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Words of Wisdom. Monie Love on “Okeydoke” Rappers and Sexism in Hip-hop.

Feminism / Monie Love

Monie Love Essence Fest
(Paras Griffin/ Getty Images Entertainment)


DJ Monie Love is one of Hip-hops original pioneers. The talented MC continues to be a much need voice for women in hip-hop — in many ways women like Monie Love are the original “Hood Feminists”. At 44, when asked about the current state of hip-hop Monie Love definitely doesn’t mince words. She recently spoke about “okeydoke” rappers, a.k.a. rappers who indulge in hypermasculine performance that degrades women, and how the culture surrounding them has resulted in some serious marginalization of women in the genre of hip-hop. In an interview with Vice Magazine, Love stated,

The okeydoke rappers is fucking it up for everybody else. They’re messing it up for the people that really do want to be a part of the culture and a part of the art. They do, unfortunately. It’s the same thing with women. It’s like when there are two or three women that are like look at my butt and look at my boobs, unfortunately men then tend to generalize women and then you walk past a bunch of men and they’re all doing the whole googling, oogling, argling and unfortunately it’s like, no—I don’t like that type of attention. They’re conditioned to stereotype because they’ve seen six other women that want that attention. Then here comes the one behind the six that doesn’t want that attention, but unfortunately the men are already conditioned by the previous six. Same thing with hip-hop. Same thing with MCs. There are so many people flooding the market that care nothing for the culture, that know nothing about the culture, don’t care to even listen or learn anything about the culture—I just want the bread real quick. The general public gets conditioned by that and there are a lot of really prolific artists that get lost in the sauce.

…

When I was on the charts and when I was up for a Grammy two years in a row, so was Salt-N-Peppa. So was MC Lyte. So was Queen Latifah. There was us on the east coast in New York and then on the west coast there was Oaktown 3.5.7 and J.J. Fad all out at the same time, all selling their records at the same time, all touring through the United States and overseas at the same time. I don’t come from a place where it’s one woman at a time. I don’t believe that.

Monie Love also took to Twitter recently to defend Nicki Minaj and point out the real problem is the lack of female rappers in general.


She went on to drop more knowledge about the harmful impact of BET and programs like the infamously raunchy late night show “Uncut”.


No disagreements here. As I continue to root for the long list of female MC’s, new and old, that are still putting out great material, I have to wonder if we’ll ever have another mainstream/charting artist with a persona like MC Lyte or Missy Elliot. Either way, “Ain’t no shame, ladies do your thang. Just make sure you ahead of the game”.

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