God Save the Queens

Because let’s face it: every little bit, every diss track, every major single, every questionable fashion choice, and every big budget music video or grainy flip-cam freestyle has proven that when women want something, they go get it.

So here we are, over forty years later, and that same dilemma still exists for female rappers. How do you express your individuality and creativity without being labeled as one or the other?

This started a witch hunt for the “gay rapper,” as if it were some shamefully shocking revelation.

Female rappers were selling a fantasy to their male audience, whether they wanted to or not.

Not necessarily saying that there’s something wrong with that, but the fact that women felt like they had to do that to be seen or be appreciated, it just never sat with me well.

Most rappers were making music to ride around to in their expensive cars. Missy was traveling in a spaceship.

She never feared hitting rock bottom; she had spent her childhood there.

Two decades following her departure from No Limit, Mia X is still actively performing. She’s fought uterine cancer and has even released a part cookbook, part memoir titled Things My Grandma Told Me, Things My Grandma Showed Me. The No Limit tank may have stopped rolling, but she certainly hasn’t.

The single won an Oscar for Best Original Song, making Three 6 Mafia the first hip-hop group to ever win the award, and the second hip-hop act to ever take home an Oscar (Eminem was the first for his 8 Mile song “Lose Yourself”).

“We used to diss each other in songs because they used to tell her things, and then they’d tell me things and [then] put us on the same song, talking about each other. Real messy.”