Thursday, March 12, 2009

VARIOUS ARTISTS - Fly Girls! B-Boys Beware: Revenge of the Super Female Rappers [Soul Jazz]

Perhaps the most underappreciated element in popular music is women’s immense contribution to hip-hop. An impact that has been suppressed by prearranged mainstream strategies to enforce hip-hop through ridiculous notions of hypermasculinty and chauvinism. Telling the true tale of hip-hop is long overdue and fortunately Soul Jazz Records has once again stepped up the task with the celebratory compilation: Fly Girls! B-Boys Beware: Revenge of the Super Female Rappers. A fitting title, for revenge is best served cold on two turntables and a microphone.

Fly Girls commemorates thirty years of women MC’s on record. Sugar Hill Records entrepreneur Sylvia Robinson produced the first commercial hip-hop album in 1979 with “Rappers Delight”. Nevertheless, women in hip hop follow a lineation further back than Sugar Hill Records and can be traced to the funky-sassy-attitude of Millie Jackson “The Grandmother of Rap” and depending on how flexible your definition is, to Nina Simon’s “Funkier than a Mosquitoes Tweeter”. But Soul Jazz’s timetable on Fly Girls is appropriate for the sound we’ve come to identify as hip-hop today.

Soul Jazz has done a bang-up job blending legendary names from the Golden Age, with the likes of Queen Latifah, MC Lyte and Roxanne Shante, with forgotten artists like JJ Fad and Cookie Crew, while also mixing in contemporary names such as Missy Elliott. From the old school to the new, from boom-boom-bap, club bangers and G-funk to dope jazzy beats, with so much diversity, Fly Girls is sewn together with the flow of empowerment.

-Bardos Freedoom
(Chicago correspondent)

Fly Girls! is currently featured in Radio1190's new rotation.
Read more reviews at Vitamin Fuzz.

1 comment:

  1. This album is really great. And just in time for springtime! Peace, Love and Flygirls! <3

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