From hip-hop’s earliest days, female rappers have had to fight for attention, let alone respect. Since the rap song category debuted in 2004, the award has been given to precisely one female rapper: Megan Thee Stallion, for her “Savage” remix, which got an assist (and some vital Grammy familiarity) from featured artist Beyoncé in 2021. Although nine female-led albums have been nominated for that rap category since it was launched in 1996, Cardi B became the first solo female artist to win, with “Invasion of Privacy,” in 2018. Elsewhere, Eve became the first — and only — one to take best melodic rap performance when that category was introduced in 2002; the same goes for Megan Thee Stallion with the “Savage” remix in the best rap performance category in 2021.
Voting for Academy members just recently opened on Oct. 11, and labels and artists are already forecasting that the 2024 Grammy Awards will course-correct. Over the past year, women have undeniably ushered in a new hip-hop renaissance, one with the same fervor that artists like Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown brought around the turn of the millennium — and there’s exponentially more of them. The current crop of newcomers — among them Ice Spice, Kaliii, Doechii, Sexyy Red and Coi Leray, to name a few — has parlayed viral tracks on social media into tangible radio hits. Meanwhile, more established MCs (and prior Grammy nominees) including Nicki Minaj, Megan Thee Stallion and Doja Cat have continued to pour gasoline on their unflappable runs as hip-hop titans.
So why should the Recording Academy have a change of heart? Many predict that the ubiquity is too much to ignore. “I think the girls got it — the Academy is going to support,” says Leray. Earlier this year, her nostalgia-nodding “Players” slingshotted from TikTok viral earworm to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100, spending 26 weeks on the chart. “Everybody is supporting the girls right now,” she adds. “How can you not? You thought I was playing when I said girls are players too?”
Kaliii enthusiastically concurs. “We’re taking over — when you listen to a song that’s lit right now, it’s a female song,” she says.
No stranger to viral success, the Atlanta native similarly mined TikTok gold with “Area Codes,” which became a top 40 hit and spawned a series of female-featuring remixes, including Sexyy Red and Kenzo B. “I feel like when there’s a female artist, it’s [usually] not a lot of us at one time,” she continues. “People only focus on that one artist or that one person, and they get kind of scared. It’s like, ‘This is what we’re used to.’ But now, the girls are putting themselves in people’s faces, and you have no choice but to listen and see us.”
Some credit the recent dominance of women in hip-hop to the versatility they’re bringing to the art form. Ice Spice, for instance, cornered the drill market and just as quickly lent her signature deadpan flow to collabs with Taylor Swift and PinkPantheress, while Doechii chased the gooey R&B smash “What It Is (Block Boy)” with hard-nosed rap records like “Booty Drop” and “Pacer.”
But it’s also a testament to their work ethic and the mentality that more is more. “This year, and in the past few years, women have totally, totally outworked the men,” says Leray’s manager Amina Diop, CEO of the Diop Agency and a senior VP at Republic Records. “A music listener can find one of these females they can connect to because there’s so many differentiations and they’re so diverse. It hasn’t been like that for a very long time in hip-hop.”
With that, of course, the competition at the 2024 Grammys will be fierce. If the Grammys are a popularity contest, then potential rap category nominees will have to contend with major records from Gunna, Travis Scott and DJ Khaled. Even then, says Kaliii, it’s not just about awards — it’s about maintaining the momentum that she and her peers have built up.
“It’s definitely a female takeover,” she says. “Not just this year, not just the next year, but the years after that. We are here to stay.”
