‘NOTHING POWERFUL LIKE WORDS SPOKEN’

Abstract

This article examines the rhetorical techniques black British female rap artists appropriate and manipulate when they compose and perform their songs. To this end, this work probes how they explore female agency and respond to political, race, class and gender inequity in their compositions. In all, this discussion corrects the virtual absence of black British female rap emcees from transatlantic discourses by offering a close reading of the hip-hop narratives written and/or performed by Shystie, Tor Cesay, Speech Debelle and Ms. Dynamite.

Keywords:

• black British female emcees
• hip-hop
• agency
• theoretical trope
• sampling
• gender
• rap

Notes

1. Whether the male and female rap artists whom I feature in this study would identify themselves as black British is open to debate. With this in mind, it must be noted that I use the terminology black British not to treat these rap artists as a monolithic group, nor does my work aim to establish these artists as representative of ‘the essential black subject’ (Hall 1996, p. 166). My employment of the term black British, again to quote Hall (1996), recognizes:

the extraordinary diversity of subjective positions, social experiences, and cultural identities which compose the category ‘black’; that is, the recognition that ‘black’ is essentially a politically and culturally constructed category, which cannot be grounded in a set of fixed transcultural or transcendental racial categories and which therefore has no guarantees in Nature.

(p. 166)

While conversing with ‘the immense diversity and differentiation of the historical and cultural experience of black subjects’ (Hall 1996, p. 166), this study appreciates that negotiating the minefield of identity politics is not for the faint hearted. This discussion acknowledges the individual creativity of black British female rap artists even as it seeks to find correlations and distinctions between them.

2. See Jonze (2011), Bainbridge (2009), Lyons (2011), Smith C. L. (2011), The Independent (2010).

3. The term ‘femcees’ is used in an article written by an uncredited journalist who published the piece Missing in Action: Where Have All the Talented Female MCs gone? [online]. Available from: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/missing-in-action-where-have-all-the-talented-female-mcs-gone-395464.html (accessed 1 July 2011).

4. In their description of grime music, Edward et al. (2006) maintain that:

[a]t the start of the new millennium London's tunes sound[ed] decidedly grubby. UK garage and electronic music got together on pirate radio stations and produced the urban lovechild that is grime music … the tracks are characterized by spare strange-sounding beats bound up with some spitting (fast aggro rapping with rhythm). The effect is a harsh, bleak, futuresque sound that bores right into your brain.

(p. 81)

5. Interestingly, in the liner notes of Shystie's Diamond in the Dirt, a notation is added to the copyright section of Shystie's song ‘Woman's World (Gurlz Stand Up)’. This notation states that Haydn Davis is responsible for the idea behind the formation of this composition. This information does not take away from Shystie's creativity, but it does accept that collaboration plays a part in her (re)envisioning of gender roles.

6. Though their research focuses on the formations of black American English, the findings of Michael L. Hecht et al. can be applied to a reading of Ms. Dynamite's lyrics. Hecht et al. (2003) maintain that:

the structure of Black English … semantic differences … ha[s] also been influenced by African languages … [f]or example, reversal of the meaning of ‘bad’ derives from a Mandingo idiom that also uses a negative word to connote a positive meaning.

(p. 147)

Ms. Dynamite's use of the double negative in her composition conforms to the ethos underlying this rhetorical strategy.

7. The aim here is not to criticize female artists who market an image of themselves in order to sell their records, nor to elevate one kind of female rapper as being more legitimate or worthy of feminist endorsement over another. My description of the black British female artists featured in this study does maintain that, no matter where female rappers reside, the relationship between marketing and the selling of female artists’ sexuality is commonly tied to their profile – whether they embrace this persona or not. For a multilayered and nuanced discussion on this subject matter see Tricia Rose's The Hip-Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip-Hop – and Why it Matters.

8. See http://www.iamshystie.co.uk/

9. Though Carole Boyce Davies does not examine the narratives performed by black British female rappers, her terminology and analysis of black female diasporic histories and identities enhance their significance as artists.