Black Women Exist in Music Outside of Hip-Hop and R&B
Constraints on the achievements of Black people date back to Europeans’ planned & prolonged brutality against the polymaths of Africa. In music, these lines were marked by genres as white executives explored ways to market – and inherently exploit – Black artists. Followers, committees, and the like commonly surmise Black people belong in Rhythm and Blues or Rap only. But what happens to the girls who cannot be categorized? Or dare to not exclusively become hip-hop or soul superstars?
Since 1619, white Americans have been working overtime to ensure the separation of white and Black in an effort to never confuse which was inferior. This forced Black people in America to create our own culture and sustain with the little we had. Africans on the middle passage used singing to communicate due to language barriers between the differing tribes. During slavery, they used song to find happiness and ease the pain of a time in which their deaths were merely means justified by an end in the eyes of white people who thoroughly enjoyed and profited from their torture. Some of the expressions of the enslaved live in the lyrics of the earliest blues songs. These “songs of survival” (as genealogist Kenyatta D. Berry names them) became spirituals that would help them navigate freedom in a post-civil war world.
The earliest recording (that has survived) of a Black voice is from 1890. George W. Johnson’s “The Whistling Coon” and “The Laughing Song" are the “second and third hit songs with lyrics” in popular music history according to The Columbia Journal of American Studies. But it was a new sound that took form in a red light city in New Orleans that became quintessential negro music: ragtime. Storyville, New Orleans, also known as “The District,” was a port city created as a means to regulate prostitution and it became the state’s highest source of revenue. Due to segregation, other forms of entertainment emerged, which attracted even more tourists. Musicians with African, French, Spanish, and Anglo-American backgrounds performed in these profit centers, and their styles merged to form ragtime. The foundation was rhythm.
But when Storyville was shut down in 1917 as the U.S. navy prepared for WWI, harmony was disbanded. Some ragtime musicians stayed in New Orleans and played in white homes, while others went north. Jazz, stemming from ragtime and quite similar in the early stages, had already begun to spread throughout the U.S. Blues started to expand with new advancements in technology after WWI. Juke joints (also known as “colored cafes” in the late 1800s) and other segregated music venues popularized across the country by the 1920s because of the migration of African Americans to northern, industrial cities like Chicago. This period is commonly known as the roaring 20s.
Over the next two decades, the lines of jazz and blues became blurred with emerged eras of swing, soul, and more. Thus, R&B was established in the 1940s. According to Britannica, Jerry Wexler coined the term in 1947 “when he was editing the charts at the trade journal Billboard and found that the record companies issuing Black popular music considered the chart names then in use (Harlem Hit Parade, Sepia, Race) to be demeaning.” Billboard renamed the “Harlem Hit Parade” category to “Rhythm and Blues” in 1949. With an acceptable term finally established, urban music propelled into the commercial space.
And so did one of its unintentional spinoffs. Despite what white cultural commentators project, rock-n-roll derived from blues and the originator is Sister Rosetta Tharpe, not Elvis Presley. Tharpe was famously known for singing gospel lyrics while strumming her electric guitar, a staple in rock music today. Black artists like Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix, and Chuck Berry have long been erased from the genre’s list of recognized hitmakers because of Presley’s calculated take-over to steer rock-n-roll away from race music. In the mid-1900s, white people enjoyed Black entertainers to the point where popular music was essentially run by Black stars. But, like much of American culture, once a cis-white man emerged and could be praised, Black pioneers were left in the dust.
African American lovers and performers of rock-n-roll have been pushing to reclaim the genre. Last year, the Baltimore Rock Opera Society (BROS) curated “Rock Opera 101: Race, Rock, & Revision” to present the truth behind the rewritten history of rock and outline the importance of rock in relation to Black music. In recent weeks, one artist has positioned herself to be the frontrunner for undoing the white-washing of rock-n-roll: Willow.
“I never thought I could do rock music, because I was trained since I was 8 to sing R&B,” the 20-year-old multihyphenate told W Magazine. “Then I was just like, you know what? Eff it. I got in the studio and started messing around. I was doing a whole bunch of demos during quarantine because I was like, I literally have nothing to do. Why not let me just see if I can actually achieve this musical vision?”
It is early, but I do not think I will regret stating my belief that she’s done just that. Her earlier sound falls under the now dominant umbrella of alternative R&B, but her distinct style has somehow remained under the radar. This era, Willow is taking on an entirely new sound on her forthcoming project inspired by her mother Jada Pinkett-Smith’s stint in metal. The first single “Transparent Soul” features drums from Travis Barker and a visual accumulated 4 million views on YouTube in four weeks, while her second single “Grow” with Avril Lavigne awaits release.
As in the 1600s, Black people have consistently innovated and adored music. Hip-Hop was essentially birthed from this sentiment. Block parties were prevalent in New York City in the 1970s because of an economic crisis that left Black & Latinx people in impoverished boroughs with little resources and entertainment. DJ Kool Herc used an element from his Jamaican culture to give Bronx youth exactly what they needed: loud tunes from a sound system compact enough to be set-up anywhere and an emcee flair famously used during the “break” of a track (the most up-tempo, percussive portion) to make people dance. It worked. So well, that the term “breakdancing” began to circulate in media in the 1980s.
