Foxy Music
Hip-hop diva's 'Chyna' exploits
appeal to the lust generation

FOXY BROWN, "Chyna Doll" (Def Jam)


n hip hop, it pays to hone your persona. Take Foxy Brown. The Brooklyn-based MC rose to prominence two years ago by presenting a powerful new role for women: the sex bomb gangsta queen. This is a character every bit as curvacious and cartoonish, if nowhere near as clever, as the blaxploitation actress whose movie roles inspired Foxy's approach, Pam Grier.

Previously, most female MCs had either been dignified (Queen Latifah), tomboyish (MC Lyte), sisterly (Salt-N-Pepa), camp (Bitches With Problems) or streetwise (Yo-Yo). But Foxy (ne Inga Marchand), and the simultaneously launched Lil Kim, tried to use what often belittles women in public life — their sexuality — as the very reason they should be taken seriously. Foxy presented her erotic hold over men as an act of revenge, a way to even the score for the evil that men do in the name of love.

Foxy Brown

She didn't have to worry too much about guys feeling overly threatened by this. Most seemed too turned on to care. It only helped matters that the music on her debut LP, "Ill Na Na," offered more accessible R&B-pop than hard street rap. For all its nasty language and soft-porn photos, the LP sounded pretty sweet.

Critics may have carped about the relentless material greed expressed in the raps, but Foxy saw this as taking care of business. Their suspicions about her rhyming skills probably hit closer to home, which may help explain the new approach she took for her latest album.

It's a harder, less melodic LP than the debut, the better to highlight the raps and deepen Foxy's street credibility. In a world where hardness automatically equals respect, she made a smart move. But if her raps have respectable flow, it isn't enough to make up for the less involving new music. Especially since the sound gives the listener fewer distractions from Foxy's depressing view of love.

Her take on male-female relations nearly always involves some act of manipulation, competition or retaliation. Since she rarely trusts men to begin with, it's no wonder the ones she meets always turn out to deserve so little. Foxy might call this realism, but it's really cynicism. And cynicism, like sex, sells — which is something artists like Foxy Brown understand all too well.