Southern women are shaping the sound of hip-hop’s future

What a difference a year makes.

At the end of 2023, GloRilla, Latto and Doechii had each earned namesake notoriety and steady rotation in playlists. Repping Memphis, Atlanta and Tampa, they stood in their Southern heritage and made sure it bubbled up in everything they dropped. Still, for all three, there was something missing. Whether it was the need of an elbow-throwing alter ego or a tuning out of toxic cynicism, each had to fight themselves off the ledge of stagnancy.

The mission for Memphis phenom GloRilla was to stand in her power. In 2023, after already securing platinum plaques for her breakout hit, “F.N.F” and “Tomorrow 2” featuring Cardi B (two hits about listening to your instincts over people’s projections and negative actions) Glo’s confidence was tested. You’d think haters would have piped down after Glo’s repeated moments of sincere virality. But the rapper admitted seeing claims she “fell off” in 2023 almost shook her foundation. “Yall made me feel crazy when I dropped ‘Cha Cha Cha,’ yall made me feel real crazy,” she said during an Instagram Live in March.

While Glo was getting her gumption back, the name of the game was authentic momentum for Latto. The 25-year-old had already put in 10,000 hours into a career that started in her early teen years. As the first solo female rap artist from Atlanta to go platinum thanks to tracks like “B**** From Da Souf” in 2019 and the Gucci Mane-assisted “Muwop” in 2020, Big Latto was still feeling the heat of a pop crossover, 2021’s “Big Energy,” and had started to signal that she wasn’t letting go of her trap roots with 2023’s “Put It on da Floor.” Her ability to sell catchy singles and her talent for internet challenge-spawning bars had been proven, but up until 2024, delivering a full-length that told her story had evaded her.

As Latto’s pop and rap tracks remained in playlist rotations, Florida’s new don-dada, Doechii, was trying not to be defined by one sound or being mistaken for someone she’s not. Doechii’s highest performing single to-date, “What It Is,” which dropped in March 2023, had all the makings of viral, rompy, cookie-cutter TikTok audio but lacked the shameless bite and bravado that true fans of the Swamp Princess know. And as the first female rapper signed to super label, Top Dawg Entertainment, the Tampa rapper had to define herself as a distinct member of the California-based clique so as to not get lumped in as a formulaic West Coast transplant.

The South has always had something to say, and in the nearly three decades since 3 Stacks claimed it with those words, the region has become the nucleus of hip-hop culture and in 2024, these three women of the South have fought for their place at the center of the conversation in ways that will dictate where it goes next.

“They all offer different things,” says Jewel Wicker, a writer who has covered Atlanta hip-hop as it diverged and evolved over the last decade. In 2024, Wicker realized she’s never felt more represented by the variety of womanhood on display in rap. “I personally feel like as a Southern woman, I am all of those things and so, to have artists that speak to all of those different elements to me, feels really special.”

Their three standout albums will go down as 2024’s best. Not just because they had the best bars, but because the artists who dropped them trusted themselves enough to make artistic and commercial leaps.

But there was a slow climb to get to these massive moments of vindication.

Lore’l, co-host of The Morning Hustle and host of the podcast Listen To Black Women, distinctly remembers how vicious fans were when Glo dropped a less-than-stellar collab in 2023. “Being attacked like that, just for being creative on your song is sickening,” she says.

Instead of staying sick, Glo locked in with her murzik to address haters almost directly. In February, she dropped her first single of the year, “Yeah Glo!,” an inner monologue of affirmations dispensed with her unmistakable timbre and sauce to match: “Them b*****s fraudulent, you know you the truth (Get ’em, Glo!) Stop overthinkin’, these hoes can’t f*** with you.” The reception was the equivalent to a jolt of adrenaline right before a roller coaster drop.

Like Glo, Latto faced internet shade while trying to get into her next phase. Imaginary beef between the ATL rhymer and Bronx drill princess Ice Spice was instigated by fanbases while Latto was preparing to drop new music. Latto hit the booth with the quickness and used agitation to conjure her brand new alter ego: Big Mama. “You aint daddy, b****, I’m Big Mama / Everytime you book me with that hoe it’s gon be big drama,” she snarled on February’s “Sunday Service.”

