By the year 2000, the hip-hop industry was comparable to a male football locker room. Most of the top executives were men,
the majority of hip-hop artists were male, as were almost all of the producers, video directors, engineers and DJs.
That basically left video model or personal assistant as the most likely career option for a woman.
But as a female, if you were successful, and rose to the top of the corporate ladder, your reputation became that much more vulnerable.
If you looked halfway decent, then the misconception was that you slept your way to the top. On the contrary, if you were not easy on the eyes,
then you must either have been gay or related to someone. As a woman, I knew it would be hard to beat the odds. But because I had put so
much time in, I wasn’t about to let the odds come between me and what I wanted.
But a woman doesn’t only have her resume to worry about, she’s also got her reputation, and when it comes to a woman’s reputation in the
business of hip-hop, it’s almost customary to define her by the men she’s been linked to. Pick up any hip-hop magazine and compare the
stories done on women to those done on men. I guarantee you’ll find out more about he woman’s past sex life than you will about the man’s.
That code doesn’t just apply to celebrities, it’s the same behind the scenes as well. For me, it was no different. The more successful I became
in the industry, the harder it became to keep people out of my personal business.
My days and nights revolved around the magazine and around hip-hop, and my social network was composed of people who were just as
obsessed with money, power and hip-hop as I was. Therefore, the majority of the men that I met along the way had some sort of function
in the music industry. But in this particular sect of the industry, known to us as the hip-hop culture, the usual double standard applied to
women is administered in much bigger doses. Once Snoop said “Bitches Ain’t Shit,” it was a wrap for us.
