Articles tagged with ‘women in hip-hop’

• A-Love

  In this 2005 interview, Melbourne-based FemC A-Love talks to Local Noise about her studies in anthropology and her ideas of hip-hop as mode of cultural and ethnic identification. The eloquent A-Love tells of the rise of females in Australian hip-hop as artists and as administrators, including her own seminal role in some of the first all-female hip-hop shows and displays in Australia.

  Tags: All The Ladies, Melbourne, women in hip-hop, Interviews

• Josie Styles

  Local Noise spoke to DJ and hip-hop promoter Josie Styles in 2005 at UTS, just after her hip-hop show at 2ser and at a time when she had been offered a job with Shogun Distribution (based in Brisbane). The energetic Josie talked about her two-sided life, spread between her love of hip-hop and her work as a terristrial ecologist looking after an endangered Bell Frog population. She spoke about the early days of getting into hip-hop, early Australian hip-hop and its influence, tape culture and growing up loving hip-hop in the rock-centric mainstream. She talked of her beginnings as a DJ, crate digging and her current practice. She spoke about the relationship with Warner Music that yielded the two Australian hip-hop compilations Straight from the Art. This led to a long discussion about the history of major labels and hip-hop in Australia and working in the industry in general. Josie focuses on representing women in hip-hop, and understands the difficulties of being a woman artist, citing the examples of Canadian FemCee Eternia and Perth-based FemCee Layla as positive examples.

  Tags: Straight from the Art, Shogun, DJing, Sydney, women in hip-hop, Obese, Interviews

• Layla

  This 2005 discussion with Perth-based FemCee Layla took place at a community hip-hop event in Sydenham, where she was as part of a national tour on the back of her recently released album, Heretik. In a very frank and honest way, Layla talks about her life, the role of hip-hop in it, her influences and her struggles, her experiences and putting that down on record. The talk also covers issues of female role models in society, the sexualisation of children and also the wider scope of social injustice, which she saw from the inside during her time as a social worker.

  Tags: Obese, social work, women in hip-hop, Perth, Interviews

• Liones (Review)

  A review of Liones’s self-titled LP (Mother Tongues/Creative Vibes) published in Music Forum

  Tags: Media, labels and releases, Music Forum reviews, Tony Mitchell, Brisbane, women in hip-hop, Press & Media

• MC Que

  We met up with MC Que on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy for dinner and an interview whilst we were in Melbourne in 2005. Que told us about the way she first heard hip-hop through the tapes her sister’s brought back from trips to the city, and then plugging into the underground Australian scene through radio and going to gigs. She spoke about the genesis of the film All the Ladies, and her 15-member crew Ladies Love Hip-hop, as well as a much more broad-ranging discussion about being a woman in a male-dominated hip-hop culture, dealing with discrimination and supporting women in hip-hop. Que also spoke about the strong link between her ethnicity, marginalisation and her connection to hip-hop as an alternative to the Anglo-centric mainstream pop scene.

  Tags: cultural identity, breakdancing, MC Que, Ladies Love Hip-hop, DJing, workshops, women in hip-hop, Melbourne, All The Ladies, graffiti, Interviews