“I’m all about upright and upliftin’ the woman,” announced YoYo on her signature hit, 1991’s “You Can’t Play With My YoYo.” She does just that as hostess of egotrip’s Miss Rap Supreme, a gig that finds her schooling budding female rappers on the trials and tribulations she faced coming up in the industry.

Below, the Queen of West Coast Rap talks about the show, coping when her rap career stalled, hip-hops prevailing misogyny, her relationship with 2Pac and what it was like coming face-to-face on the set of Miss Rap Supreme with one of her biggest adversaries on wax: Roxanne Shanté.

As someone who knows the game inside and out, what are your thoughts on the state of women in rap?

We’re doing great, considering our lack of leadership. There’s a lack of female MCs, period. But it’s like trying to build the world with 10 women. That’s why this show is so needed. It’s going to allow females from the outside to look in: “Maybe they are making room for women MCs. Maybe I don’t need to put down my notepad.”

Back in the day, you could hear a political track like “You Can’t Play With My YoYo” on the radio, and that would never happen today. How do you feel about that?

When you think about hip-hop, you think about the fact that you’re only as good as your last hit. Those who come under us lack the history. It’s like black history, you have no knowledge of it. It’s hard for people to respect where they’re coming from. Those who can give them a story are irrelevant. People don’t want to hear from you. There’s a lack of respect, and I saw that with these girls when they first entered the Fembassy. I’m standing there watching some of these women go, “The Lil’ Kim room? I’ll scratch her name out. This is the so-and-so room.”

Did you feel that the girls on the show respected you adequately?

Oh, definitely. I just think it’s a problem in general with the younger generation. It’s like my culture. You see so much black-on-black crime because people don’t know their history. It’s hard to teach people where they’re going, if they don’t care about where they come from. Same thing with hip-hop.

One the things you talked a lot about in your music was “womanism.” But it seemed to me that the major tenements of “womansim” – equality for women and the importance of sisterhood – were the same as feminism. Was this just a matter of semantics?

I really didn’t understand what feminism was growing up. They’ve given women with power all these labels, and I wasn’t too cool with that. Eventually, I came to the point where I figured, if “feminist” means a strong woman who defends woman, I am that. I’m a rebel, anyway. I was never good with the labels. When I got in the game, I just wanted to defend women, because all I heard was, “A bitch is a bitch is a bitch…” I’m like, “Who they talkin’? Who? Who?”

For all your hard work, we still have rappers like the Game, who refers to women as “bitches,” almost exclusively.

That’s just ignorance. When realizes how big he really is and the impact he has on his community, on young black men who idolize him…when he knows better, he’ll do better. Maybe right now, he’s too stuck in it that she can’t see the forest from the trees. If he ever grows up to be somebody, and I know he thinks he’s somebody now, he’ll sit back and say, “Oh my god. Why didn’t somebody pull me to the side?”

Is rapping for you, at this point, out of the question?

It’s never out of the question. I’ll forever be an artist, but I have my own company now. I have a radio show in Los Angeles. I teach a class through the Thelonious Monk Institute magnate program at my old high school, Washington Prep High School. I have a youth organization, Let Your Light Shine, with MC Lyte, where we mentor kids. If I go in the studio to record an album, I’m not looking to get paid. I’m looking to discover the next young talent.

Your last album, Ebony, never saw official release. Did you feel like throwing your hands up at the industry, at that point?

I did throw my hands up! But Ebony was a blessing in disguise. For that album, I hooked up with some East Coast writers and it wasn’t me. I was glad it didn’t come out. Even when I listen to today, I was talking about stuff that I was already past. It was like I was backtracking. I was just frustrated with hip-hop, and here I was, this young girl ready to move on, and I didn’t know how. I was like, where do I go from here? Nobody told me how I was going to go on being somebody. It’s not like you can just go get a job working for somebody else. You’ve been around the world, you’ve done so much, and you feel like, oh god, this cannot be it for me. Usually, when you’re done, you’re done. Longevity is not there for artists anymore. So that’s why I moved to Jersey, went back to school to work on my Associates degree in liberal arts. I auditioned for Lee Strasberg, got accepted and went there for two years. I knew I had to get myself together. I had to take myself out of the loop, and that’s when I began to love hip-hop again. For a while, I hated it. I’d been doing it since I was 17, I didn’t know where to go, I still had people wanting my autograph. And there I was, lost. But even when you get lost, you keep on fighting. You keep on trying. You reeducate yourself.