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GloRilla (left) and Megan Thee Stallion parlayed their chemistry on the track “Wanna Be” into a spring and summer tour.

By spring, both Glo and Latto’s visions of greatness came into view. In April, Glo’s chemistry with Megan Thee Stallion on the track “Wanna Be,” another immediate knockout, fueled the announcement of the duo hitting the road. Glo served as the opening act on the Houston Hottie’s first national headlining tour, The Hot Girl Summer Tour, and won the arenas over for 23 shows from May to July with unshakeable confidence, 40-inch bussdowns and rumor-starting twerk-offs. While on tour, Glo made sure she had plenty of new material for crowds to chant by giving us “TGIF,” in June, the more grown-up cousin to her 2022 breakout single, “F.N.F.”

With the introduction of her bossed-up head of household alter-ego, Latto’s new mode was activated. In June, she dropped a genre-jumping banger of the same name and synthesized her rap and pop instincts into an infectious hit. The track was timed perfectly with a career milestone for the Georgia girl: In June, she made history when she became the first woman to headline Birthday Bash, Atlanta’s annual hip-hop festival put on by Hot 107.9.

To mark the occasion, the rapper renamed the show “Big Latto Bash” and created stage productions that mimicked the city’s signatures (stripper poles included). “For her to come out there and not just bring the whole city out, but to sell it out?! She sold out the State Farm arena. Everybody don’t sell out Birthday Bash,” says Lore’l, who watched the set from the side of the stage.

Lore’l remembers how the energy of the crowd revved up with each hit Latto performed and each guest pop-out — Crime Mob’s Princess to Mariah The Scientist, Usher and Baby Drill to 21 Savage. “You [can] look at radio play or this and that, you can look at what we’re streaming. But you have to remember the people that are really supporting you are on the ground,” Lore’l says. “And you got to sometimes go out and touch those people and I think that’s exactly what she did. Mission accomplished.”

Compared to Latto and Glo, the first half of 2024 was quieter for Doechii. Even though she’d been bubbling for years as the talented little sis of TDE’s lineup, the strength of Doechii’s dexterity had yet to be revealed to a larger audience. In March, “Alter Ego,” a long-teased collab between Doechii and City Girls’ JT finally got an official release. The only issue was snippets of the song had already made so many rounds on social media, it took the wind out of the moment.

Feeling conflicting by ideas of what type of artist path she should follow — The fluffy sex symbol? The prophetic purist? — Doechii felt paralyzed. That inertia pushed her to throw out the music industry rulebook. It simultaneously freed her and forced the industry to follow her lead.

When she finally made her move, it made noise. It was July when the campy theatre kid started releasing Swamp Sessions music videos, breadcrumbing her larger vision. When the third Swamp Session track and video, “Nissan Altima,” dropped, it took off faster than fraudulent owners of that same whip with expired tags. Her mixtape that followed in August, Alligator Bites Never Heal, was recorded in about a month, a creative purge the 26-year-old later recalls in interviews as being “impulsive.” The fruits of this rapid burst of kinetic energy and labor were juicy; 19 tracks of tough love, inner-monologues, comedic storytelling, frantic breathing exercises, boom bap love notes and delicate R&B coos. Proclamations (backed up by the versatile content of the project) that she can’t and won’t be boxed in. “Say it’s real and it’s rap / And it boom and it bap / And it bounce and it clap / And it’s house and it’s trap / It’s everything /I’m everything!” Doe screams on “BOOM BAP.”

Big Mama played her smartest move of all in August, too: She dovetailed off her career peak at Birthday Bash in a way that brought the sound of her people with her. Latto’s third studio album, Sugar Honey Iced Tea balanced her own coming-of-age while swerving through the city that raised her: dropping off a classic intro with “Georgia Peach,” sampling icons like Mike Jones and T.I., plotting rendezvous at Copper Cove, switching flows like vintage fits and adding the term “Brokey” to the running list of a hustler’s sins never to commit.

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Latto’s introduction of a new alter ego, Big Mama, helped her usher in a new era of creativity.

