Does anyone else feel that a certain number of the übermensch didn’t quite engage with the bulk of female hip-hop in good faith?
Every time someone on Twitter asks what female rappers men like to enjoy, the same two answers usually pop up: Lauryn Hill and Rapsody—despite neither currently charting enough compared to more popular rappers. Often, the reason isn’t just a choice in preferred topics, but because there’s laziness in finding more fitting and relatable rappers outside the mainstream. Even public figures of hip-hop like Joe Budden, DJ Akademiks, and Jermaine Dupri have made statements deriding showing genuine concern for the movement. Budden specifically has proclaimed that 1) the female rappers aren’t selling and 2) the female rap wave, as he bills it, is over. Baltimore producer PeaceRussie clearly does not share that sentiment.
On his Bandcamp, PeaceRussie produces multiple mixtapes dedicated to and remixes multiple female rappers and singers, most of whom come from the Baltimore area. Popular rap production has given way to creative homogeny like never before—and this isn’t just a folly affecting women but all of hip hop. Still, PeaceRussie always produces his choice of songs with more color and dynamic heft.
This time, PeaceRussie’s Glorious Stallions finds a creative muse in three of the most currently relevant female rappers: GloRilla, Megan thee Stallion, and Cardi B. PeaceRussie shifts the songs’ perspective in ways that give the songs more color, more emotion, more heft, almost elevating the tracks in the process. PeaceRussie casts his ear on two of Megan’s most recent tracks off her eponymous new album, MEGAN. Originally, “Hiss” used simple piano keys and bass over Houston-style trap. But PeaceRussie decided to match Megan’s rage-filled energy by blending 90s house with drum and bass into a Baltimore club framework for an instrumental you could call “black anime boss fight music.” Given Megan’s affinity for anime, she would likely be proud. Meanwhile, “Cobra,” Megan’s track tackling suicidal depression, trades in the thematic instrumental with guitar solos and snake charmer flute for a 90s-style soul beat. Each choice elevates Megan’s solo songs like never before by focusing on the emotional theft of the lyrics provided.
PeaceRussie then dresses GloRilla’s “Wannabe,” a track where GloRilla collaborates with Megan, in liquid psychedelic soul keyboards over hi-hats. “Yeah Glo!” trades in Memphis trap for something more sparkly with bits of jazz, and “Tomorrow²,” a remix with Cardi B, goes full New York boom bap with jazz samples and a beat switch best described as New York gangsta.
As for Cardi B… If you felt like the instrumental to “WAP” and “Bongos” were too skeletal, PeaceRussie’s production fixes that with speed and more color. A few key elements from both beats aren’t jettisoned entirely, instead, they become more “filled in.” “WAP” trades in the original drums for more industrial percussion with piano chords underneath while “Bongos” has two versions. One is PeaceRussie’s mix of Future House (club as in Ibiza) and another is simply described as an “Apache Mix,” which uses elements of “Apache” by Sugar Hill Gang.
Although in a viral video, Dupri said he has trouble seeing “who are the best rappers,” that every female rapper has a story about “going to the club,” and the single-heavy movement is “stripper rap.” PeaceRussie proved through his choice in both rappers and their songs that not only is it not true, but it is reductive. Odds are Dupri may be referring to rappers like the three on Glorious Stallions, but the allure of Cardi B is that even if she raps about sex and money, she flexes a sense of humor and a big enough personality to sell those raps. Megan expresses many emotions from feeling tall and on top of the world to feeling so low that she explored the thought of “slitting her wrists.” GloRilla’s raps even have men listening as they often feel stuffed with positive sermons.
PeaceRussie did two things with this tape: He dismissed the claims of female hip-hop being overly homogenous and proved if there is anything homogenous about the rappers, it’s the production choices or the trap framework they’re placed in. That being said if this doesn’t lead to a future production job for one of them, it’ll be a shame.
