Hip hop turned 50 last year, and there were celebrations all around. One thing missing was the presence of the women pioneers. Besides Sylvia Robinson’s founding of Sugar Hill Records, not many other women are acknowledged unless to deride them for their skills or lyrical content. The truth is women have been present molding hip hop from the beginning, facing down the misogyny thrown at them to do what they loved. For this Black History Month, I will be looking at just a few of these pioneers.
SYLVIA ROBINSON (1935-2011)
Sylvia Robinson was already an industry veteran when she founded Sugar Hill Records, having recorder her first song in 1954 at the age of 14 and since writing and producing R&B songs throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In 1979, she founded her own record label and named it Sugar Hill Records, after an affluent Black neighborhood in her native Harlem. The label’s premier release was Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979, the first hip hop track on Billboard’s Top 40. In 1982, she released Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five’s track “The Message”, showing rap’s ability to address hard topics while being entertaining. In the same vein she released Melle Mel’s “White Lines (Don’t Do It)” in 1983. This song’s video is also Spike Lee’s directorial debut. Sugar Hill records folded in 1986 due to a distribution dispute with MCA Records. Robinson continued to work, forming Bon Ami Records in 1987. She signed a groupd that would eventually be called Naughty by Nature, one of New Jersey’s hip hop gems. Sylvia Robinson passed away in 2011 due to congestive heart failure. She is fittingly called the “Mother of Hip-Hop” and was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022 for her work.
The Mercedes Ladies is the first all-female Hip Hop DJ crew. They formed around 1976 and boasted 21 members at one point. Core members were DJs Baby D, Eve-a-Def, LaSpank, RD Smiley, Sheri Sher, Sty-Sty, and Zina Zee. Mercedes Ladies espoused women’s empowerment and preformed throughout the parks and block parties in the Bronx. Eventually, they would perform with Hip Hop Legends like Red Alert, Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and the Furious Five, but they never secured a major record deal. They do not often receive the recognition they deserve and are often forgotten in the telling of Hip Hop’s early years. However, Mercedes Ladies paved a path for women MCs and DJs who followed them. In 2008, Sheri Sher wrote and published a biographical novel about themselves entitled “Mercedes Ladies”.
SHA-ROCK (1962-)
Sharon Green, is the first female emcee to be recorded on vinyl. Sha started out as a b-girl in South Bronx, and she was influenced by Kool Herc to try her hand at rapping. At the behest of Sylvia Robinson of Sugar Hill Records, Sha-Rock became the +1 of the Funky 4 + 1. They released the 12-inch “Rapping and Rocking the House” and “That’s the Joint” nearly back-to-back, and both of them were big hits. In the latter release, Sha-Rock innovated a style of recording called “echo chamber”, in which her voice would bounce and drag as if she were in an amphitheater. This style inspired later artists like DMC and MC Lyte to do the same. Sha-Rock is also the first female rapper to perform on live television, when the Funky 4 + 1 were the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live.” Sha-Rock is often considered “Mother of the Mic” for her work. In 2023 she was honored with the Key to the Bronx.
WANDA DEE (1963-)
Lawanda McFadden is the first female hip hop DJ recorded on vinyl. Harlem born and Bronx raised, grew up in the middle of the birthplace of the genre. In her teens she became a protégée of DJ Kool Herc, who gave her the stage name “Wanda Dee”. On top of DJing, she started also rapping. Dee would eventually meet Afrika Bambaataa, who inducted her into the Universal Zulu Nation hip hop collective, the first woman in their crew. Wanda Dee also appeared in the Harry Belafonte-produced film “Beat Street.” So talented was Wanda Dee that her 1989 single “To the Bone” was sampled by British electronic band The KLF, but without her permission of knowledge. She sued, and in the settlement, they compensated her with a share of the royalties and co-writing credits for the US release of their album “The White Room”. When The KLF retired in 1992, Wanda Dee continued to thrive, going on a 90-country tour dubbed “The KLF Experience Featuring Wanda Dee”, much to their chagrin.
