MC Lyte is Frustrated About the State of Female MCs


mclyte1.jpgMC Lyte is caps-lock upset about the media (really, only blogs) just now picking up on the lack of female MCs in music today, and rightfully so. This has been a topic of discussion here at SoulBounce and on other sites but it is refreshing, albeit bittersweet, to read about the issue from the perspective of one of the greats. She questions whether current female MCs can even be considered such within the framework of hip-hop:

"So many publications are deciding to now speak on something that has been brewing for many years now. Has the female MC morphed into something we can no longer recognize as hip hop?

She then reveals that the women she sees in hip-hop today are not recognizably MCs, all of whom she thinks "favor the melodic sounds of Missy Elliot" and "look good [and] sound good" but shy away from the title MC because that label gets them zero attention.

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This post "The Female MC" on her blog is a case study in just how far
removed both hip-hop and music media really are from the source of this
issue: female MCs. MC Lyte writes in isolation about something
with which she is completely familiar, that affects her directly, but
that no one asks her about outright. She is objectified as a relic from
the glory days of hip-hop but even with all of her clout, her skills,
as a woman she is invisible. She jokingly dismisses this in her post
but actually her struggle for voice is a sobering reflection on the
pervasive sexism in hip-hop.

In the end MC Lyte calls men to task since "the female MC has been born
out of male camps since the beginning of time," commenting that

"...[T]here has got to be some men in the game that get
behind a woman and push. He needs to be happy with her point of view
from the get go and not mold her to his liking. Let her be!! With her
just being the truth will be told and she will gain fans from being
genuine."

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We're right there with you, MC Lyte. If only it were this simple.

The Female MC
[OS]

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