Can’t Stop the Women of Hip-Hop

My awakening to Black feminist thought came in 1989 when Queen Latifah, with British rapper Monie Love, rapped about “Ladies First” and opened the music video for this powerful track with a pantheon of fierce Black feminist icons: Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis, Frances E. W. Harper. Coincidentally, in the realm of the academy, Patricia Hill Collins […]

How Nicki Minaj Stumbled Onto Black History

It had every stereotype of Black womanhood one could think of: the prerequisite “crazy hair” passed off as the “real thing”; the sassy attitude coming from a “ho who didn’t know her place”; and, above all else, a “booty” that is a “masterpiece of modern science.” For those who missed it, I am describing a […]