ROXANNE SHANTE (1969-)
Lolita Shante Gooden was a prolific freestyle rapper even before she put her voice to wax. At age 14, the Queensbridge native worked with legendary DJ/Producers Mr. Magic and Marley Marl to record “Roxanne’s Revenge”, an diss record and response to UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne”, all because UTFO snubbed Marl for a concert performance they were supposed to do with him. “Roxanne’s Revenge” was an instant hit, and it also talked to women’s perspective of the street harassment that was common and emulated in “Roxanne, Roxanne”. Roxanne Shante’s first song sparked the “Roxanne Wars” and stoked the smoldering Bridge Wars, inter-borough beefs and rap battles between artists that spanned 30 to 100 songs. While not all songs were memorable, a most notable line was Boogie Down Production’s “The Bridge is Over”, in which a young, erstwhile conscious rapper KRS-One would imply that Roxanne Shante was only worth what she could provide sexually (reminder: she was only 16 at the time). Shante held her own throughout this time though, once famously recording a 7-minute no-break freestyle Marley Marl. Gooden retired from the music industry at 25, but she would still make occasional appearances throughout the 90s and 2000s. Her unflinching attitude against the constant misogyny thrown at her inspired other female rappers to step into the spotlight.
Salt (Cheryl James) and Pepa (Sandra Denton) were classmates at Queens Community College and co-workers at College Point Sears when they met and became fast friends. James’s then boyfriend, Hurby “Love Bug” Azor, wanted to record them for a class project. The song was called “Show Stoppa”, a response song to Doug E. Fresh’s “The Show”. Luv Bug passed along his project to Marley Marl, who played it on his weekly radio show on WBLS. The track was frequently requested though it wasn’t available in stores given that it was a school project. Independent Pop Art Records stepped in to give the song an official release, and it hit 46 on the Billboard R&B Chart. This success inspired the recording of “Hot, Cool & Vicious” in 1986, But Luv Bug had the forethought of making the group all women, so he hired a DJ Spinderella, Latoya Hanson. “Hot, Cool & Vicious” became the first female rap group album to certify gold and platinum, but Salt and Spinderella did not get along, so Azor recruited a 16-year old Deidra Roper to be the new Spinderella. Their subsequent albums, “A Salt with a Deadly Pepa” and “Blacks’ Magic” would also be major hits, certified gold and platinum respectively. Salt-N-Pepa would rhyme about the joy of women’s body autonomy, sexual pleasure, and also take on serious subjects like sexual assault and safer sex practices, and AIDS with songs like “Let’s Talk About Sex” and “Do You Want Me”. Their 1993 album “Very Necessary” went 5x platinum with hits like “Shoop”, “What a Man”, and “None of Your Business”. The album garnered them a Grammy Award for best Performance by a Rap Duo or Group in 1995, a first for an all-female rap group. They won a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2021. Though Salt-N-Pepa have since broken up, they will always be considered The First Ladies of Hip Hop.
MC LYTE (1970-)
Flatbush native Lana Michele Moorer started her career at age 12 and eventually became the first female rapper to release a solo album. Though “Lyte As A Rock” (1988) wasn’t considered a mainstream commercial success, it was critically well-received and respected as a classic in the hip hop community, and it was the launchpad for MC Lyte’s career. MC Lyte shed light on societal issues and her personal life in her rhymes. She was a prominent member in the Stop The Violence Movement, a rap surpergroup that addressed urban violence and poverty. Her 1993 single “Ruffneck” was the first solo woman rap song to be certified gold. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Lyte would collaborate with a broad spectrum of musicians, from Jay-Z to Queen Latifah to Aerosmith to Sinead O’Connor. In 2006, she donated her diary, turntable, and other personal memorabilia to the Smithsonian Institution. From 2011 to 2013, she was the first Black woman president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Recording Academy (Grammys). Throughout her career, MC Lyte used her platform and power to help disenfranchised people. She partnered with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund to go tour South Africa and teach young leaders. Her personal foundation Hip Hop Sisters Foundation garners scholarship money for students in need.
