Slave To The Ism

She calls herself ‘The Voice of the Young People’. 18 year-old Lil Mama is your favorite female rapper’s favorite rapper, because she’s got her head screwed on mad tight. From a part of Harlem “where the streets look like Africa,” Ma, who hit it big with the 2007 bleacher-stomp “Lip Gloss,” is on some real talk, big woman shit.
“I did a record with Lil Mama for my album,” says Missy Elliott. “I got a chance to meet her and get in the studio with her and she’s incredible. She’s a dope MC to be young like that.”
In the introduction to her rock-tinged break-up song “Emotional Rollercoaster”, in which she also sings the hook, she philosophizes

There are many girls. …going into womanhood… and they go through different emotional roller coasters and when you’re on a roller coaster in real life, you can’t get off in the middle of the ride. You got to ride it out until it stops. And at the end of that ride… that rollercoaster was fun even though it had a couple of twirls spins and drops that made you cry.

Homegirl don’t sound like she’s cried at all though, her voice hard as concrete.

“She got her own lil lane,” says Lady (Gangsta) Boo.  “She came out with a little catchy song about lip gloss. I mean ABC. It’s like damn that shit was hot. I like the fact that she did something different when girl MCs aren’t getting the recognition and the respect that we should be getting she came through saying ‘what’s up. I’m still here—and my lip gloss poppin.”

And she’s like the hoodchick-next-door. In the album’s obligatory T-Pain track “What it is” she’s “sexycool,” while rocking to a Go-Go beat—-but it doesn’t go any farther than that.  Lil Mama ain’t showin jack, yo—no skin no a-tall —nada— she bumps a turtleneck on her album cover, and kicks it mostly in hoodies and jeans in her videos.

“Oh, I’m so glad she decided not to go that route,” says Monie Love, “SO glad” referring to the raspy voiced young miss’s decision to keep her goodies in the jar.

As one of the few female rappers with a major label deal, hopefully she’s part of a movement to create a strong solid platform for more diverse female voices in hip-hop to be heard, to be marketed, and to be in a position to inspire young girls and women. Her father’s persistent push to get her single played on Hot 97 led to it blowing up the entire east coast and attracting the attention of Jive Records. Then she followed with a club joint with Chris Brown  “Shawty Get Loose”.  In one album soliloquy she says, “Now that it’s obvious that I’m true to the game, we gotta go deeper. We gotta get into the reality of life,” Homegirl  is not playing.

“What she has to bring is necessary, “ says MC Lyte, to whom she’s often compared, because of Mama’s talent for telling stories from varying points of view,  “She’s got some powerful songs. She’s got stories. She’s socially conscious about what’s going on around her… She has the capabilities to really turn heads and to really satisfy a culture of people with some hip-hop that lives.”

- Makkada B. Selah