“Latto has proven she’s a really, very strong rapper and lyricist, but she also has this knack for melody that kind of makes pop crossover really easy for her,” Wicker says. “This album really capitalizes on all those strengths.”

As Latto and Doechii created the last heat waves of the summer, GloRilla geared up to show audiences all the seasons of her journey on her long-awaited debut. On Glorious, which arrived in October, Big Glo peeled back the layers of her artistry and revealed her true motivations in the rap game. She tapped into her gospel roots, advocated against domestic violence, transmitted candid “hood b**** motivation” and lived out early 2000s R&B dreams. With one of the most unique voices in all of rap right now, Glo’s tone and Tennessee drawl add dimension to her raps, carrying her conviction to ring off farther. Sales followed: Glorious earned Glo the highest first week figures of any female rapper this year, moving 69,000 albums in its first week.

Watching Glo go from underestimated to congratulated within a year, Lore’l believes it’s a celebration of the long road, complete with imperfections, that makes this moment in her career much more empowering: “[She] just makes you feel good about yourself and to feel good about who you are without any alterations [or] approval. Like, ‘This is me, F my baby daddy. He’s a bum, you know, but I’m still poppin’.'”

We have women in rap to thank for the continual surge of starpower through this year’s catalog, including a range that stretches far beyond these three artists. Mobile’s Flo Milli finished up her clever, cutthroat trilogy with Fine Ho, Stay. Miami’s JT proved she could stand alone from City Girls with City Cinderella. Rapsody’s Please Don’t Cry reflected and Monaleo’s Throwing Bows lashed out. Megan Thee Stallion morphed into her strongest form yet with MEGAN (Acts I and II) and Sexyy Red delivered her second child and the undeniable In Sexyy We Trust — all while on tour! In a rap game that’s been rigged against women for decades, breaking a new mold for the South is revolutionary. “I envision breaking a lot more records for Black women,” Doechii declared after her Tiny Desk. “Taking up a lot of space in this industry and exceeding expectations constantly with accolades and within music or just… breaking out of boxes, really deleting the concept of a box.”

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After releasing her biggest commercial hit, “What It Is,” in 2023 and then staying quiet for most of the first half of 2024, Doechii regrouped and recorded her mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal, in about a month.

While Doechii’s dreams of freedom reflect an ideal that’s always being fought for, being boxed in is a restraint that hip-hop has always known, both internally, and literally recently.

“I think Atlanta specifically is in a transitional moment. We’ve been through a lot in terms of hip-hop in the past couple of years,” Wicker says. The deaths of Takeoff in 2022, and Rico Wade and Rich Homie Quan in 2024, have left a hole in the heart of the city. The criminal trial of Young Thug, a seminal figure of Atlanta’s rap expansion, put a target on the back of many more and set a precedent for how Georgia’s justice system plans to treat rap lyrics. As Wicker covered the YSL trial over the past two years from the courtroom, she watched the shift occur.

“It does feel like this moment where the folks that were on top a couple of years ago are no longer present in either literally in the terms of Takeoff or figuratively in terms of Thug and we’re kind of trying to see where the dust settles and kind of what that new crop of artists are going to be on the scene,” she says.

Latto, Glo and Doechii are women taking their shot at the top, not waiting for the dust to settle. Though each project sounds vastly different, what binds the three Southern belles together is the commitment to trusting in their vision, their rigor, their redemption over the increasing noise of hype.

Looking in the rearview of this year, all three have harnessed the hype to their advantage. Even though she considered it a mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal moved mountains for Doechii the way an album would. The tape earned her four Grammy nominations heading into 2025, including best rap album. Latto and Glo also have Grammy noms heading into 2025 for their trajectory-shifting tracks, “Big Mama” and “Yeah Glo!” The spotlight that followed the nominations even gave Doechii the opportunity to put her playful genius on display with attention-grabbing appearances at NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concerts and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

“I think this is an example of women stepping into the gaps and saying, ‘We’re here. You can’t ignore us,’ ” Wicker declares. ” ‘We’re at the center of rap.’ ”

Additional reporting by Ashley Pointer