*MC Lyte became the first female MC in 1988 when she released the album, “Lyte as a Rock” — but the hip-hop icon tells Page Six that she would not make it as a female rapper today.
“I recently told somebody it would be really old-school for me to perform on stage with pants,” she told the outlet. “Nobody wears pants. It’s that type of thing where everybody’s giving Rockettes and Vegas showgirl flavor.”
She added, “I’m happy that anyone feels great in their body. Perhaps if I had a different type of body I would be like, ‘Hey see this?,’” the 51-year-old said, “However my walk has been extremely different from that in the very beginning. I didn’t want people to look at me. I wanted them to hear me because I had something to say and I wanted them to pay attention to my words.”
Lyte also noted that she “never felt the pressure” to have plastic surgery.
READ MORE: MC Lyte Talks New Series ‘Partners in Rhyme’ and Building Her Legacy
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“I never felt the pressure to do any plastic surgery. I actually might have the smallest butt in the industry and it’s OK, it’s mine, it belongs to me. If I had the guts I might do something different but all the horror stories I hear I rather just go ahead drop and do some squats.”
The rapper blames mainstream culture for the over-sexualization of female artists.
“Everything we have seen in hip hop we have seen in the movies forever; we seen on television. We literally to this day still see woman in a lot of nothing holding up cards prancing around a boxing ring to say, ‘This Round One, Round Two, Round Three,’” she said, “It’s not anything new — it’s just that the powers that be have found a way to monetize hip hop to the umpteenth power and that’s why using every tactic that they were already used in other forms of media.”
Lyte acknowledges that there’s not “a lot of time, effort, money, marketing and branding going into” underground female rappers like Rhapsody and Tierra Whack because they don’t put the focus on their bodies.
“It’s much easier to sell sex than anything else,” Lyte said.
MC Lyte’s new sitcom “Partners in Rhyme” is now streaming on the Allblk network.
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