Female rap beef is outta control

Rap beef has always possessed a kind of WWE quality by definition, but there's something rather dispiriting about the way in which dis wars between female performers tend to get hyped up that little bit more, as if the likes of beef-seeking-missile Azealia Banks and net-celeb femcee Angel Haze are only really interesting when they're pulling each other's metaphorical weaves out. Even supposedly liberal, left-leaning publications like the Guardian can't resist a good old-fashioned cat fight, it seems.

Of all the female rappers to have emerged over the last couple of years, Azealia Banks is one of the most intriguing. Unlike certain of her peers, who've sought validation via co-signs from established male performers or somewhat unreliable internet buzz, she's blessed with a strongly individualistic streak. She seems determined that she'll be the one to dictate the terms upon which she'll stand or fall, whether that be via all the “Little Mermaid in the hood” imagery or by choosing to rhyme on tracky house beats or over twitchy, Warp-inspired electronics, rather than voguish Lex Luger knock-offs or the obligatory Mike Will beat. All of which makes her propensity towards bouts of public bickering with the (often inferior) competition seem that much more bewildering.



But perhaps a more worthwhile question might be; in the already hyper-competitive world of hip-hop, how come female rappers generally exhibit a more alarming level of open aggression towards their peers than even their male counterparts? Never mind that it plays up to every lazy stereotype you've ever heard about some women being more anti-woman than even the most avowed misogynist. It sometimes seems as if there's a compulsion to view all other female emcees as threats to be torn down at every opportunity. I say “sometimes”, because it's worth pointing out that this applies much more readily to US performers than their British equivalents, who are models of virtuous, supportive sisterhood in comparison.

Perhaps it's because they've noticed that the industry at large only seems prepared to accommodate one successful female rapper at any one time. It's a little like the one-in,one-out situation with reggae acts. After all, how many people can name more than one currently active, internationally successful reggae act with widespread name recognition? I'll give you Sean Paul as a starter, but after that I'll bet that anyone else you name either isn't really that big, is in decline or is dead. But I digress.

There's a widely-held perception that, rightly or wrongly, rap's core audience simply isn't interested in female rappers. Consequently the industry will only seriously invest in either the most extraordinarily talented (Missy) or the ones with a strong image, preferably one which is highly sexualised (Lil' Kim). Occasionally, there's a striking confluence of both skills and image (Nicki and Azealia), but for the rest of the pack all that remains is a frantic scramble to get through the door before it slams shut. A big part of that scramble involves a ruthless trashing of the competition along the way, and so we end up perpetually witnessing something like the closing scene of Blue Collar, only with Harvey Keitel and Richard Pryor replaced by a parade of rappers with two X chromosomes. Which, at its worst and most spiteful, manifests itself in the kind of smack-talk that involves a black woman making sideways remarks about another black woman's skintone. In the words of Jeru, ain't the devil happy.

"Will he make it out alive..?"

It's long been a suspicion of mine that part of the reason more rappers and R&B performers choose not to come out is the fear that there'll never again be a point, certainly not in their professional lives, where they won't be expected to discuss their sexuality. It won't make a blind bit of difference whether their music is on some perpetual next shit or if it's landfill. From now on, for a significant part of the media, "who's Frank Ocean fucking?" is always going to be a bigger story than his music. This is pretty depressing.



All the same, this is a big deal whichever way you slice it. Added to which, if your area of business is an idiom where, generally speaking, notions of masculinity are far from fluid, then that's quite a risk you're taking there. It'll be interesting to see how things are looking a couple of albums from now, when we'll know the extent to which the current fuss has shaped Frank Ocean's career path. Right now, as you'd expect, there's no shortage of people ready to declare that this news means they're no longer able to listen to his music, seemingly without a thought for how irrational that might appear. Meanwhile, Chris Brown.

Andrew Noz said something on Twitter that I thought was insightful, but for some reason he chose to delete it a couple of minutes later. I wouldn't want it to get lost in all the noise, though;  

"dude very carefully wrote about a complicated experience only to have it immediately reduced to a soundbite."