Grandmaster Flash, a young DJ who idolized DJ Kool Herc, incorporated Herc’s style into his sets in 1975 as he performed all over the Bronx at parties & clubs. He would later become an innovator of his own by stopping tracks and starting them again at different times, or scratching, and switching between songs, or cutting. Afrika Bambaataa also used Herc’s distinctive “beatbreaking” technique in the 1970s to ultimately develop a diversion from gang violence. In 1980, the Sugar Hill Gang dropped “Rapper’s Delight,” and the rest is history.
The next decade would be marked as “the golden age of hip-hop”. New school rappers like RUN DMC, LL Cool J, and N.W.A. dominated the charts as rap became popularized in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Though women like MC Lyte, Salt-N-Pepa, Roxanne Shante, and Queen Latifah were able to help cultivate the new style, hip-hop was primarily male-dominated. With that came a foundation of misogyny laid through demeaning lyrics and salacious videos. Women were used as highly sexualized props, believed to be disposable and deserving of normalized gender violence. This also set the cap & standard for the success of female artists in the category from the beginning.
Lil Kim, Eve, Missy Elliot, Foxy Brown, Da Brat, Trina, Bahamadia, etc. kept women in hip-hop conversations in the late ‘90s and 2000s, as well as Nicki Minaj in the 2010s. But the patriarchy prevailed. In my opinion, it demands even more risqué behavior from rappers who happen to be female to catch the eyes and earn the ears of men who continue to be gatekeepers. Once their behavior becomes too out-of-the-box, they are blacklisted in hopes they will disappear.
Doja Cat, unfortunately, found herself in that position in 2020. A series of incidents on the internet landed her on Twitter threads and cancel culture’s bad side. Of course, Doja Cat’s music was receiving increasing attention at the time, which could suggest this was her experience with social media’s “hate train” wave. “Say So” from her 2019 album Hot Pink went viral on TikTok in late 2019 after a young influencer on the platform named Haley Sharpe created a dance to the tune. It became the most popular choreo on the app and ruled the timeline for a few weeks. Doja Cat even included Sharpe in the official music video for “Say So” that now has over 300 million views on YouTube. A remix of the pop record starring Nicki Minaj scored Doja Cat her first Billboard No. 1 single in May of 2020.
Her versatility as both a rapper and a singer who explores various sounds is what makes watching her upheaval so entertaining. You really never know what she is going to do next. Doja Cat’s creativity can be looped with the likes of the legendary Missy Elliot, another phenom whose concepts always kept the crowd on their toes. In my opinion, the ability to be everchanging while remaining enticing to fans is a skill mastered only by talented artists that truly understand longevity and effectively articulate the excitement of musical expression.
Bree Runway is another pop star to watch. Similarly, the London singer/songwriter/rapper considers her music to be “genre-fluid”. Though her discography consists of only two projects at the moment, she has already dabbled in electronic, pop, R&B, hip-hop, and rock. Bree Runway’s unique talent was underlined by the aforementioned Elliot with a featured verse on 2000AND4EVA’s “ATM” following a Twitter cosign almost a year before the single’s release. Fans are currently anticipating her debut album, and I think it is safe to say this is the start of something iconic.
Every year during award season there is a discourse around where certain artists fall in terms of genre, especially because, more often than not, Black artists of differing sounds are grouped and thrown in “urban” categories. As more musicians speak up about this glaring issue, it becomes more apparent that there is little knowledge of the distinctive sounds of genres and their fundamental characteristics in today’s music scene/industry. Whether you choose to research and re-imagine is out of my control. But I hope you will re-evaluate the way you and others define each style of music out of respect for the greatest art form to ever live.
References:
African American Performers on Early Sound Recordings, 1892-1916. The Library of Congress. (n.d.). https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200038862/.
Berry, K. D. (n.d.). Singing in Slavery: Songs of Survival, Songs of Freedom. PBS. http://www.pbs.org/mercy-street/blogs/mercy-street-revealed/songs-of-survival-and-songs-of-freedom-during-slavery/.
Blondet, R., Branch, L. E., & Greer, D. (n.d.). Five WWI Army African American Bands That Changed Music Forever. Home - World War I Centennial. https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/articles-posts/5891-five-army-bands-that-changed-music-forever.html.
Haylock, Z. (2020, May 27). Doja Cat's Controversial Career, From Overnight Star to Canceled Overnight. Vulture. https://www.vulture.com/2020/05/doja-cat-career-controversy-timeline-dr-luke-racism.html.
Jones, N. (n.d.). African American Songwriters and Performers in the Coon Song Era: Black Innovation and American Popular Music. CJAS | The Columbia Journal of American Studies. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cjas/salem4.html.
Lewis, P. (2016, March 7). Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll? These Are the Black Pioneers Who Laid the Genre's Foundations. Mic. https://www.mic.com/articles/136969/who-invented-rock-n-roll-these-are-the-black-pioneers-who-laid-the-genre-s-foundations.
Milliman, H. (n.d.). The Complete History of Hip Hop. https://blog.prepscholar.com/hip-hop-history-timeline.
PQ, R. (2019, November 26). Hip Hop History: From the Streets to the Mainstream: Icon Collective. Icon Collective College of Music. https://iconcollective.edu/hip-hop-history/.
September 20, M. P. (n.d.). Tell It Like It Is: A History of Rhythm and Blues. Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/freedom-sounds-tell-it-like-it-is-a-history-of-rhythm-and-blues.
Wally, M. (2021, May 10). Willow Enters Her Pop-Punk Era. W Magazine. https://www.wmagazine.com/culture/willow-smith-transparent-soul-interview.
Ward, E. (n.d.). Rhythm and blues. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/rhythm-and-blues.