Female hip-hop fights a bad rap

By Mariel Concepcion

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Before 2007 is out, Eve, Missy Elliott, Foxy Brown, Trina, Shawnna and Remy Ma should have new albums in stores, setting the stage for a banner year in the world of female rap. For the long-suffering genre, that would mean that more than two or three titles could finish in the top 100 of Billboard's year-end Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.

Female rap shows few, if any, signs of growth. In 2006, only Remy Ma's "There's Something About Remy: Based on a True Story" cracked the year-end top 100, just making the cut at No. 92. Since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991, only 13 female rappers have appeared on the year-end chart out of a pool of 585 artists.

The genre's biggest stars all seem to be winding down in terms of sales. Lil' Kim cracked the million-selling mark with three straight albums, beginning with her 1996 debut, "Hard Core," which has sold 1.42 million copies. But her latest, 2005's "The Naked Truth," has shifted a mere 388,000, a 73 percent decline. Brown, Elliott and Eve also have seen their album sales slashed by more than half in recent years. To be fair, these numbers are in line with the overall slippage in hip-hop market share, which amounted to 107 million albums in 2000 but just 59.5 million in 2006.

RULES OF THE GAME

It has grown so bad for female rappers that the Recording Academy did away with the best female rap artist category of the Grammy Awards in 2004, two years after its inception, due to a shortage of eligible entries. The category was combined with best male rap artist to create the best rap solo performance field.

"We try to have at least 25 entries minimum because that gives a good variety and cross-section of music," said urban music/awards project manager Alan Foster, who revealed that the category won't be present in this year's Grammys either. "The problem we had with the female rap category was we only had like 13 entries."

It wasn't always like this. In fact, Brown was once a bigger star than Jay-Z. But the truth is, females have been playing by male rapper's rules almost from day one.

"I believe that is mostly attributed to what being an MC is all about: being arrogant, braggadocious and aggressive," WQHT (Hot 97) New York program director Ebro Darden said.

"It's a male domain, and the theme, the images, the styles, the outlooks and perspectives have been driven by men," said author and University of Pennsylvania humanities professor Michael Eric Dyson, who has written extensively about hip-hop.

"The success of women (rappers) has suffered as a result of the prerogative of men to set the standards for what's acceptable and not acceptable in hip-hop and, quite frankly, to set the rules of the game as to what lyrics, what styles and what genres will be most popular," Dyson said. "So, it has been difficult for women to fit in."

DISCOURAGED AND INTIMIDATED

The danger for female rap now is that the lack of success turns off tomorrow's would-be stars. Jazmin Polanco, who organizes the yearly "Unanimous Decision" MC battle in New York and also serves as general manager of Def Jam imprint Roc La Familia, said she's been impressed by underground female MCs like La Bruja and Patty Duke. But she said women are "usually outnumbered when they come out to my showcase, and they become intimidated by men."

"Girls used to approach me like, 'I rap,'" said Eve, whose first album in five years arrives August 7. "But now it's usually guys that give me demos. No girls have come up to me in a while."

An artist like Trina illustrates the uphill struggle for female rappers. Her 2000 debut, "The Baddest Bitch," sold 684,000 units, while 2005's "Glamorest Life" has shifted 398,000. But the latter album spawned Trina's biggest hit to date, "Here We Go" featuring Kelly Rowland, which reached No. 3 on Hot Rap Songs and No. 8 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.

That success wasn't enough to keep Trina at her longtime label home of Atlantic, however. "Because of where Trina is with her career and where we are with our label, we felt we could put out her record on our own," said Slip-N-Slide project manager Aaron Lucas, who inked a new deal with EMI to distribute Trina's "Baddest Bitch II," due August 14.