Hip-hop: Eve on five female MCs who changed the genre

Image source, Interscope Records< /figure> By Mark Savage BBC Music Correspondent

Hip-hop may seem like a man's world, but women have been in it all along.

The famous Bronx party that gave birth to the genre was organized by Cindy Campbell, a high school student who was trying to raise money for her back-to-school clothes. It was Cindy who wrote the invitations on index cards and invited her brother Clive, aka DJ Kool Herc, to play the music.

After a short time , former R&B singer Sylvia Robinson co-founded the world's first hip-hop label, Sugar Hill Records. Alongside landmark singles like Rapper's Delight, she also released one of the first all-female rap records, The Sequence's Funk You Up (featuring a then-unknown Angie Stone).

But as the genre became mainstream, pioneers like Roxanne Shanté, Kool Lady Rock, and MC Sha-Rock were overshadowed by their male counterparts. The dawn of gangsta rap in the early 1990s transformed hip-hop into even more of a boys' club.

As the genre turns 50 , a new three-part BBC documentary aims to rectify the record.

Narrated by Neneh Cherry, First Ladies of Hip-Hop recognizes the contributions of artists like Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Rah Digga and Lil Kim, while highlighting a new generation - Ice Spice, Little Simz, Doja Cat - at the forefront of rap innovation.

Among them is Philadelphia-born rapper Eve. , the hard-core MC who emerged as part of the band Ruff Ryders...