Cardi B becomes the first solo woman to win Grammy Best Rap Album
At the 61st Annual Grammys, *Invasion of Privacy* wins Best Rap Album — the first time the category, introduced in 1996, goes to a solo female artist. The award caps a year in which the Bronx-born Belcalis Almánzar (raised on the same East Tremont blocks that produced Big Pun and Fat Joe) holds the Billboard Hot 100 #1 with 'Bodak Yellow,' headlines major festivals, and gives birth to her first child.
Why it matters
The 23-year gap between Best Rap Album's introduction (1996) and a solo woman winning it (2019) is, by itself, the story of how the Grammy infrastructure understood women in hip-hop for most of the category's existence. Cardi B's win does not erase that gap, but it does open the door — within five years Megan Thee Stallion and Doja Cat would be Grammy mainstays, and the architecture for treating women rappers as central to commercial hip-hop (not as a sub-category of curiosities) is established.
Branches
People1
- centers oncardi-bperson
Citations 3
- A
- B
- B