Rapsody

Busy, splitting time between making nostalgic hip-hop with her group Kooley High and prepping for her solo debut, Rapsody has her eyes set on becoming the next female emcee in a long line of lady assassins. For now, we can all ignore the antagonism that exists between the limited female rappers of count and the largely dominated male hip-hop industry. In the epic James Brown song “It’s a Man’s Man’s World,” he exclaimed the man’s world while admitting it “wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl.” Rapsody plays on the notion and song with her track “Man’s World.” "It ain’t ‘bout Big or Jay/ It’s ‘bout Lyte and Lauryn,” Rapsody—or as she sometimes calls herself, Rapdiddy—says, painting herself as the tough contemporary of hip-hop’s feminist side, as embodied in Queen Latifah’s anthem “Ladies First.” The past several years have given us the chance to witness a refined, young, N.C.-bred emcee take her time priming the nationwide hip-hop circuit for her debut album on 9th Wonder’s It’s a Wonderful World/ Jamla label. Prepping for her future career by gracing stages with a sharper B-girl aesthetic instead of the softer, show-stealing pageantry upon which she used to depend, Rapsody is preparing to diminish any notions of how little of a threat a female emcee can be. —Eric Tullis