Rose Xu

Maurice Rodriguez

ENGL 1010

3.25.2020

Women in Hip-hop

With the development of the society, there are various themes composed in the works and

hip-hop is one of the most frequent methods to show the sensitive thoughts of producers.

Nowadays, gender equality is one popular trend in society and people, especially females, always

need to find the platform which can share their thoughts freely without any bias. In addition,

music is a place for people to vent because the audience will only care about the quality of the

music, they will only choose what they want to listen to, so music has become the most equal

platform for different people. For example, the women hip-hop singer called Lizzo created ‘Like

a girl’, this hip-hop song has absolutely shown how the identity of women should be defined

from her side. After I listened to this work, I realized her confidence of being a woman and her

motivation to lead more girls to be more independent. It also became one of my favorite songs

about women; Lizzo not only let more women find themselves not only focus on the physical

look, the more important aspect is the growth of the inner. At first, I was surprised by the album

cover of this song, but it also made me more curious about this song. After listening, the

combination of lyrics and pitch gave me a good impression of the song and she mentioned self-

care is the most essential base for the confidence.

The essence of ‘Like a girl’ is the lyrics which is the most attractive part for me. At the

beginning of the song, ‘I don’t need you, I’m Macaulay Culkin, home alone.’ uses the reference

of the film called ‘Home Alone’ to show the thought of being independent and women do not

need to rely on men. Women have had the absolute power to improve themselves and have their
own life, they should get used to the new environment with gender equality. The reason for

Lizzo to choose ‘Home Alone’ is that she is like Kevin in the film, Lizzo can also do everything

alone without anyone else, she does not need men to help her put or tell her what to do. Another

lyric is ‘Hanging out the 750, feeling bossy in my city.’ which used one example of BMW and

also makes me feel Lizzo really loves herself and she trusts herself to achieve success by herself.

The song is the symbol to represent the rights of the present females. According to the research,

female hip-hop singers have a lower percentage of awards in the music industry than male

singers, which makes me realize that sexism still exists. I certainly worship how brave Lizzo is

willing to produce this music for the rights of women.

The title ‘Like a girl’ motivates me to be a real ego and how to be myself, what we

should do is to find the method which encourages us to love ourselves. ‘Like a girl’ led me to

have the willingness of independence, women can still depend on themselves to live alone. The

importance of being myself is the reason for us to know how our own life should be.