That’s Thizzle Dance, made popular by the Vallejo rapper Mac Dre.
The Bay Area has always had the style and swagger. Here some of the earlier Bay dance styles:
The Humpty Dance by Digital Underground (1989)
MC Hammer Going Wild in his Hammer pants (1990)
This thursday at Batterram we make a trip to the Golden State. It’s all good from Diego to tha Bay!
Santogold – Creator
M.I.A. – Paper Planes
Yo Majesty – Club Action
Kid Sister ft. Kanye – Pro Nails
DJ Blaqstarr & Rye Rye – Shake It To The Ground
Santogold just released her debut album this year. She was the lead singer of the punk rock band Stiffed, coming from Philadelphia. Everybody already knows M.I.A. the british artist of Sri Lankan Tamil descent with the great albums Arular (2005) and Kala (2007). Yo Majesty is a new girl group coming from Tampa, Florida, they have two EP’s out, “Yo” and “Kryptonite Pussy”. Kid Sister comes from Chicago and her debut album is supposed to come out this autumn. Rye Rye is young (17 yo) talent coming from Baltimore and you should know her song Wassup Wassup by now!
The second Batterram event “Ladies First” highlighted some of the coolest female artists in hip-hop but also in soul, r&b, dancehall, electroclash and whatever is good. The DJ’s and dancers kept the party live until 2 a.m. DJ Vibe covered for Reea and played some of the funkiest female hip-hop from the golden 90’s blended with some soul classics. Pussy P finished the night with dancefloor bangers from the likes of M.I.A., Yo Majesty and many more, not to forget Feven! Feven is the Eritrean-born Swedish female mc who broke through in 2001. Wonder where she’s now?
Remember this?
Feven – 10 budord
The music industry is what it is, the realest shit gets slept on too often. So here we go! Check out some of today’s realest female emcees who you don’t see every day on MTV.
Medusa – I See You
Medusa – My Momma Raised A G
Silk-E feat. San Quinn – Hard times
Silk-E live at The Fillmore with The Coup
Newsense with Psychodrama – Horrible Terrible No Good Very Bad Day
Medusa is the L.A. Gangsta Goddess who comes from the legendary Project Blowed crew. Silk E comes from The Bay Area and is collaborating and touring with the revolutionary rap group The Coup. They say KRS-1 said she’s the rawest female rapper he ever heard. On some The Coup songs she sings, too. Newsense comes from Chicago, she was part of the legendary Chi rap group Psychodrama and the Vice Lords street gang.
Mystic – The Life
Goapele – Closer
Streets to the Hill – El Shaddai
Mystic comes from Oakland, and her debut album “Cuts for Luck and Scars for Freedom” came out in 2001. Goapele is a Berkeley-born, Oakland-based singer-songwriter. She has done 3 albums and collaborated with rappers like E-40 and Hieroglyphics. She’s also featured on Mistah Fab’s song “Make It Thru” (2008). Streets to the Hill is an Oakland-based duo that “combines the lyrics and struggle from the ghettos of Kingston, Jamaica with the streetwise, neo-soul grooves of New York, Philadelphia, Oakland, and Atlanta”. Their debut album “The Soul of Kingston” came out in 2006.
The name LADIES FIRST comes from the classic song by the same name. It was a song by Queen Latifah (who was 19 back then) and it featured the London-born rapper Monie Love. It’s not the hottest song but it was influential for sure. The video was directed by Fab 5 Freddy and it presented Latifah as a “matriarch, military strategist and militant”. Latifah was by no means the first notable female mc – before her there was Sha Rock, Lady B and others – but her success paved the way for many more. Her third album, Black Reign, was the first album by a female MC ever to go gold.
According to Jeff Chang, however, the musical counterpart of the emerging hip-hop feminism was not in rap but in the so-called “neo-soul” movement. It was “a movement opened up by Elliot and Hill, Mary J. Blige, Meshell Ndegeocello, Jill Scott, and Erykah Badu, that put the groove back into the music and the love back into lyrics. Emblematic of the shift was Angie Stone, who had been a female rap pioneer in The Sequence, and now returned into the limelight as a singer.”
This thursday 21 August 2008 Batterram comes with a feminist flavor. It’s called LADIES FIRST. Special Guests Reea (Blaka Blaka) & Pussy P (Le Corps Mince de Françoise) & Resident DJ’s play the hottest tunes by the queens of hip-hop & urban music.
The evening starts at 20 with a screening of Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a movie about masculinity in hip-hop. Check out the presentation of the project: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/hiphop
From 21 ’til 02 the dj’s provide us with some laid back tunes and with somethin’ 2 dance 2!
Where it’s at: Rajasarenpenger 12, Töölö, Helsinki. Suggested entrance fee 3 euros. Support the scene!
When talking about female mc’s one should not forget Ladybug Mecca. She was part of the NYC-based “hipster” hip-hop group Digable Planets that made two tight albums in 1993 and 1994. So jazzy, so cool.
On another classic song “Rebirth of Slick” they had the line that was later sampled for the E-40 song “Yay Area”. We be to rap what key be to lock! According to their song “Where I’m From” they also read Marx.
Salt-n-Pepa was the shit back in the day. This female rap group came from NYC and is known for their hit songs “Push It” and “Let’s Talk About Sex”. In 1988 they did a song together with the DC-based go-go (*) band Experience Unlimited (E.U.). It sounds like this:
Salt-N-Pepa – Shake Your Thang
On the video they’re confronting cops who try to stop them from dancing dirty!
* Go-go is a subgenre of funk that originated in the Washington D.C. area during the mid- to late-1970s. Chuck Brown is credited with having developed most of the hallmarks of the style. With few exceptions, go-go bands have seen little success outside of the Washington D.C. metro area, yet the style lives on and continues to evolve.
