Ncuti Gatwa's Secret Obsession with Female Rap

Oh, hello there, Vanity Fair.

My name's Ncuti Gatwa, and you've caught me looking

through my secret obsession,

which happens to be female rap.

[mellow hip-hop music]

What albums do I have here?

I have Pink Friday 2, I have Queen,

I have the iconic record, WAP,

and an OG, Missy Elliott, right here.

This, Under Construction, Work It,

when that video came out,

I was maybe like eight years old,

and I was like, watching it, Top of the Pops.

Do you know what Top of the Pops?

With my family, and I was like, oh my god, what is this?

This is incredible. Who is this person?

She's just spat in someone's mouth.

This is just, this is amazing.

There's a critic called Brittney Cooper,

who's described female rap as like,

women in hip-hop, arriving into hip-hop,

as having like, the creativity and ingenuity

that's very characteristic of what it takes

to survive in America,

and I think that's what it is for me.

Like, I feel like these,

[laughs] these ladies have, like, empowered me

on so many different layers.

My sister got me into it, older sister.

She was obsessed with Lauryn Hill growing up, and yeah,

and then my brother was obviously very into the guys,

but like, when I would hear them rap

and what they were rapping about, I was like, this isn't,

I can't really get on board with this.

This isn't. [laughs]

I can't really relate.

So yeah, the girls have always taken it for me.

I think maybe Nicki's verse on Monster

is like, yeah, when I put that on, I feel like a monster,

[laughs] and I feel like there's nothing in my day

that I can't achieve.

And that track, that was like, I feel like,

the first time she, like, exploded onto the scene.

She was on there with Jay-Z, Kanye, Rick Ross,

and obviously, infamously, Kanye was gonna take her verse

out of the song because it was too good.

Like, he was like, when people listen to this song,

they will only remember this verse,

and to be fair, it is the only verse

that I remember from that song.

[laughs] It was the only one worth listening to,

so that verse.

Just the level of like, it was like, who is this person?

Who is this, like?

The references she was pulling,

like, the voices, the characters,

it was just like, the level of creativity

and humor I feel like is what I have found

in a lot of female rappers, like.

Yeah, if a robber broke into my house

and put a gun to my head

and asked me to rap along to any verse,

it would probably be Monster by Nicki,

because just, that was incredible.

What an opening into the world.

Would you like to hear it? [laughs]

♪ Pull up in the monster, automobile gangsta ♪

♪ With a bad bitch that came from Sri Lanka ♪

[Ncuti laughs] [gentle music]