by Nadirah Simmons
As I’m sure you already know from my and The Gumbo’s social media, my debut book First Things First: Hip-Hop Ladies Who Changed The Game is coming out on January 30, 2024. I learned about a lot of different women during the book writing process, and it struck me just how many hip-hop ladies there are that the average person doesn’t know about. Shoot, how many hip-hop ladies there are that I don’t even know about.
As a New Jerseyan, I’m constantly advocating for my state’s contributions to hip-hop culture. Ladies like Lauryn Hill, Queen Latifah, and Rah Digga are indelible figures in Jersey and hip-hop history, with their music filling my playlists growing up and today. But for a long time, those were the only women rappers I knew who hailed from the Garden State.
Now, of course I knew about women musicians from New Jersey who made hip-hop music. Faith Evans was raised in Newark and started singing at the city’s Emmanuel Baptist Church as a kid. Claudette Ortiz was the sole lady in the R&B/hip-hop group City High, who saw success with tracks like “What Would You Do?” and “Caramel.” (Fun fact, Claudette is from the town right next to mine!) And then, of course, there’s Sylvia Robinson, who moved to Jersey in 1966 and would go on to be known as the “Godmother of Hip-Hop,” founding the pioneering label Sugar Hill Records.
But the extent of my knowledge on New Jersey hip-hop ladies ended there. Until…
I randomly decided to look up women rappers and literally every single city in New Jersey that I could think of! And when I typed in “Camden” and “women rappers” I got “Lady Crush.”
Hailing from Camden, New Jersey, Lady Crush-born Rochelle Ryndia Ray-would rhyme with her cousins as a kid and even won some poetry contests. She came up with her name at the age of thirteen, to signify “a Lady that would Crush an emcee’.” And when a local radio station announced that they were hosting a rap contest with the prize being a feature on an upcoming record, Lady Crush rapped on air and won. Another teenager by the name of Baby T won, as well.
Lady Crush and Baby T appeared on the 1984 Tim Greene track “The Facts of Life” and then the remix of the track called “The Dub of Life”-which appeared as the B-side on the 1985 pressing of “The Facts of Life.” The success of “The Dub of Life” led to Lady Crush recording her first solo record entitled “MC Perpetrators” on KAM Executive Records, which also featured a verse from Tim Greene. As Lady Crush wrote on her website, she didn’t just write her “MC Perpetrators” verse, she also wrote “all but a few words of Tim Greene’s feature rap verse.” But when the song was released, Tim gave two of his family members writing credits.
The next part of Lady Crush’s story is a familiar one to anyone who knows a thing or two about hip-hop deals from those early days. Here are some bullet points from Lady Crush’s website:
Tim Greene asked then 14 year olds Lady Crush and Baby T out for pizza and then asked them to sign a “recording contract”- without parental advisory or consent. He then later circulated information about the meeting, joking that he had signed them for only pizza and a drink.
When the initial press of [“MC Perpetrators”] ran out, more copies were still being requested from record stores and DJs and were also needed for Lady Crush to continue to book shows- Tim Greene and Butch Kelly (KAM Executive Records) refused.
A heated argument then ensued between Lady Crush’s momager Joyce and Tim Greene’s team that not only did her daughter not have a valid recording contract for [“The Facts of Life” ] or [“MC Perpetrators”], since she wrote the lyrics on the record she should be given the masters anyway to do as pleased. A week later Lady Crush was mailed the [“MC Perpetrators”] masters.
Nonetheless, Lady Crush persisted, and along the way she performed on tv shows like Dancin’ USA and Dancin’ On Air and opened for acts like Heavy D & The Boyz, UTFO, and Salt-N-Pepa.
Today Lady Crush works behind the scenes, writing songs and producing for herself and others. In 2015 she released her first single in more than 30 years, entitled “F**k,” followed by the EP Fifty Shades of F**k.
She’s another lady in hip-hop that you need to know.