Sista MC droppin' rhymes with a beat: A fantasy theme analysis of songs performed by African-American female rap artists

In recent years rap music has become the musical mouthpiece for another disenfranchised segment of the African American society—young African American women from all types of socioeconomic backgrounds. Although rap has been largely an African American male artist dominated genre, African American female rappers have also used rap as a channel to rhythmically articulate a myriad of views and experiences from a woman's perspective. The study outlined the challenges African American women have historically faced in their quest to establish and sustain their own voice in their community. Since the late 1970s, female rap artists have used that genre as their own voice.; Qualititative and Quantitative methods were used to develop the study's findings. For the study's qualitative investigative focus, Ernest Bormann's (1972) Fantasy Theme Analysis was used to closely conduct a line by line lyric examination of the rhetorical content of 260 rap songs on 19 CDs performed from 1988 to 2002 by six popular female rap/hip hop solo artists: MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Lauryn Hill, Lil Kim, Missy Elliot and Eve. The study outlines the 260 songs' fantasy themes, fantasy types and rhetorical visions to determine what type of rhetorical bond is forged between the artists, their female artist peers, and their audiences. In the quantitative portion of the study, three hundred African American females between the ages of 15–30 were surveyed with Likert scale type questions about the messages found in female rap music and their ability to understand, relate and be influenced by the songs' messages. The survey also used three open-ended questions to give those respondents an opportunity to further express their views on this subject.; A review of the songs yielded 40 major themes, 465 coded fantasy types and 216 rhetorical visions. Some songs had multiple themes, fantasy types, and rhetorical visions. Survey results revealed that 261 of the 300 African American female respondents understood and related to the songs' messages. The respondents indicated that not all female rappers spoke for young African American women. Only those artists with positive, uplifting messages could be deemed as spokeswomen for young African American females.