One night in 1998, Katrina Laverne Taylor was hanging with a few friends when she got a phone call. Her friend Trick Daddy, rising Miami rap star and mainstay of her Liberty City neighborhood, was in the studio completing his album www.thug.com, and he'd had an idea. Duet tracks were taking over hip-hop: They were hard, yet sexy, and Southern rap didn't have an answer for them yet. He was going to make that answer, and he needed a counterpart. So he begged Katrina to come down to the studio, and played her a song he had already cut called "Nann N****."
Katrina, known these days as the Southern rap legend Trina, laid down a verse that night that got her a record deal on the spot, and led a generation of women toward being liberated on mic — as she calls them, "a whole universe of bad bitches." But in a time when women were expected to be "ride or die chicks" hanging their whole careers on a man's cosign, Trina put the girls on her back and left Trick hanging in the balance.
Illustration by Amanda Howell Whitehurst. http://amandahowellwhitehurst.com
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LOUDER THAN A RIOT’s second season unpacks just how deeply misogynoir is embedded in the fabric of the hip-hop culture that we love. How did issues of masculinity play into the tensions between ILoveMakonnen and Drake, or Saucy Santana and the industry? How did Rico Nasty's community mobilize for her when she was targeted by Playboi Carti fans? Why did Megan Thee Stallion's reputation get put on the stand for a trial where she was the victim? And why does the culture antagonize rap beefs that reinforce the idea there can only be one queen of rap?
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