How Female Rap Went Explicit In The 90s
- Elexus Jionde
- Dec 9
- 6 min read
Before the creation of W.A.P. and other freaky female-led songs we bop to today, female rappers of the 90s were getting sexual. Keep reading to learn how female rap got explicit in the 90s.
After the more overt yet still subtle sexual references in R&B of the 1970s and 80s, Black women in the 90s hottest musical genre, Hip Hop, were even more direct. Salt n Peppa were definitely sexy when they arrived on the scene in the late 80s, but then came their 1990 song Lets Talk About Sex.
The song wasn’t explicit— but it was straightforward— and highlighted the positive and negative aspects of sex during a time when HIV/AIDS awareness was crucial. In 1993’s None of Your Business, they rapped:
If I want to take a guy home with me tonight
It's none of your business
If she want to be a freak and sell it on the weekend
It's none of your business
While this anti-slut shaming anthem directly conflicted with black respectability politics, it was still very tame compared to the new girlies on the block. In 1990, NWA’s Easy E signed the short lived Hoes With Attitude, whose 1991 debut album Livin In A Hoe House made one reviewer write, “this L.A.-based trio makes the mistake of fighting fire with fire -- appealing to the animal instincts of the males species by talking dirty to them…”
The group was originally made up of Kim aka “Baby Girl”, 'Jazz' (Tanya Kenner)
Diva (Dion Devoux). In one song, Nasty, the trio rapped:
He aint getting no pussy cus his dick is too short
Yeah I said you were ready to play
This aint Burger King you can’t have it your way
In 1990, before there was Lil Kim there was Kim Davis aka 'Choice' from Houston Texas, who was associated with the Geto Boys. She rapped on Cat Got Your Tongue in 1990:
He really tried to eat my meat
He must’ve been a new freak cause he was nothin’ but teeth
I said hol’ up, goddam, what the fuck?
Nigga get your black ass up
Wrote The New York Times:
“Choice is nearly a mirror image of the rappers she answers; she, too, subscribes to the categorization of women as bitches, hoes and freaks, although she bristles when men try to buy her favors. But unlike most of her male counterparts, she sounds like she actually enjoys sex, even while she's keeping score.”
HWA and Choice were joined by Bytches With Problems, or BWP in 1990, with BYTCHES standing for “Beautiful, Young, Talented College Honeys.”
Starring Lyndah McCaskill and Tanisha Michelle, their song Two Minute Brother reached number 6 on the rap charts.
See, I'm the kind of bitch that loves to be fucked
Trimmed, tucked, stuffed, and sucked
Up in my ass, deep down in my throat
So we can get busy, but jimmy wear a raincoat
Their raunchy music and the accompanying video even reached the mainstream, with Entertainment Weekly reporting in 1991 that “…a whole Ivory soap factory couldn’t wash these ladies’ mouths clean.” Just like all the other black and sexual female artists who came before them, BWP were dynamic women with wide interests. The two even licensed the Rodney King video for their music video “Wanted,” which stemmed from a 1985 incident in which Lyndah was beaten and choked by police.
Still, there was a potent fear and mistrust of black women who made explicit rap that could go bar for bar with that of the men. The fear of black women’s sexuality can be summed up by an Ice Cube quote: “…The power of sex is more powerful than the motherfuckers in Saudi Arabia. A girl that you want to get with can make you do damn near anything if she knows how to do her shit right.” The theme of a powerful and sexy woman, or a seductive femme fatale in the future of pussy rap can’t be examined without this quote— but we’ll be back to that in a moment.
Clearly, for BWP to reach number 6 on the rap charts, there was a budding consumer base looking for raw lyrics by black women— and these would be the ones who found empowerment in the lyrics. But on the flip side, criticism of “women who talk back” was the norm. Said Queen Latifah, “I like some of what BWP does.… BWP are just saying 'stand up for yourself and don't be bullied by any man'. I just have some problems on the vulgar way they say certain things.” Noted executive Lyor Cohen, who claimed that one lyric from their debut album had been eliminated for being “beyond.. the breaking point”, also said that BYTCHES was “one of the truest recorded histories of urban teenage girls ever made. There are a lot more BWPs than Queen Latifah's.”
The album did not bare the logo of Russell Simmons Rush Associated Labels, a subsidiary of Def Jam, where Cohen was the president, because of rumors that they didn’t want to be associated with it’s explicit content. When asked about rumors that some women at Columbia refused to work on the album, Simmons said, “There are black women at every label who wouldn’t think that group is funny.” The explicitness of lyrics by HWA and BWP, while radical when juxtaposed to expectations of black women’s behavior, don’t obscure the larger conversation happening in the early 90s about hip hop.
The misogyny was always a step away from female rappers, even when they were being lauded for “sticking it to men”. In addition to being under the rapist Russell Simmons, at the January 27th 1991 release party for BWP in Hollywood, future hip hop mogul Dr. Dre assaulted journalist Dee Barnes. After getting a slap on the wrist and being ordered to pay Barnes money, he would say the next year, “Ain’t nothing you can do now by talking about it. Besides, it ain't no big thing – I just threw her through a door.” His career, of course, was in tact, and he’d go on to beat other women.
In 1993, the rapper LeShaun rapped on Wild Thang:
I know you're hungry, come on, continue
I'm gonna fill you up, just look at the menu
He gave me some tongue, the man was delicious
On a health scale, he was very nutritious
If you don’t recognize these lyrics, you definitely recognize the opening lyric and the beat of the song, which would be used in LL Cool J’s hit song, Doin It. Though she laid down all the iconic filthy lines of one of my favorite songs of all time, she wasn’t featured in the video because she was pregnant, which likely impacted her career. The same year of Doin It, Adina Howard sang about being a “Freak Like Me”, which was certified platinum, fitting for an era known for Freaknik.
The Naughty Nineties, when it comes to black women, belonged to Kimberly Denise Jones, and to a lesser extent, Foxy Brown. Harlots or Heroines, asked The Source in 1997.
Foxy, born Inga Marchand, was 17 years old when she recorded the following line on LL Cool J’s I Shot Ya in 1995:
Four carats, the ice rocks, pussy bangin' like Versace locs, pops (So what the deal)
Wanna creep? Open like raw asscheeks
Lil Kim’s 1996 debut album Hardcore was iconic and controversial. Kim was in an abusive relationship with Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie, and whether or not he wrote the lyrics for her is was a major rumor that hounded the early part of her career. But their grit and frankness on later albums have stood the test of time and inspired countless female emcees down the line. She bragged on Queen Bitch:
Bet I wet ya like hurricanes and typhoons
Got buffoons eating my pussy while I watch cartoons
A series of articles picked apart her image, and whether or not her music, which was massively popular among different classes of women— was empowering or exploitative. In 1997, The Rolonda Watts show asked, “Is Lil Kim Sexualizing our Children?”, turning Kim into a villain responsible for the morality of American youth.
Some people pointed out the need for more explicit boundaries between what is purely for adults. Kim insisted that her music and persona was a manufactured image. An October 1998 article in Spin magazine mentions that Kim had “pop-oriented plans” for her 2nd album, which wouldn’t “cover the same sexualized territory as her 1996 debut.” In another Spin feature from that year titled From Freaky Mama to Buttoned Down Businesswoman, Kim said, “That stuff I rap about is what I used to do four or five years ago—Ive really just been chilling out lately. When I hear all these things about how Im a ho and a slut it kind of hurts me.” The critics of 1996 and 97 had definitely bothered the Queen Bee… but her follow-up albums and image were still raunchy.