White, Female…and a Rapper, Sunday Style Australia

White, female
and a rapper
Ruby Warrington checks out the rest
of the new breed of hip-hop queens
When 14-year-old Iggy Azalea was busting
out rhymes in her bedroom in Mullumbimby,
dreaming of becoming the next Lisa ‘Left
Eye’ Lopes, it seems she wasn’t alone. The
first wave of female interlopers to have
successfully occupied the very male world
of gangsta rap in the 1990s has spawned
a whole new generation of wannabe lyrical
stylists, with Azalea tipped most likely to
succeed from the get-go. And if having ovaries meant the likes
of Missy Elliott, Eve and Lauryn Hill thought they had a lot to
prove – try being white, to boot.
“I can’t tell you the double standards I’ve been subjected to since
I started performing, but I knew going in what preconceived notions
I’d have to battle,” says Brooke Candy, a former stripper from LA
and the other leading figure in the all-new white female rapper
line-up. Other artists coming through, meanwhile, include K.Flay,
Kitty Pryde, Dessa and Kreayshawn, whose single Gucci Gucci is
a YouTube sensation with more than 42 million views to date.
But no matter that Candy’s lyrical flow and ghetto stance have
been likened to her idol Lil’ Kim (“Imagine Siouxsie Sioux dressing
up as Kim,” wrote one music blogger), the hip-hop
purists are having a hard time accepting these
“vanilla vixens”. Writing on ‘The false rise of
white female rappers’ for ahoodie.com, the
site’s editor, Butchaz, describes Azalea and her ilk
as “a plague of shallow, self-absorbed white chicks that
believe talking monosyllabically about the contents of their
wardrobe over a synth-heavy beat qualifies them to be
called rappers. When did it stop being about the music?”
Even hip-hop presenter Touré Neblett gave them a
hard time when he wrote in The New York Times: “Hip-hop
coming from a white woman is almost always an immediate
joke,” citing Gwyneth Paltrow’s cringe-worthy rendition
of NWA’s Straight Outta Compton on a British TV show, and
Natalie Portman “furiously” spitting rhymes on Saturday
Night Live. Anybody who’s witnessed MC Dusk, aka actor
Abbie Cornish, in action (yes, seriously – the debut album is
in the works) will get the idea. Believing they lack the ability to
fully embody the “celebration of black masculine power” that’s
at the heart of the genre’s gangsta appeal (which he says some
white men and some black women have been able to carry off
successfully), “It’s seen as cute and comical, like a cat walking on
its hind legs,” he concluded.
Try telling that to Brooke Candy. Having described herself as
“an aggressive, angry person,” she says rapping has been an outlet for
the rage she’s felt at being marginalised for being female. “I realised,
what does fighting and screaming and being crazy ever achieve?
I’m lucky to be able to get it all out on-stage now.” Like Azalea, she
raps about female sexual empowerment, subverting the traditional
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