Her bit in the NY Times 50 Rappers 50 Stories piece
Over five decades, hip-hop has grown from a new art form to a culture-defining superpower. In their own words, 50 influential voices chronicle its evolution.
www.nytimes.com
I’ve made a special contribution to hip-hop, and I feel like that gets overlooked a lot of times. Hip-hop is Black culture. People say, “Oh, you make house music, a.k.a white people music.” I’m like, honey, no. House music is Black music. Everything I do is in the spirit of hip-hop.
My first memory of hip-hop, even though I had no clue what was going on, was O.D.B. on Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” remix. I was like 2, going on 3. And Lil’ Kim’s verse on “All About the Benjamins.” The audacity was just so fab. I remember the video with the fisheye lens, the see-through dress and the blonde wig. And she started off with: “What the bloodclaat?/Wanna bumble with the bee, huh?/Throw a hex on the whole family.” I didn’t know what a hex was until I was maybe 16, but I could spit that [expletive] word for word.
I was a theater kid, and
LIL WAYNE, for sure, was like a thespian. It was theatrical and the jokes were
funny. “Cannon” is probably one of the best Lil Wayne verses ever. [Raps “Cannon” for 30 seconds]
But my favorite rapper of all time is
STYLES P, from hearing the Lox at block parties. Then we had the DatPiff era, so I would download like, “Ghost in the Machine.” I just like how unrehearsed he is. And the swag. He was talking to you rather than trying to create a fantastical world.
We actually have a song together on my first mixtape. He did it for free. I’ve done collabs with other male rappers that will probably never see the light of day because I wouldn’t sign their record deal. Like, damn, Yeezy — I loved you my entire life and that’s what you do?
I started rapping because I had this boyfriend who rapped and they would do these cyphers. If your bars were wack, they would, like, snatch the blunt from you, you know? I skipped the cypher for like two weeks and I came back with a vengeance. I had to learn all these different words for “firearm.” I wrote “Seventeen” over that Ladytron beat and when they passed me the blunt that day, I came out with: “I’m not the don diva/I’m beyond ya don skeezers/I get cake from quick chicks with long heaters.” They was like, “Ohhhhhh. Shorty, you can rap! You should record that!”
The very first record that I ever recorded was into a microphone in a sock in this guy’s closet, in between all these Supreme jackets. Two weeks later, I was featured on the Fader blog. I blew up overnight and then it was just kind of like, OK, I have a job to do now.
I think that all of that theatrical training definitely helped. When it came to “212,” that white girl Valley Girl voice, I was really just making fun of dumb bitches who come to New York for like two years and are like,
I’m a New Yorker!
I think that everyone at XL Recordings forgot that I was 17. I felt like there was no mentorship. Everybody just kind of abandoned me and expected me to know what they wanted.
At the same time, they had just signed Odd Future, who were super, super duper crass. I won’t lie — I was so jealous just watching them put all this love into Odd Future. Just to see them be given the support to be kids. It’s a classic tale of boys can do whatever they want, but girls need to be like, prim and proper. I sent “212” in to XL and they dropped me. It was 100 percent a bunch of misogynoir.
I was thinking maybe I should go get a G.E.D. and go to college. Then I just get this phone call from Nick Grimshaw on BBC Radio 1, and he’s played it like a million times. I didn’t even know what BBC Radio 1 was. And then very quickly you go from getting paid $150 and a bottle of Smirnoff to perform to getting like, €5,000 at some weird charity event. I’d never had 5,000 anything all at once in my hands, ever. All I could think was, I’m going to get a weave and a laptop.
One thing leads to another, and then I’m at Karl Lagerfeld’s house. I didn’t even know who Karl Lagerfeld was when he invited me to perform at his house in Paris. I didn’t know what Coachella was when I got booked for Coachella. That Coachella date in 2012, it was like, all right, I’m here. I’m a star.
Jimmy Iovine, the very first day I met him, he said to me, “The best thing you can do for a woman is get the [expletive] out of her way.” He actually bought me my first, like, three pairs of Louboutins, my first Chanel bag, my first real bottle of perfume. He was always a gentleman and he always thought my jokes were funny.
“212” was such an anomaly that no one has been able to successfully build upon it outside of me. What I see is people doing an Azealia Banks impression, and that is partially due to just the belief that a woman couldn’t be the mastermind behind the sound, the aesthetic, the everything. I’m still alive, girls.
There’s no magic in hip-hop now. Hip-hop has been taken from us and used as a weapon against us. No one is talking about anything. Just for the record: All these little new rap girls — they really suck.