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There are two unfortunate truths in rap music: namely, that if you’re white or female, you face a much more difficult road. If you want to rise to the top and not immediately be deemed a novelty act, you’ll have to establish a presence and achieve some amount of street cred, and do it fast. More than a few white rappers and female rappers have flamed out in spectacular fashion after less-than-impressive debut albums, and even if their mixtapes are solid, they tend to be derided (fairly or not) as a joke to the mainstream public.
So what happens if
you’re a white female rapper? Unfortunately in that case, you’ve got the
toughest row to hoe of all (no pun intended) – not only are you operating in
the extreme minority, there are very few (if any) acts who have achieved
success in this vein. I mean, who are your successful white female rappers? Can
you think of any off the top of your head? At least with female rappers you
have Lil Kim and Missy Elliott and Nicki Minaj, and white guys have the Beastie
Boys and Eminem and Macklemore, but in combination as a white female rapper,
who do you get?
Well, the first
one that jumped into my head was Kreayshawn, and if you look at the sad
trajectory her career took after her disastrous debut album, the prospects look
bleak at best. What’s all the more unfortunate is that her career charted the
same path as most other rappers who get signed and rushed to market before a
coherent album is released, which is a single album of sloppy club tracks that
showcase none of the girl’s talent before being dropped from the label and
consigned to the ephemeral dustbin of pop history. And as someone who actually
thought Kreayshawn had real potential, her failure did sting a bit. And of
course there was some of Cher Lloyd’s early rapping material, but I don’t like
to dignify the fact that exists.
So when I heard
that a female white rapper named Colette Carr was dropping her debut album this
year, I was more than a little skeptical. Outside of Kacey Musgraves’ mind-blowingly
great country debut with Same Trailer,
Different Park, I don’t have a great track record looking at debut albums
from female solo artists this year. Hell, Skylar Grey had the pedigree of
Eminem behind her album and she couldn’t rise above mediocrity. So to say I had
low, low expectations when it came to
Colette Carr’s debut was a bit of an understatement, and coupled with the fact
that it was a debut album comprised of four EPs mashed together with a few
additional tracks (which was the same path Charli XCX took with her unfortunate
debut), I expected this to be a disaster. And with the, well, let’s call it unfortunate album title of Skitszo, I was fully prepared to be
treated to a catastrophe that would end her career before it truly began.
