Word: hip-hop
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...herself to be the best to come along since Hill. Rah's voice is rough and low; at times she sounds like a man. Her beats are strong too: her songs hit the listener like middleweight champs. Her lyrics can be playful or boastful or political (she appeared on Hip-Hop for Respect, a four-song CD put out in response to the Amadou Diallo shooting). Rah uses her sexuality not as a come-on but as a weapon. She wants to show that female MCs can be as tough and aggressive as men--and look good at the same...
...Digga, the hottest, hardest new female MC in hip-hop, opens the door to her Newark, N.J., apartment dressed in a fuzzy bathrobe with faded pastel stripes...
This is not what you expected. Hip-hop in the year '00 is supposed to be dangerous, seductive, ghetto fabulous. It's supposed to be so real it's almost unreal--like something beneath an electron microscope or blown up on an IMAX screen. Hip-hop '00 is supposed to be a post-Puffy dreamscape of excess and escapism and bouncing low riders cruising down streets clogged with dancers and azure pools lined with thong-clad hotties...
...that up close. The glossy photos in perfumy magazines, the Hype Williams-directed videos, the sound-bite TV appearances--all of that seems thin and sugary, like the glaze on a doughnut. Answering the door in a fuzzy bathrobe, that's real, that's true, that's hip-hop. In that one moment in her graffiti-scarred hallway, Rah was as big a star as you've seen in a long time...
Most of today's hottest hip-hop acts are content to talk about the problems associated with urban life without offering any examination of the root causes. The hip-hop duo Dead Prez digs deeper, drawing inspiration from such politically oriented performers as Peter Tosh and Public Enemy. "We're sick of working for crumbs and filling up the prisons,/Dying over money and relying on religion," run the lyrics to Police State, a track on this CD. Smooth, strong beats drive the duo's provocative messages home...