The role of women in hip-hop should not be overlooked but it often has been.  For more than a decade (including the 90’s which many consider to be the Golden Age of hip-hop) women were a staple in rap music.  In fact, they were so much a part of the hip-hop ethos that their gender wasn’t even discussed.  Rappers like MC Lyte, Salt-N-Pepa, Queen Latifah, Foxy Brown and Lil Kim stood side-by-side with their male counterparts.  Lauryn Hill and Missy Elliott blazed the trail for ALL of hip-hop, while their male peers followed.  While hip-hop was still predominantly male, it wasn’t just a man’s game.  That was important because it gave rap multiple perspectives and prevented it from becoming a caricature of itself–one that was about nothing but “money and hoes.”  Hip-hop is multidimensional but after Lauryn Hill and Missy–the last of the great female MCs– stopped making music regularly (only one album since 2003), the (mainstream) female voice was lost and it coincided with a fairly monolithic period in hip-hop.  No one knows exactly why women disappeared from hip-hop, but BET did an excellent documentary addressing the topic: