Peach, aka Rasheeda, has, in the public eye? Would she get international success or just be trapped in the States..? Worse, a specific region of the States?
I think, if I was able to become Taccarra Kim, that I would name the opening album something particularly ferocious and feisty. Debut albums are very important in the world of the feminine rap, just like they are in many other worlds, and we all know how vital good names are. Remy Ma's debut album, for example, is "There's Something About Remy". Queen Latifahs, back in 1989, the year this white boy was born, is "All Hail the Queen". Azealia Banks named hers "Broke with Expensive Taste". And as for my white Aussie friend, Iggy Iggz, she called hers "Ignorant Art" (which seems to be more of a mixtape than an official release). So what on Earth would Taccarra Kims be called...? I think I would make it something like "When Bitchez Gank Caesar" or .. hmm .. "Pink Ceezar". Yes, that's a good one. "Pink Ceezar". We is gettin' somewhere now, ain't we, diligent reader? We're begninnig to let Taccarra breathe, shes coming to life... we are imagining her in the back of a Cadillac Escalade, somewhere on the Interstate...she's heading for JFK airport...
What is she doing? She's about to commence upon her first tour of course, for the "Pink Ceezar" album, just like she ought to.
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