Rap is no longer a boy’s game. Queer newcomers like Young M.A and Silvana Imam are flipping traditional heteronormative, misogynistic rap on its head.
MicahTron, a queer woman who makes sex-positive trap music, is joining the ranks.
MicahTron’s raps go hard. You can play her music between Tyga and Sage the Gemini without skipping a beat. In “Your B Chose Me,” she brags about stealing a man’s girlfriend over a steady eighth-note Club Clap that will have you popping. In “Hillary Clinton,” she asserts her sexuality and her power (mixed with a few puns about counting her “bills”).
Although MicahTron has yet to put out an official E.P., her extensive discography is growing by the day.
MicahTron has been making music since she was young. When Missy Elliott interrupted the rap game in the 1990s, MicahTron realized that as a masculine-of-center queer woman she could make it just as big as Missy. Later, she traveled to Berlin to study performance art, and opened for groups such as Grammy-nominated neo-soul collective The Internet.
MicahTron doesn’t shy away from discussing sex, gender and power. Her contemporary Young M.A has been criticized for being misogynistic, and some of MicahTron’s lyrics could be coded the same way. However, MicahTron never claimed to want to revolutionize rap music. Her desire has always been to carve out a space for women within existing hip-hop movements.
Should rappers such as MicahTron be more aware of the way in which their music seems to perpetuate misogyny? Yes.
However, because she is a woman, her music also serves as a reclamation of female sexuality – as a woman, she can enjoy the bodies of other women. As a woman, she can choose to offer her body for consumption by other women. She can simultaneously own women while allowing herself to be owned.
What critics call misogyny seems to be a system of consensual dom/sub encounters, the type that male rappers have endorsed for decades, consensual or not.
Check out more of MicahTron’s music. Watch her hit song “Bumper” below.
