This IP hop culture then took off, with several groups, mainly male groups, coming together to emphasis the pillars of hip hop; Mincing, Digging, graffiti, breakfasting, and beating (Starr, 2007) The sass was a groundbreaking decade for hip hop, In that this Is where artists other than Black males started to enter the rap and hip hop scene. Artists such as Salt-N-Peep, MAC Late, and Queen Latish, opened the door for female MAC artists. Salt- N-Peep were the first all female rap group to hit the mainstream, with multiple successes, and their presence opened the doors for artists Like Queen Lath.
In this time, female Masc. had to prove that they were Just as good as their male counterparts, it not better. This competition left the female artists being ;hard” and showing their “street creed” so much so that they were very masculine, because society at that point may not have been ready to accept a woman as both sexy and a great rapper. After artists like MAC Late and the Queen opened the door for female rappers, hip hop took another turn. Artists like TTL, Foxy Brown, and Ill Kim, who not only emulated the hip hop culture, but brought sexiness Into the equation.
With the emergence of these artists, females in hip hop had a socialized connotation that almost only depicted women in a sexual manner when it came to hip hop. Women in hip hop at this point held sexual roles, which were the Diva, Gold Digger, or the Dyke (Stephens, 2007), and their music usually reflected that; being about sex, money, or fulfilling the “hard” roles like a male rapper, and reflected more masculine characteristics than feminine (Stephens, 2007).
In the late 1 ass’s, with the high sexual content of the female MAC such as Ill Kim, and Foxy Brown, Lauren Hill released her first solo album, The Insemination of Lauren Hill. Lauren Hill had all bases covered when It came to hip hop: she had the street credibility, the lyrical ability, the melodic flow, sexuality etc. (Thespians, 2010), but she combined that with everyday female issues of that time, which made this album relatable for both women, and men.
This album was about her struggles In life and love at the time, particularly about her pregnancy at the time she was writing about the album. The album was classified as a hip hop album; however it was a blend of rap, rapped flawlessly on a single album, with songs like Do Hop (That Thing), which fleeted the old styles of do hop vocal harmonies that were prevalent in music in the sass and’ass, and Everything is Everything. Lauren used Jamaican influences as well in the songs on this album, with Jamaican dialects and a reggae style to her songs.
Not only did this album infuse the different music styles, she also addressed personal issues that before this time female rap artists did not do for the most part. She opened her life to her fans, as artists in the singer/songwriter forms of folk and contemporary music styles did with songs like her single Ex-Factor. This song had such a personal component, that although it wasn’t as commercial successful as a song like Do Hop, it still showed such a personalized aspect of hip hop, especially female hip hop, that wasn’t prevalent before.
This album debuted on the Billboard charts at number one, and sold more copies during its first week than any other female artist’s album at that time (USA Today, 1998). This album also won Lauren 5 Grammar Award nominations, as well as 5 Grammar Award wins, which made Lauren the first female artist, hip hop or otherwise, to have that many nominations and wins, in one Grammar Award night. With all this success on her first album, one would suspect that she would have a blossoming career; however, her second release was not as successful.
This could be due to the fact that people expected her to outdo her success of The Insemination, which is highly unlikely. Lauren went a very spiritual road for her second album, and some even believed that it was unfinished (Thespians, 2010), which could have lead to the disappointment of her career that persisted from then on. With the success of The Insemination of Lauren Hills Lauren will forever go down n history as a very influential participant in the hip hop culture to many female hip hop artists of today (Thespians, 2010), and tomorrow.