Today marks a week since Ms. Melodie’s untimely passing.
The Boogie Down Productions member and Brooklyn native was a pioneer in rap music whose hard-hitting delivery contained enduring socially progressive messages of self-empowerment.
DETAILS: Ms. Melodie Of Boogie Down Productions Is Dead
Despite how history has marked it, women have been instrumental in hip-hop culture since its inception, especially as emcees and DJs.
Although women’s contributions to hip-hop are often eclipsed due to, well, sexism, their impact on the globalization of hip-hop as a whole should not continue to be underestimated.
LIST: GlobalGrind’s 10 Favorite Up & Coming Female Rappers
Female emcees such as Roxanne Shante, Antoinette, Sha Rock, Sweet Tee, The Sequence, and Lady B, put the genre on the map in hip-hop’s early years, taking to wax just as forcefully and artfully as their male counterparts.
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Check out the gallery celebrating some hip-hop’s earliest female pioneers.