Rapper Sarai seen as possible 'Feminem'
By Nekesa Mumbi Moody
Associated Press
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| All-American looks aside, Sarai's flow on her debut album "The Original" may remind listeners of black artist Amil.
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Remember Tairrie B? Probably not. Wait, there's ... hmmmm. Actually, the most influential white woman in rap history may be punk princess Deborah Harry, whose rhymes in the 1980 hit "Rapture" helped take rap mainstream.
But now a new face, Sarai, is raising hopes that there might be someone new — a Feminem — to go where none have gone before.
"Eminem has definitely opened people's minds that there could be a white artist actually mastering the skill," says Sarai (rhymes with "goodbye"), a 20-year-old, blue-eyed blonde from Kingston, N.Y., about two hours north of the city where rap was born.
Her debut album, "The Original," was released by Epic Records last week. The first single, the party song "Ladies," has been getting airplay on hip-hop stations and MTV.
One of Sarai's producers is Scott Storch, a founding member of the hip-hop band The Roots, who's worked with artists ranging from Eminem to Christina Aguilera.
Storch says when he first heard Sarai, "she was doing something different than I had ever heard before, sort of hip-hop with a white female, and actually bringing it off like a real sister. I was a little surprised and definitely a little intrigued."
Unlike Eminem, whose race is stamped all over his nasal delivery, Sarai's skin tone won't be readily apparent to listeners — she actually sounds a bit like one-time Jay-Z protege Amil.
Until the superstar producer Dr. Dre ushered Eminem into the rap game in 1999, white people had a checkered history in rap. Unless they completely dissed their white heritage — like the late 1980s group 3rd Bass — or delivered comedy — like the early Beastie Boys — they were usually dismissed.
And who could forget street poseur Vanilla Ice of "Ice Ice Baby" fame, who will go down in history as the Pat Boone of rap?
Even considering Vanilla Ice, rap has been worse for white women.
"I never came across a white female rapper who could rap," says Damon Dash, the Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder who helped put Jay-Z on the map.
A few have made blips. Eazy-E had protege Tairrie B, described back then as the Madonna of rap (she's since gone metal). The trio Luscious Jackson has gotten attention, though more from the rock contingent than the rap community.
Currently, the trio Northern State has gotten good reviews, and the group Fannypack, which had a minor hit this summer with the novelty song "Cameltoe," has a white rapper.
But for the most part, coming up with names of notable white female rappers seems like a challenging game of Trivial Pursuit.
Dash says that's "probably because there hasn't been anyone good enough. I mean, Eminem was like the first real good white male rapper.
"It's hard enough for any kind of female rapper to stay in the game and compete with the male rappers, so being white and being female makes it all that much harder."
Princess Superstar, a sexually frank white rapper sometimes called the white Lil' Kim, can attest to that.
"We've got a lot of racial issues here, and sometimes it plays itself out in the music game," says the rapper, who puts out her music on her own label. "Any white female rapper is going to fight against being considered a novelty."
In addition, since rap is as much or more so about the street life than black life, white acts are often rejected for not having street cred.
Sarai's official bio makes it clear she wasn't a child of privilege, noting she's the daughter of a "single mother" and mentioning she took jobs to help support her family. She says she grew up in a multiracial neighborhood with "all different kind of income levels."
"Everybody thinks that I'm from a big white house and this white picket fence, and my parents bought me a Mercedes on my 16th birthday," she says.
Sarai says she grew up listening to Public Enemy, the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. She got her break when she met a producer in Atlanta during a vacation with a friend; she's lived in that music hotspot for the past four years.
Sarai describes her sound as more mainstream than hardcore rap, and her personality seems to bear that out. She describes herself as a "loving person" and doesn't pepper her talk with street slang (or even curses, catching herself before uttering a cuss during a recent interview).
Whether Sarai will make it big remains to be seen. But Dash says if she has the skills, she'll be accepted.
Record companies "are always looking to break a white rapper. They're always looking to break a white anything," laughs Dash. "If somebody is white and they can rap, that means MTV, that means middle America."
But Sarai says she hopes people eventually look past her skin color and see just another rapper.
"It's always gonna be, 'Yo, it's a white girl,' " she says. "Eventually, they have to look past it."
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A few of the white faces who have made a lasting impact on rap — for better or worse.
EMINEM — First white rapper to gain wide acceptance within the hip-hop community based on his talent.
RICK RUBIN — Co-founder with Russell Simmons of the groundbreaking Def Jam record label; producer of early Run-DMC hits like "King of Rock."
THE BEASTIE BOYS — Brought middle America to the rap table with frat-boy attitude and wacky humor on their 1986 debut, "Licensed to Ill." Their music, and audience, has since become more rock than rap.
3RD BASS — Never huge, but had a minor hit with 1989's "The Gas Face" and plenty of love from the rap community. Came across as white boys who wished they were black — even going so far as to denounce whites as devils in their lyrics.
VANILLA ICE — "Ice Ice Baby" shot to the top of the charts and remains a guilty pleasure to this day. But Ice was ridiculed by fellow rappers and critics, especially after falsely claiming to be from the ghetto. Still, his 1990 debut "To the Extreme" sold more than six million copies.
EVERLAST — Though he's gone through a few incarnations, including blues singer Whitey Ford, Everlast is most remembered for the 1992 party jam "Jump Around" with the group House of Pain.
BUBBA SPARXXX — There was nothing ugly about this Georgia rapper's success. A great farm-friendly video helped make "Ugly" one of the hottest rap songs of 2001.
LYOR COHEN — After starting as road manager for Run-DMC, Cohen quickly became a top executive and eventually co-owner of Def Jam Records. Is now arguably the most powerful executive in rap as chairman and CEO of the combined Island-Def Jam Records.
