Status, Votive Luxury, and Labour: The Female Rapper’s Delight

Abstract

Rap and luxury fashion form hip hop’s most unshakable couple. However, female rappers appear to have a more difficult time acquiring and manipulating luxury fashion. When the female rapper demands expensive clothing from her sex partners, is she complicit in her reification as a sexually alienated subject or is she highlighting the value of black women’s labour? In fact, if we look closely at the nexus of luxury fashion, sexuality, and female rappers, there occurs an important transformation of the luxury sign. For rappers like Roxanne Shanté, Nicki Minaj, and Cardi B, luxury objects and branded fashion are not symbols of taste or habitus, in the sense Bourdieu (1979) gives them. Instead, these female rappers question the social weight carried by the luxury commodity; they demand consecration, in the truest sense of the word, through the luxury gift; or, conversely, they highlight the luxury commodity’s real use value.

Keywords

• roxanne shanté
• nicki minaj
• cardi b
• hip hop
• luxury