The Hustle Has No Gender

Women in rap have the right to discuss their struggle without being overshadowed by selective moralism.

For years, rappers spouted variations of “I’m not a rapper I’m a hustler” and rap conservatives recoiled. Now, women rappers are noting, “I’m not a stripper, I'm a rapper,” and those same people are denying them.

While drug-dealers-turned rappers are celebrated, or tolerated, as rap’s quintessential rocks-to-riches story, ex-sex workers are demeaned by some as a sign of rap’s decline. Male rappers have long rhymed about life in the fast lane, lavishing women with gifts and making it rain. Some have even rhymed about women augmenting criminal operations. Now, there are more women than ever exploring those same dynamics from their perspective. Rap is one big ode to the hustle — and women have the right to discuss theirs without being overshadowed by selective moralism or respectability politics.

Patriarchy has an odd relationship with sex workers; it’s cultivated an environment where men of means boast of hiring escorts and showering exotic dancers, but the women who provide the service are seen as less than. In rap, that dynamic looks like Jermaine Dupri crediting strip clubs with keeping Atlanta music “hot,” but also questioning the artistry of strippers who rap. It exemplifies “you can be seen, not heard.”

Dupri’s assertion reflects men who are used to rap being a boy’s club depicting women as nameless, voiceless props. It’s jarring for them to see not just Cardi B, but an entire crop of sex-positive, body-positive women flexing their agency, and shattering norms of what “good women” look like. But these women are also using their platform to tell their story. On “Best Life,” an archetypal ode to upward mobility, Cardi rhymed “I was in the field, man, I slaved for this / Had to talk to God, dropped down, and prayed for this.” That’s a couplet that’s been uttered in some fashion by nearly every artist — but “the field” she speaks of is a venue that’s generally seen from one perspective.

Cardi B is the latest former exotic dancer to become a prominent hip-hop artist. But she isn’t the first. Before her, there was Trina and Eve. During a Hollywood Unlocked interview, Trina called out the double standard that women in rap face, opining that many rappers tread  “guns, violence, girls, clubs” themes, but women are criticized for talking about their perspective of what she deemed the “struggle,” noting, “whatever is in your life...this is what you’re venting about.”

Similarly, Eve, who celebrated her come up “from dancing on tabletops to making labels pop” on “Heaven Only Knows,” admitted her exotic dancer past “was a hustle, too...but I don’t regret it—I was 18 and confused, going through personal problems. I did it for about a month, and I was glad I did it. It helped me find Eve, helped me get serious. It was depressing.”

Just like T.I. said about drug dealing, Eve was “just doin her job.” But while men can recall their misdeeds and find praise for their evolution, woman often get permanently lambasted for who they were. 

In 2018, Cardi B caught fire for reflecting that “I used to drug and rob niggas” before rap. Critics took offense, and rightfully so. Obviously, no one deserves to be drugged or robbed. But few others deserve to be shot, stabbed, or even killed. Those are the circumstances that we’ve been desensitized to hearing from male rappers who aren’t all using artistic license — in fact, many don’t want you to think they are. Most male rappers are fine with being viewed as people you don’t want to fuck with, but women in rap are vilified for being proud of their past as exotic dancers. 

Curiously, no one ever policed 50 Cent for rapping, “niggas always sayin' damn 50 you bugged / cause I got h**s giving niggas the date rape drug.” on “Say What You Want.” It’s likely that many young people haven’t heard the G-Unit deep cut, but if the deed was that incendiary to men, it would’ve surfaced, and been held against 50 in the ensuing 18 years since its release. We can all think of things a male rapper could say that would be ridiculed no matter how obscure the release was. But instead, it’s just one fantastic crime chronicle in a sea of many. 

This isn’t to say either artist is better or worse than the other. It’s just to say all gender identities either deserve the space to reflect on their harm, or no one does. Most adults don’t revere artists who tell ugly stories because of their misdeeds. We don’t love them because they sold poison to their people, or robbed people, or did even worse. We appreciate their stories because they’re harrowing expressions of “survival mode,” of the lengths people go to in a world that often seems devoid of options for poor people. Here’s more of what she said:

“Ni**as must have forgotten the shit that I did to motherfucking survive. Like, I had to go strip. I had to go, ‘Oh yeah, you want to fuck me? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s go to this hotel,’ and I’d drug ni**as up, and I’d rob them. That’s what I used to do! Nothing was motherfucking handed to me, my ni**a. Nothing.”

When she apologized for her actions, she noted, “I was blessed to be able to rise from that, but so many women have not.” In the same way that many men weren’t able to rise from the corner, or whatever struggle they were in without landing in jail or the grave.

For better or worse, she speaks for them in the same way Sacramento rapper Mozzy does when he rhymed “thankful for the prostitutes assuming that we soulmates”, on “Sleep Walkin,” a song where he shouts out every element of the streets that molded him. His poetic, if politically incorrect, nod memorialized the shared hustle between genders — and how deeply he and his “soul mates” are bonded through it. They may be selling different vices and may be criminalized in different ways, but they all ended up where they are in the name of survival. Jay-Z illuminated the same when he shouted out, “Lil' Kim and them, you know the women-friend who / Carry the work cross state for a gentlemen” on “Roc Boys,” or when he rapped on “Paper Chase” with Foxy Brown about sending her to scope out and recruit clientele for his drug exploits. Nowadays, rappers like Buffalo’s Che Noir are telling the same kind of story without male involvement. 

The hustle isn’t always pretty. And it’s never been gendered. To pretend otherwise is sexist. We’re all out here struggling in different ways, and doing things we’re not proud of — and hence we all deserve the space to reflect on our strife, and make sense of it, without selective, misogynist moralism or respectability politics. 

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