In 2025, mainstream rap is defined by a female voice stronger than at any time in the genre’s history. Even nostalgists for the mid-1990s, when giants such as Lauryn Hill, Lil’ Kim, Queen Latifah, Mia X and the late Gangsta Boo commanded attention, couldn’t have anticipated the way modern rap women shape the artform. They seem to multiply endlessly by the moment: Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Latto, Saweetie, Ice Spice, GloRilla, Sexyy Red, Flo Milli, Rico Nasty, City Girls (sadly, RIP).

Cumulatively, they feel like an overwhelming aesthetic force that anyone interested in rap must contend with. Despite ongoing popularity – Doechii’s mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal just won the 2025 Grammy for Rap Album of the Year – they still feel like a provocation to what Megan Thee Stallion (real name Megan Jovon Ruth Pete) rightly called a “boys’ club” (she used this phrase during the 2022 trial and conviction of rap singer Tory Lanez, who shot her during an argument, then promulgated a cascade of misogynist vitriol against her when she pressed charges). Despite criticism over sometimes pornographic visual presentations and lyrical reductions of romance as fleeting and transactional, these artists effectively communicate to and for other women, relating everyday concerns that men don’t need to understand, much less sympathise with. In the process, they’re engendering a refreshing and much needed feminist transformation of hiphop culture.

Alas, a similar revolution hasn’t happened in underground rap. Hiphop is a complex sprawl of overlapping movements and heads will debate what exactly constitutes non-commercial rap. For now, let’s say it encompasses the kind of releases covered in The Wire. Its leaders, for the most part, are uniformly male.

Sceptics will note the presence of several women in the underground scene, like Nappy Nina, Maassai, Che Noir, Sa-Roc, Semiratruth and Backwood Sweetie. Moor Mother isn’t quite a rapper – she’s a vocalist who utilises incantations and sound art as well as rapped verse in her varied catalogue – but deserves inclusion on this list, thanks in part to her 2020 collaboration with billy woods, Brass. Noname, who has provoked and delighted with her thoughtful, humanistic lyrics about forging a life of Black activism, certainly qualifies as a leader. But she often appears as a sole female voice, the embodiment of the Hidden Figures meme in which pioneering Black NASA scientist Katherine Johnson (as played by Taraji P Henson) fights for recognition amid a room full of white men.

This isn’t the first time that the underground has escaped scrutiny over its patriarchal nature. Back in the 1990s and 2000s, when ‘indie rap’ self-righteously constituted itself as a less capitalistic and more innovative corollary to the blingy mainstream, few if any wondered why prominent labels like Rawkus, Definitive Jux, Stones Throw (before adding the iconoclastic Georgia Anne Muldrow in 2006), Rhymesayers, Duck Down and Anticon didn’t have women on their rosters. No one questioned why talented musicians like Medusa, Apani B and Stahhr The Femcee never elicited the industry attention they clearly deserved, or why T Love heartbreakingly burst into tears while discussing her career in Nobody Knows My Name, a haunting 1999 documentary about the pressures faced by women in hiphop.

This era is searingly depicted by Psalm One, who secured a deal with Rhymesayers for her 2006 album The Death Of Frequent Flyer, in her 2022 autobiography Her Word Is Bond: Navigating Hip Hop And Relationships In A Culture Of Misogyny. “Most rappers will go their whole career without ever sharing a tour vehicle with a woman artist,” she writes, describing how alone she felt on her early tours. “I’ve never felt physically threatened by a man on tour, but I’ve never felt 100 per cent safe either. That’s a terrible reality lots of women artists endure on the road.” She adds that Rhymesayers treated her poorly after the release of Flyer, undermining her creative ideas and attempts to publicise her work, leading her to observe, “This label that was looked at as so progressive was anything but when it came to me.”

By contrast, Jean Grae’s new collection of autobiographical essays, In My Remaining Years, barely mentions her lauded three decade rap career at all, understandable given that the multidisciplinary artist has evolved into a humourist, playwright and visual artist who writes sharply and poignantly about gender fluidity and transitioning into a “gender transcendent” state of being. For those of us who celebrate backpack classics like “Negro League Baseball” and “How To Break Up With Your Girlfriend”, as well as full-length forays such as Jeanius with producer 9th Wonder and Everything’s Fine with Quelle Chris, it’s painful to see her distance herself from a culture she once dominated with her sharp, powerful words. Perhaps she has little patience for a past that, no matter how fruitful, is undoubtedly burdened by an experience of being constrained within all-encompassing male oppression. In a section where Grae wittily muses about how we should honour her at her funeral, she commands, “Absolutely no rap music I have ever been involved with in any way, shape, or form should be played.”

In today’s mainstream, women in rap are “winning”, as Lil Baby put it. One can question the true intentions of rap imprints rushing to sign their own dripped out, high maintenance snap queen that can do numbers on socials and streaming services. One can also ask why women like Rapsody, Tierra Whack and Leikeli47 who decline to present themselves in glammy, revealing poses seem to garner fewer viral hits and attention from fans. Regardless, the industry is making space for women and building a more inclusive culture in the process, no matter the resulting problems and concerns. By contrast, underground scenes appear comparably deficient, with men too content to augment their recordings with soulful vocalists (and to be fair, producers like DJ Haram and KeiyaA) while avoiding strong female presences that can spit as hard as they can in the booth.

Let me make it plain now, without naming and shaming: your favourite underground labels need to make space for women. There’s no reason why these imprints that earn regular placement on critics’ best of lists shouldn’t have at least one rapper that identifies as female and/or non-binary, if not more. Underground rap as a structurally male endeavour must end.

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