Blog #1: The Road to Research

I used my Airpods to play pre-game music, almost always rap, before every volleyball game this season

Discovering My Topic

My initial guiding research goal was initially not anything to do with female rap music. While I knew that it was something that I knew that I wanted to learn more about, I didn’t know how my research would really go. I had originally thought that I had wanted to look at color theory in movies. However, I found that while I did find the topic interesting to learn about, I had no idea how I wanted to further that research. It was a very broad idea, and I spent a lot, if not most, of my initial time researching that topic to try to understand it on a deeper level.

My largest struggle was figuring out that I didn’t actually want to deal with color theory in movies, as it was becoming more and more complicated, expensive, and difficult to narrow within the given time period. I decided to shift to something that I found myself engaging with quite a bit - music.

Narrowing The Focus

While I did listen to music every day, I had needed to narrow down my topic of study, and rap music was becoming very common in my daily life, especially in regards to volleyball throughout my season. As I began to look at rap music, and then narrowed it to female rap music, I had found very limited official studies on the topic.

As I continued to research with the key words, “female,” “rap”, “hip-hop,” “rap history,” or any combination of those, I began to discover the research gap, which will be further discussed below. The gap in question regarded the history of themes that were present within the industry. While there had been a multitude of studies done regarding the themes of rap overall, or the beginning years of female rap music in the 90s, there was a large disconnect between the past and the present.

I began to search in regards to the themes within female hip hop, but primarily rap, to see where I could find the best historical evidence of the topic, and go from there. I found that I mostly wanted to focus on women’s impact on the industry through their music due to the impact that it has had on me personally, as well as acknowledge how female rappers have been able to change their value within the rap industry, especially in recent years.

Because the majority of studies within this part of the academic conversation revolves mainly around male rap or rap as a genre, there’s a significant lack of information about female rap to begin with. As such, sources are limited and much of the background information is not meant for this kind of study per se. Much of the research that I have found will work just fine for my study, even though there’s not really a clear history of prevalent themes within female rap music. In my research, I found no known studies of the growth and popularity of female rap on a year-to-year scale, as well as little to no information as to how that music has changed over time. This is where I intend to fill that gap in the research.

Themes to be Analyzed

Solidifying a Hypothesis

I believe that I will find a shift from heavy misogyny to modern-day feminism. Because of the way that initial female rap artists had to meet the demands of the music industry that were made by their male counterparts, they were continually including derogatory and misogynistic messages within the early years of female rap. However, today it is much more common to see these female rap icons empower both themselves and their audience. I believe that because of the commonality of the languages used both past and present, there could be lyrics that border on misogyny, but in a more reclaimed fashion.

Methodology

I plan to use songs from every single year from 1990 to 2022. I plan to take approximately five songs from each year, creating 160 total songs and data points.

I will be using the Billboard Hip-Hop Top 100 ratings which will stay consistent throughout today. In regards to song selection, I plan to find the female rap songs that were in fact within the Billboard Top 100 for that year. In order to create a more varied and differentiated study, I will create a list of each female rap song within that year and randomly select different songs to analyze. This will allow for a greater look into the popularity of themes within popular songs, but without creating a detrimental bias. This will also allow for my research to show the biggest trend in the data, especially as a function of time.

I will code under positive, negative and neutral thematic categories that I have found to be the most popular throughout the genre as a whole, rather than just themes found in female rap music. It makes more sense to use themes found throughout the greater genre rather than just those specific to women, which will hold a larger impact within the whole genre as it is continually dominated by men. These themes can be found in any kind of rap music, making women’s shifts more drastic and noticeable as they continue to stray from traditional industry rules. The positive themes that I will look for will be body positivity, sexual expression, independence, and the encouragement of others. The negative themes I will code for will be violence, misogyny/sexism, braggadocio, and self objectification. Finally, the neutral themes that I will find will be family, religion, wealth/fame, and emotional expression.

I will use full sentences to allow for complete thoughts and expression of ideas. While I could look at stanzas or how it is separated by the music itself, I will look at the lyrics and seek to find clear differentiators within the words to find a complete sentence and thought. If there is any confusion on what any of the words may mean, I will look at the Consulted Rap Dictionary for better clarity which will help to analyze the words and their intentions. Based on each sentence, each song will then be given a percent value based on the lines that hold the themes. For example, a song could be 15% violent, 45% independent, and so forth.

Similar to the initial songs, each year will be given a percentage value based on the song's themes. Beyond that, a timeline of each major theme will be created to see a change over the past 32 years. Analysis will then be done on the changes over this time.

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