Hip Hop Divas

A provocative examination of today's hip-hop scene provides a timeline history, essays, photographs, and profiles of divas at the forefront of the industry including Lauryn Hill, Queen Latifah, and TLC. Original. 50,000 first printing.

THROWDOWN. By Dream Hampton
I remember getting jumped at the skating rink, by, like, eight girls. It started on the carpet, where you walk on the bumper part of your skates, but quickly spilled onto the rink's slippery floor. At first it was Alexis, a pretty dark-skinned girl with breasts (I had none; still don't). She grabbed one of my two French braids and spun me toward her screaming, "Yellow bitch!"

She swung. I stepped back. She missed. Her girl Tanyetta didn't, though; she punched me dead in the eye. Terrified, I still managed to bust her lip. The 15-year-old girl, who said she was Alexis's cousin and complained in the girls' bathroom that she'd had an abortion the Friday before, hit me in the back of the head with a skate and opened my scalp. Blood poured into my eye, down my cheek, into my mouth. I was on the ground now and being stomped. My pretend cousins, my real best friend Marqueila, and Skateland's security broke through the circle and peeled my battered and bruised 11-year-old self from the floor. But it was way too late.

I knew it was coming. Andre, this beautiful ninth-grader from Detroit's Martin Luther King homes, had spent the past three Saturdays trying to teach me to skate backwards. He had expensive skates and long pretty Jheri curls. I helped him write his book reports and he told me stories of all the girls he "messed with." He'd point them out while we were skating. "See that girl with the big ass?" (I didn't have one; still don't.) "She sucked my dick last night." Andre didn't turn me on; he couldn't even spell. I just wanted to be held up while I learned how to skate backwards. I was still playing with Barbies. I'm still mad at these bitches. When I cut my hair short, there is the raised scar at the crown of my skull from that skate.

I had another friend, Darius, who also had a long Carefree Curl, and used to drive a cherry-red moped. He was murdered in 1986. He would strap a giant boombox to his bike and give me rides to and from the arcade. His mother's boyfriend was from Harlem and he'd bring mix tapes of rap music back to Detroit for Darius's box. I remember the morning he came over with this "battle rap" between Sparky D and Roxanne Shanté. They sounded as if they were in the same room but Sparky D called Shanté a crab-ass bum and accused her of giving her man fleas and gonorrhea. Shanté called her half-ass white, fat, and accused her of having a pussy that was "through" and getting fucked in the ass. Sparky came back with rhymes about Shanté being too damn black with hair that would never grow.

The girls on my block, some of whom had stepped to my defense at Skateland, loved Darius's new jam. They dubbed it and played it over and over again. Sometimes a dis from the song would make its way into our neighborhood arguments, like the time Stephanie called Naomi a crab-ass bum. One time India told me to "shut the fuck up, you half-ass white." I couldn't call her too damn black with hair that would never grow. I didn't even choke on the comeback-it never came.

I hated the way my girlfriends talked to each other, even then. In John Hughes movies the girls were scheming and cruel, but they had nothing on my friends. We were violent and abusive with one another, our deep self-hatred as visible as the tribal identification marks of a far-flung clan. We all, each and every one of us, learned to hang with boys instead, to say things like "girls ain't shit"; "you can't trust 'em." Some of us came back to our preadolescent selves, to become loving and trusting women. Some of us didn't.

SHOW STOPPA
Because they wore coordinating outfits three to four times a week for four straight years, Kenya and Shannon had to split the "Best Dressed" award in twelfth grade. In the back of the high school yearbook they are wearing twin outfits and posing in lunge positions with their hands on their hips. They're each wearing gold chains that spell the other's name. They didn't know each other before freshman year, but they sort of fell in love in Spanish class and have been best friends ever since.

When U of M turned Kenya down, Shannon forfeited her own admission and they both went to Spelman. Shannon's mom was so pissed. They pledged Delta together but their line was all fucked up when this girl died from a car crash. The school blamed it on relentless rushing. Kenya met this Morehouse boy from Queens and fell deeply in love. He spray-painted his tag on her dorm wall, then went to jail for two days when the campus guards caught him trying to sneak out of Kenya and Shannon's room with Krylon and dirty fingers.
On a trip to Lenox Mall Shannon saw Kenya's boyfriend from Queens kissing this girl from Texas and walked right up to them both and slapped the shit out of the girl. Kenya dropped the boy two hours later. They had each other's back like that.

When they attended the Al B. Sure! concert Al himself had arena security invite them backstage. He asked Shannon straight out if she wanted to fuck and she really wanted to, but Kenya gave her a look that said, "We would be so over-so very over-if you played yourself right now." They had each other's back like that.
Before graduating they organized a talent bazaar/charity event for a shelter that housed runaway girls. They performed "Push It" and wore matching unitards and slid under each other's legs just like Salt-N-Pepa did in their video. Shannon went to Parson's School of Design in New York for graduate school and because Kenya was unsure of her plans, she followed Shannon.

Kenya married a guy who played for the NBA a year later and Shannon designed fur coats for rappers and ball players. When Kenya's husband got some cheerleader pregnant just three weeks before she was to deliver their first baby, Shannon drove to Jersey, packed her best friend's things and moved her and her soon-come infant daughter into her one bedroom. They have each other's back like that.