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Fly Girls! B-Boys Beware: Revenge of the Super Female Rappers

Soul Jazz ****

A chronicle of female rap on record in 20 colourful steps, Fly Girls! is a reminder of just how fresh those early she-rappers were. While the compilation does turn the clock back a little to a pre-rap age (Nikki Giovanni's Afrobeat poetry and Camille Yarbrough's slinky Praise You are odd pointers to what was to come when the hip-hop party began), the real beef – and beefing – comes when such ladies as JJ Fad, MC Lyte, Sweet Tee and Sequence step to the mic with something to say. Even 20 years after the fact, you can still feel the sparks when the JJ Fad trio have a pop at Roxanne Shante (and nearly everyone else in the game) on the glorious You're Goin' Down. The beats may be as rudimentary as early hip-hop comes, but the sentiments and how they're expressed beat today's braggarts hands down. www.soul jazzrecords.co.uk

Download tracks: JJ Fad, You're Goin' Down; MC Lyte, Cha Cha Cha