The most popular genre in the country, rap consumers are becoming increasingly diverse, which has cleared a pathway for the ascension of female rappers. The reaction they received from fans encapsulated the new tide of hip-hop. And this year, Latto had one of the best performances of the weekend while the City Girls, gender-nonconforming rapper Saucy Santana, Flo Milli, Baby Tate, Saweetie, Shenseea, and Dream Doll injected the weekend with standout performances that ignited dense crowds snaking their stages. Photo by Michele Eve Sandberg Last year, Megan Thee Stallion’s headliner-worthy performance was overshadowed by DaBaby bringing out Tory Lanez on stage, violating a protective order that requires Lanez to stay at least 100 yards away from her after he allegedly shot her in the foot during an altercation in July 2020. Yet, Miami has yet to see a woman headliner. This year, it's recruited Nicki Minaj as a headliner for the New York City edition at Queens’ Citi Field in September. In 2018, Rolling Loud finally tried to rectify the blaring gender gap of their lineup by tapping Cardi B as the first-ever woman headliner at its Los Angeles festival (her spotlight was interrupted by her husband Offset attempting to repair their relationship). Smith found that a mere 12.3 percent of songwriters were women, 22 percent of the top-ranking artists were women, and only two percent of producers across 400 songs were women, suggesting a lack of representation in every branch of the music industry. So why are they still underrepresented throughout major festivals in the country?Īccording to a USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study that analyzed 700 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 year-end charts from 2012 to 2018, professor Stacy L. It would take a few more years for labels and consumers to catch up to the pouring of female rappers throughout regional underground scenes, but seven years later, women are at the helm of one of the most significant shifts in hip-hop's history. Bubbling under Nicki Minaj’s hegemony, acts like Dej Loaf, Azealia Banks, Tink, Junglepussy, Jean Grae, Rhapsody, Noname (who went by Noname Gypsy at the time), and Dreezy were widening and diversifying the confines around female rap. As hip-hop festivals started to garner more momentum, women rappers were beginning to crop up and shatter the suffocating barriers to stardom.
Back then, hip-hop festival stages mainly catered to men with a sprinkle slating Nicki Minaj as a headliner. Since its inception in 2015 as a homegrown festival at Soho Studios in Wynwood, Rolling Loud has curated a global ecosystem for Miami’s music scene and some of hip-hop’s most prominent players. This year was one of the most inclusive for the ladies, with about 26 women on the docket, but in 2022, a year where women are clearly dominating hip-hop, one of the biggest hip-hop festivals not centering them points to the misogyny women still face in the industry. Nothing out of the ordinary for a festival that was met with backlash last year when DaBaby went viral for making homophobic comments during his set.īut a blaring contention throughout the weekend was the lack of women performers billed as headliners.
Like Rolling Loud festivals of years prior, this year’s Rolling Loud in Miami propagated viral-worthy controversy: Ye made an appearance during Lil Durk’s set, Kid Cudi was disrespected by fans throwing water bottles at him and subsequently walked off the stage, and social media it-girl Brittany Renner threw a bottle of water at a fan’s face.
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