I was watching the “Romantic Call” video earlier and I’d forgot that 2Pac was in it. Were you two close?

We were very close. 2Pac and I used to date back in the day. 2Pac was a militant soldier, but the industry changed him. He never said “nigga” so much. I was like, “What happened to the Black Panther soldier?” What the hell is all this?

Do you have any contact with Ice Cube these days?

I see him every now and then. It’s always love. Of course. Ice Cube is one of the reasons that my hip-hop career existed. I’ll love him forever.

Back in the day, people accused you of being a puppet who was rapping lyrics written by Cube and Del the Funkhomosapien. Was that just sexism?

Well, it got to the point where it was a battle for me. Once I started saying and owning my lyrics, people would say, “YoYo, you keep a gat in your purse.” And I was like, no! I don’t! Oh god, is this what you think of me? People started thinking I was harder than I really was. The older I was getting, the more I was running from it. Although, I identified with everything I said because I am an artist and can play any role.

So this was all part of a constructed image?

I was just lyrics! Writing “The Bonnie and Clyde Theme,” we pulled up at the studio. The music was laid by Jinx. Cube had already did his first verse: “It’s a man’s world, but check the girl…” I remember sitting in the car, because that’s where I like to write in the car. Even still today, when I feel creative, I go to the car. “It’s a man’s world, but check the girl with the Mack 11, 187…” All that was visions. I was sitting in my car, visualizing. I just could see it. The music was bumpin’. So I came with, “I’m the type of girl that’s down…” It was just like writing a script. Cube’s words put me in that mode. “Robbin’, stealin’, killin’ and wheelin’, always on the go ’cause the hits is always loco.” It was fun! But what I’ve learned is that you don’t always know the impact of your songs. That’s why I tell kids today: lyrics matter. You have to be careful. These images you depict, they stick. History shows it. You can see it in the hip-hop babies. You can see it in the parents who ride around listening to these sexist, cursed-our lyrics with their kids in the car. I could never go back to that.

Speaking of cursing, I was surprised to hear you criticize Nicky2States for doing so.

When you know better, you do better. People always used to ask me what I think about Lil’ Kim. I always said: when she gets ready to get out of that, it’s going to be the hardest image to get out of. You gotta be careful what you put out. I didn’t think about things all the way through. I didn’t think about growing up. I didn’t think about the fact that I always wanted to be involved in politics. That’s my fear: I can’t represent my city because my opponent is going to pull out my old music. It’s almost like my success became my biggest problem. When I talk to those girls, I’m not talking to them from the point of view of where I used to be; I’m talking to them about what I know now.

I was kind of shocked to see that Roxanne Shanté was going to make a guest appearance on Miss Rap Supreme, after she dissed you so hard in “Big Mama.” What were your feelings about that?

(Laughs) We talked about that. A couple of months before she wrote that song, I met her for the first time in New York at Rockefeller Plaza, down at the ice-skating rink. She and I had lunch, we went skating and we talked, so when that song came out, I was like, “That’s all lies!” She talks about that on the show. She talks about how you do stuff just to dis. If you’re known for dissing, you just go there. Some people don’t really think about that, and it is a business. I never had beef with Roxanne Shanté – she did what she did for record sales. I love her. When she was coming on the set, people were nervous, but it was all love.

What’s your take on the drama element of the show between the girls?

I remember when I was coming up and all these European journalists would say, “So, YoYo, we think women rappers are all lesbians. Is that true?” Now, they’re gonna watch this show and say, “I knew it!” They do more kissin’ and humpin’ and makin’ up to break up than we really do in hip-hop. I love ‘em all, and I don’t judge.

Related content
egotrip’s Miss Rap Supreme show page


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