Frank's tumblr post is a nice bit of writing, after all, apart from being something of a cultural watershed. But that little observation from Noz also raises the issue of what our reactions, and those of the media, might be saying about us. I think it's perfectly possible to separate the art from the artist; you just have to want to do it. And unless Frank Ocean chooses to be gender-specific, I don't see where the issue is. I don't remember anybody being too bothered by this, and it's clear as fucking day what it's about now...

Speaking of which, isn't it funny who's turned out to be the first rap crew with an actively progressive attitude towards sexual orientation?

Erykah Badu puts it out there. All of it.

At 3.33am last Saturday morning, Erykah Badu premiered the video for her new single Window Seat on her official website, and her new album New Amerykah Part Two (Return Of The Ankh) is released in the US today. UMG has been pulling the video off a few sites, including YouTube, but the clip's viewable on Badu's website as well.



Without an enormous amount of fuss, Erykah Badu has spent much of the last decade planting her flag squarely in the centre of that piece of turf - left-of-centre, post-hip-hop, black female singer/songwriter - that previously appeared to have been Lauryn Hill's to call her own. She still gets bracketed in with that whole neo-soul, coffee shop, headwraps-and-incense clique that emerged in the mid-90s, usually by people who don't realise she's made five albums since breaking through with On And On and the subsequent Baduizm album, but she's gone in a much more interesting direction since then.

The video was shot hit-and-run style and sans permit on St. Patrick's Day in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, TX, the site of John F. Kennedy's assassination. One camera, one take, then run before the cops turn up (you see her feeding the meter at the start because she knew she'd have to come back for the car later). Badu has described the shoot as being simultaneously terrifying and liberating, and although the symbolism may perhaps be a little heavy-handed - if you expose yourself as an artist, you risk being shot down - it's still a pretty daring thing to do whichever way you slice it. Almost immediately, she was criticised for supposedly indulging in the kind of thing that she herself has previously criticised others for (the whole "half-naked video chick" yada-yada) whilst trying to dress it up as some kind of guerilla performance art exercise. Personally, I don't think that argument is even remotely capable of standing up, and I'm sure she's perfectly well aware that most of the talk surrounding the video will deal with the fact she gets her kit off at the end. But come on now - this isn't Lil' Kim's Crush On You. It's not even Alanis Morrisette's Thank You. Erykah is not auditioning for Girls Gone Wild here. And even though the concept of the artist being attacked for daring to express him/herself can seem a bit whiney and self-indulgent in the hands of some, Badu has been on the dirty end of such attacks often enough for her to have an issue or two with the groupthink mentality she criticises at the end of the video. There have been plenty of instances in the past where she's been vilified as a kind of hip-hop Yoko Ono/succubus figure, supposedly emasculating rappers like Common or Andre 3000 and leading them astray (whatever that means), or for dressing herself in pseudo-mystic boho/earth mother/numerology rags early on in her career. Nevertheless, she continues to push the boat out.

Not that there's any connection between the two things other than the one in my mind, compare and contrast with Lady Gaga's Telephone video. Coincidentally, here's another female artist courting controversy, who's not afraid of using the pop video format for something more than the purpose of just selling records. But entertaining as Telephone is, it's unclear what point, if any, Gaga is trying to make other than cramming together a succession of images each more bizarre and surreal than the preceding one. The most obvious conclusion to arrive at is that Telephone is just a well-executed 80s throwback, paying lavish homage to the days of high-concept mini-movies like Michael Jackson's Thriller and Bad videos or Madonna's Like A Prayer. On the other hand, with Window Seat, Badu is almost literally out there on her own, and is arguably taking a far bigger risk in playing around with iconography that continues to have a lot of potency and resonance as far as the American psyche is concerned. It resonates that little bit more when you consider it (unintentionally) arrives only days after those nimrods occupying the furthest lunatic fringe of the American right began to vocalise their belief that the correct response to Barack Obama's attempt at healthcare reform was to assassinate him before they woke up to find a gulag in every town.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it. Maybe it's because I've grown used to pop stars who aren't interested in giving their audiences anything to think about which doesn't relate to the mythology they create for themselves and expect us to buy into.