Hip-hop heroines who committed a revolution in music in 2014
While as male rappers in 2014, frankly lazy, female rap took new heights. Hip-hop artists constantly became the main topic of the news, and not only because of provocative videos - mostly due to great music and hit hits. We traced the career paths of the most popular hip-hop women this year, from the Beyonce music queen to the high-profile rookie Iggy Azalea - and finally made sure that there could be a coup in the genre.
Iggy Azalea
Breakthrough of the Year
The competitor of Beyoncé herself came from not expecting - from Australia. The 24-year-old white girl Iggy Azalea (not to be confused with Azilia Banks) took the industry into oblivion, working from year to year on the hits of songs, recognizability, and, generally speaking, gaining importance. The "difficult" girl, who left for America at sixteen, told her parents that she was going to a friend for a weekend, worked for a long time as a model, but "only hip-hop was in her head." She was signed to his label Atlanta rapper T.I., and this year it finally became clear to everyone that he took her not only for her model appearance.
The big hits "Fancy", "Black Widow" and "No Mediocre" forced to speak about Azalea as "new Nicky Minaj", and the album "The New Classic" turned out to be a pop rap in the best sense of the word. And at the end of the year Azalea even managed to sort out Snoop Dogg: he posted a parody photo on instagram, after which the girl got offended and angrily replied. Everything turned into a stream of funny pictures and trolling - the rapper even promised to “kick her white ass,” but in the end he had to apologize. Another significant moment for Iggy's career is that she was called to appear in the clip Jennifer Lopez. Try to guess with one try what the clip is about.
Dej loaf
AGGRESSION OF THE YEAR
The loudest novice girl came from Detroit, a devastated and semi-abandoned industrial city that for many years has been supplying America with rap eggs - male and testosterone. The 23-year-old artist called herself DeJ Loaf (loaf - from loafers, her favorite shoe) and recorded the YouTube hit "Try Me". The song fits perfectly in your ear, it's hit and melodic, and DeJ Loaf's voice is extremely sweet. That's just in her, she is really tough, giving out lines like "I have a trunk with me, just poke myself - and make pasta out of you."
The song was appreciated by male rappers, the girl herself released a good mixtape "Sell Sole", thus coming into the view of Eminem, who loves to keep his countrymen from Detroit with the word and couplet. Not to say that in the song "Detroit Vs. Everybody" DeJ Loaf reread everyone at all, but fit in there very confidently. Ask what's the big deal? And the fact that not every rapper man can withstand Eminem's pressure, but a woman who has resisted in sparring with him, and in general only one - Nicky Minaj. Now the situation is slowly changing.
Ariana Grande
Mimimi of the year
Another reincarnation happened in 2014. Ariana Grande, once the star of the Nickelodeon Children's Channel TV series, suddenly grew into a big star. The hit album "My Everything", where EDM merged with the new R & B, could easily be called the pop breakthrough of the year. The key word for her music would be “sweet”: there were no such charming and innocent pop songs for a long time. This begs the question - what does hip-hop have to do with it? First, Grande grew up on it: the girl calls her favorite actress Fergie from Black Eyed Peas. Secondly, now virtually any rap artist dreams of getting Grande to her track, as can be seen from her collaboration with Iggy Azalia, with whom they recorded the loud hit of the year “Problem”. Thirdly, her boyfriend is Big Sean, label artist Kanye West of GOOD Music, so hip-hop cutie Grande is tied up as much as possible.
Azilia Banks
rock'n'roll year
At the end of the year, something happened that no one, to be honest, waited. The news came from the camp of Azilia Banks, a Harlem girl who had been booming with a song “212” a couple of years ago, and then also began to stall quickly. For a long time Azilia could not release her debut album, spending time on hihinki on Twitter. To top it all off, she left Universal label, blaming his management. Hopes that her debut album "Broke with Expensive Taste" once see the light, there was less and less left.
In November 2014, he just picked up and appeared in iTunes - appearing great. The hip-hop enthusiasm, the grim's anger, the intelligence of advanced British electronics, house and samba, trap and pop-punk - all came together in these songs. It turned out that all three years Azilia not only swore on Twitter with A $ AP Rocky or the Disclosure group, but also wrote songs that tore common rap templates into two accounts. Of all the artists of the year, she is the most illogical, whimsical and immediate hip-hop star, a real rockstar girl at a time when the rockstar sounds like something offensive and outdated. In general, it is good that this is still possible in our time.
Nicki Minaj
SEX symbol of the year
Nicky Minaj’s new album "The Pinkprint" (in the title is a reference to the Jay Z record "The Blueprint" - for the hip-hop canonical), according to label calculations, should be sold out 155 thousand copies in the first week. But there could be no album or sales. There could be only one cover. That is how the single "Anaconda" was promoted. Photo of naked Nika, confidently showing his main asset - a huge ass, - was sold online as a video with kittens. She was dismantled for memes, rap was read about her, finally, a photo calendar for 2015 was made with her. If we make a list of things that we’ll take from 2014, the cover of "Anaconda" will go in there without any questions.
Behind all these physical beauties, the songs on "The Pinkprint" could very well be undeservedly pass by many, which is a pity, because this is a bold and really cool rap album. His courage was not even in terms of unexpected production decisions, but in the fact that Nicky utters the most explicit things. "Frank" here are equated, rather, with "personal" and "shocking." In addition to the already traditional lines about the big ass, there are punchlines, as if borrowed from the pornographic stories written by schoolchildren: "I will take off my underpants and come up to the peasant, let him bury his nose in something wet." So frankly, joking on such topics was for some time the prerogative of men, with very few exceptions. Nicky also showed that in her own words she can drive any rapper-vulgar into the paint - and this is more important than any of her photo shoots.
Beyonce
ICON OF THE YEAR
How to meet a year - so spend it. We started the 2014 with a new Beyonce album on hand, and it naturally went with us right up to the next one. The main star in the music did everything right: here and the successful laconic name "Beyoncé", and the format of the "visual album" - along with the songs on iTunes they sold a video for each of them, and the absence of any announcements. In Russia, they even came up with the verb “bounce” - that is, to release an album without any preliminary announcement. Double platinum, applause of music sites, the world hit "Drunk in Love" - no doubt, this is the best and most integral Beyonce record, where there are almost no filler songs. At the end of 2014, it was reissued as a collectible box set completely deserved: you need to remind about such albums.
It may be remembered that exactly ten years have been shared by "Beyoncé" and the debut of the artist "Dangerously in Love". During this time, the attitude towards Beyonce has changed almost beyond recognition. Now for her the label "R & B-singer" is small: she is an icon of a generation, an actress of national significance and even earns more than her husband Jay Z, which for young rappers is a measure of success. Take a look at the Forbes' top earning artists of the year - Beyoncé’s second. She lost only to Dr. Dre, who, it is necessary to clarify, appears less and less often in the news as a musician and more and more often as a successful entrepreneur.