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Lady Leshurr: Music industry remains tough place for rappers who are female
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 30 October 2015
The UK rap scene remains a tough place to get ahead if you’re a woman, says rapper Lady Leshurr, regardless of your talent.
“We don’t get classed as just ‘rappers'”, she tells Noisey. “We get classed as ‘female rappers’ – like you’re good for a girl, you shouldn’t be doing this, you should be in the kitchen washing dishes”.
“We get swept under the rug a lot, like ‘oh, it’s just her’, and we don’t ever get mentioned with Skepta and people like that”, she continues, while discussing the lack of any women in Kayne West’s UK-rap-celebrating BRITs performance earlier this year. “We’re still placed in the ‘good for a girl’ box and it’s actually horrible, but that’s one of the main things I wanna break next year. I wanna make sure we get named alongside all these established artists in the UK and America”.
She adds that the problems are as much behind the scenes as they are on stage: “I realised … that the industry doesn’t actually know what to do with females as far as marketing and getting them out there goes. It felt like their best strategy was to pit females against each other. The media tries to make some imaginary beef happen, and I just hate it. I’m all about female empowerment – I’m a representative in it, so I’m never gonna put a female down. I’m never gonna be in beef over silliness”.
Read the full interview here, and watch the latest instalment of Lady Leshurr’s ‘Queen’s Speech’ freestyle series here:
