Why We Picked This

Andrew Winistorfer: This is another record that has been on our list for a fairly long time. I know that I put this on our master potential Record of the Month list in probably the first 6-7 months of us having this sub. It’s a super important record in hip-hop history: She was the first female rapper to ever go Platinum, and in a genre that isn’t always hospitable to women artists, that’s a feat that is worth celebrating. Plus, the album rules; it’s one of the first major LPs out of Atlanta that went national.

It feels like an easy slam dunk for why we would pick this, but every time we do a female rapper in this spot, we get a lot of weird feedback on the album “being pop” or an album “everyone” wants to Swap. It really mirrors the general attitude of the rap internet, which it seems like every three months has to have a public referendum on whether women rappers have artistic merit, when of course they do. Why is it important to you, and for us as a company, to keep shining a light on women rappers?

Alex Berenson, Head A&R at VMP: She’s the first solo female rapper to go Platinum! It’s not easy to sell over a million copies of an album; if it was, more male rappers would have done it. Plus, it’s hard to sell over a million copies of an album when you’re a woman, when you’re a woman doing rap music, and when you’re a woman doing rap music in 1994. To think how incredible that is! You have to pay tribute to that. And frankly, the music is really fucking good!

Yeah, not only is it a historically important album, it’s also great music. It’s also the first time in 25 years you can get this on vinyl. Which is the entire point of the Rap & Hip Hop subscription in a nutshell.

Yeah, exactly. And we’re never going to stop shining that light on records like this; especially records made by any marginalized people who are breaking down barriers.

Package Details

You’ll have to tell me what the package looks like, since I haven’t seen it IRL yet.

Oh man, the color on this one is wild. It’s red neon…

Which is a new color effect that just came out at our pressing plant.

And it looks great. Really does actually glow without having to be under a light or anything. In a standard jacket, with a cool stencil that shouts out one of the songs here. Audio was DMM like the last few RHH records, right?

Yep, DMM cut at GZ, which has given us our best sounding rap records.