Nearly a half-century after the invention of hip-hop, women are still sadly far from getting their due recognition. Google “hip-hop artists” and the entire line of artists stretching across the top of your screen will be male - despite the fact that women are ruling the game right now.

As Clover Hope notes in the final chapter of her new book The Motherlode, 2020 marked the first time three Black women occupied the top three slots on Billboard’s Hot 100: Doja Cat, Nicki Minaj, and Megan Thee Stallion. They’re all rappers, and that doesn’t even include chart forces including Lizzo and Cardi B, one of the biggest stars to emerge in American entertainment in the 2010s.

The Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop lands just a year after Kathy Iandoli’s God Save the Queens: The Essential History of Women in Hip-Hop, but there could be a new history of women in hip-hop every year for the next half-century and we’d still be making up for lost time in celebrating women’s contributions to a genre that’s often not only excluded them as artists, but lyrically maligned them. Hip-hop historians are still unpacking the way that urgent truths blended with toxic masculinity as rap matured in the ‘90s.

As it happened, the ‘90s were better for women in hip-hop than the first decade of the 2000s. As Hope notes, dozens of women rappers were signed to major labels in the late ‘80s and the early ‘90s; by 2010, that number was down to three. The record industry generally, of course, hit a historic slump in that decade…but that didn’t stop labels from dropping huge releases by Eminem, Kanye West, Ludacris, OutKast, and Lil Wayne. (That, by the way, is also the complete list of artists who won Grammys for Best Rap Album from 2000 to 2012.)

Clover’s book is an excellent complement to Iandoli’s. The latter is more of a read-through narrative, while the former is something you can dip into at your leisure. You’ll want to take time to listen to these artists - which include not only big names like Roxanne Shanté, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Missy Elliott, and Lauryn Hill, but also underappreciated figures like MC Sha-Rock (“hip-hop’s first prominent female MC”), Yo-Yo (the Martin star who released “You Can’t Play with My Yo-Yo”), and Vita (whose voice you’ve heard on Nas hits like “Put It On Me”).

The title’s promised 100+ rappers are divided among profiles, first-person testimonials, and listicles (“First Ladies of Rap Crews,” “White Rap Family Tree”) - with stylish portraits by artist Rachelle Baker. Hope’s aims are primarily educational, but The Motherlode hardly reads like a textbook. Her dry wit shines in entries on Teena Marie (“once called herself ‘the first woman rapper ever,’ which was sweet but incorrect”) and Bytches With Problems (“gangsta girl shock jocks”).

Hope, a Pitchfork writer who’s been an editor at Billboard and XXL, also brings a critical acuity that’s key in unpacking the complex legacies of artists like Foxy Brown and Lil’ Kim: two women who achieved hip-hop stardom on a scale that, with the exception of Lauryn Hill, wouldn’t be known again until the rise of Minaj in the 2010s. Both Brown and Kim embraced highly sexual images in ways that were both liberating and limiting.

Brown, writes Hope, was “aware of her physical power” and yet also “a teenager who was sexualized by men and created a whole new expectation for women in rap.” Kim, forever tied to the legacy of her partner the Notorious B.I.G., was “an experiment, a muse, and a sacrificial lamb.”

One of the book’s many fun features is a list of 18 things “you need to know about Lil’ Kim’s ‘Not Tonight (Ladies Night Remix),’ featuring Angie Martinez, Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes, Lil’ Kim, Da Brat, and Missy Elliott.” Among them: it samples Kool and the Gang’s “Ladies Night”; Martinez’s lyrical claim that she just made her rap up the previous night was literally true; the posse cut was conceived to help create solidarity around Kim lest she get backlash for her hypersexualized image; and the video features cameos from artists including Queen Latifah, SWV, and a dancing Mary J. Blige.

The Motherlode also lends clarity to hip-hop’s early years, the subject of decades of contention over who precisely led the way. Hope gives ample credit where it’s due, which means spreading it around among the many women who were on the mic in the ‘70s and early ‘80s.

One of the stars was MC Sha-Rock, who performed with her group the Funky Four Plus One on a 1981 episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Debbie Harry. The Blondie frontwoman earned her own place in hip-hop history, and Hope captures its nuances: “Rapture” helped introduce rap to the mainstream, but it also paved the way for decades of white rappers who have been variously more (Eminem) or less (Vanilla Ice) tied to the Black culture that created hip-hop.

At the other end of the historical timeframe, Hope brings readers up to the present with an enthusiastic appreciation of today’s superstars. Whereas the music industry struggled to market earlier gifted women rappers without the artists being demonized, sexualized, or marginalized, Cardi B markets herself. Needless to say she’s sexy, but on her own terms; she also raps on her own terms, transparent about the fact that she collaborates with other writers. “All these rappers out here got writers,” she’s said, “even the ones that say they don’t.”

Among those rappers are those “who shall remain unnamed,” writes Hope coyly, but who benefited from the compositional skills of Charli Baltimore. Hope also makes a point of emphasizing Missy Elliott’s production and writing credentials, disrupting the assumption that only her longtime collaborator Timbaland was a genius on the other side of the control booth window. (Timbaland, for his part, will have to wait somewhat longer for a defense of his modest abilities on the mic.)

For today’s stars, writes Hope, “the internet meant a sustainable career could be achieved through their own ingenuity. They didn’t have to be beholden to record labels if they didn’t want to - they could build their own community online. They could be weirdos. Suddenly, women are all around, whether on a major label or DIY, and it’s hard to imagine hip-hop going back to a place without at least a few of them owning their own lanes in rap.”

Chances are, happily, that it’s going to remain more than a few.

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Tune in to The Current at 8:30 a.m. (Central) every Thursday morning to hear Jay Gabler and Jill Riley talk about a new book. Also, find Jay's reviews online.

January 13: Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock and Roll by Lenny Kaye (the Patti Smith Group)

January 20: The Work by Scott Hutchison (Frightened Rabbit)

January 27: Led Zeppelin: The Biography by Bob Spitz

February 3: Prince and Popular Music: Critical Perspectives on an Interdisciplinary Life, edited by Mike Alleyne and Kristy Fairclough