There’s no great aha moment in the origin stories of most rappers. Most simply grow up listening to hip-hop, gradually realize they want to try rapping for themselves, then do. That wasn’t the case for Milwaukee rapper Shay Rowbottom, though. She wasn’t even allowed to listen to rap growing up. “I was so sheltered, my parents would barely let us listen to the Spice Girls,” she says.
Her first significant exposure to rap was in high school, when some rapper friends invited her to their studio to sing a hook on one of their songs. And although she’d never shown any real interest in the genre before, something clicked for her during that studio visit. “I did the chorus for them, and then I noticed them writing down all their rap verses, which I found interesting, because I’ve always written poetry,” Shay says. “Ever since I was a little girl I’ve written poems. So I thought, ‘If these guys can do it, I can do it.’”
So she immersed herself in hip-hop, especially women rappers like Salt-N-Pepa, Trina and Eve—not necessarily the freshest influences for a modern rapper, but ones that nonetheless shaped the rhythmic club rap of Rowbottom’s debut album Feminist Rap. Released this summer, the album is decidedly contemporary in its approach, built around slinky, minimal beats and deep bass throbs from producer Job Jetson.
Those beats leave plenty of room for Shay’s raps, which are at once boastful and unflinchingly candid, whether she’s rapping about romantic disappointments on “Things That Hurt Me” or digging into more explicit territory on “Crazy Dudes,” a celebration of rough sex. That may not be the subject matter that many listeners expect from an album called Feminist Rap, but Shay says it squares with her notion of feminism.
“I did not realize how controversial that title would be until I released it,” she says. “I got a lot of feedback from both sides. I had a lot of people saying, ‘I love your concept, feminist rap, because you’re literally just speaking your mind and speaking what you think, without caring that you’re a woman who isn’t supposed to be talking about this like this.’ But I also heard just the opposite: ‘How can you claim to be feminist, you have a song about men beating women.’ And I’m like, ‘No, that’s not what the song is about; it’s about sexual preferences.’
“There’s still people who think feminism is about trying to encourage women to be a certain way, but it’s not about that,” she continues. “It’s about trying to teach women to be themselves and to be how they want to be, and encouraging men and women alike to accept that.”
Shay says she sees herself as a role model.
“I want to help people to figure out what they want in life,” she says. “I’m so saddened by the lives around me. My family members, my friends, my coworkers—I feel like the vast majority of people never stop to question their life and think, ‘What do I really want?’ I think about my own life and I think about what it would be like if I never decided to pursue rap music. Like, I never had support from my family to do this; they didn’t want me to be a white rapper. This was all me. I did this on my own, and I’ve reached a level of happiness that I can’t even explain. I wake up every day and I’m following my dreams and getting paid for doing what I love. I want other people to find that level of happiness, too.”
Feminist Rap is streaming at shayrowbottom.bandcamp.com.
