Clover Hope is well-known for documenting popular culture icons via her many canopy tales, profiles, and interviews. The prolific journalist and writer took her work to new heights in February 2021 when she launched “The Motherlode: 100+ Ladies Who Made Hip-Hop,” her ode to the tradition’s feminine pioneers, trailblazers, and present heavy-hitters. Whereas the e book provides a visible map of greater than 100 influential ladies in ra, and particulars their musical and profession breakthroughs, Hope’s newest model of it goals to raise these ladies’s legacies much more via audio.

“The Motherlode: 100 + Ladies Who Made Hip Hop,” now an Audible Unique, launched as a five-chapter audio collection on Aug. 10 to dig deeper into the historical past and misogyny of hip-hop, propping up its “neglected innovators and underappreciated voices” in a brand new type of media simply in time for the tradition’s fiftieth anniversary. Created and govt produced by Hope, the audio collection primarily based on her e book, she says, guarantees a “new listening expertise,” because it’s narrated by a few of the most outstanding ladies in hip-hop, together with MC Lyte, Remy Ma, and radio legend Angie Martinez, in addition to stars like Lauren London, Nia Lengthy, Chloe Bailey, and Janelle James, plus Hope herself.

By archival footage, music snippets, scripted reenactments, and extra, Hope and Audible’s “The Motherlode” provides listeners the possibility to listen to all concerning the historical past of ladies in hip-hop straight from their mouths.

Forward of the “Motherlode”‘s audio launch, Hope spoke to POPSUGAR about revisiting her e book in a brand new medium, honoring ladies in hip-hop, and her star-studded forged of narrators. Learn forward for the complete dialog, plus an unique snippet from the collection with Salt-N-Pepa discussing their impression on vogue.

POPSUGAR: It has been over two years since your e book was launched. Was your work carried out with that, or did this audio collection supply an opportunity to revisit and elevate it?

Clover Hope: It was an opportunity to carry the phrases to life and in addition carry the tales to life. Once I was engaged on the e book, it was necessary to have these illustrations together with the histories and this documentation as a result of truly seeing the ladies provides this extra layer. Illustrations of MC Lyte and the way she selected to current herself, and Queen Latifah and Lauryn Hill, how they really seemed. And so with the audio, it is an opportunity to see, hear, really feel, and get that added context. Not solely are you studying the tales, you are seeing them represented within the e book after which, now, you are listening to them in audio kind informed by these different actually iconic ladies in leisure who’re threading this story and providing you with this narrative.

[This series] was an opportunity to even have this totally new listening expertise as a result of, along with me narrating, you will have these different voices narrating, musical archives, and tune snippets, which might be probably the most thrilling half to me. You are breaking into the storytelling and listening to these iconic songs as you are listening to the tales being informed.

PS: Was it a troublesome course of to clear these songs for the collection?
CH: Yeah, it’s a course of, however I feel that was necessary to incorporate regardless of the clearance a part of it. Partly as a result of, even with the e book and the audio collection, I considered how a lot individuals dissect rap lyrics. Working in hip-hop journalism all these years, and principally with males, I have been in these debates about who’s the best and high songs, and folks will dissect these lyrics like they’re doing surgical procedure or one thing. That is what I miss although, seeing it for songs by ladies. Listening to these songs be dissected and given the identical kind of consideration we do to Biggie’s “Warning,” to Lauryn Hill’s “Misplaced Ones,” or Trina’s “Da Baddest B*tch,” I feel, is necessary.

PS: How did you get ladies like MC Lyte, Nia Lengthy, Remy Ma, Lauren London, and Angie Martinez to relate the collection?
CH: I do know, it is form of wild. And in addition, a bit little bit of my wildest goals, as a result of it began with fascinated about, “All proper, what’s our want checklist?” MC Lyte was on the high of that. She’s the voice, the announcer, and she or he’s within the e book. I discuss a lot about how she controls and instructions her voice and truly having her because the bedrock of the collection. As soon as that locked in place, the entire venture simply felt extra actual.

After which we form of bought one after the opposite. Just like the voice of New York, Angie Martinez, and Nia Lengthy, who has that heat and softness. It was necessary in ensuring that there was quite a lot of voices that you simply’re listening to as a result of it’s an audio expertise, so that you need to have these distinct, distinctive voices telling these tales.

PS: Inform us once you first found hip-hop and the way that planted the seed for “The Motherlode,” the e book and the audio collection.
CH: That is an extended story. I feel a variety of my love of music typically got here from my household and my dad. Our household got here right here from Guyana. I used to be born there and got here right here after I was round 1 yr previous. Loads of my youth was being engaged in American music, Black American music, and studying and listening to it in the home on a regular basis. We had Whitney Houston, Stevie Surprise, and Michael Jackson, and I keep in mind flipping via these information and feeling a soulfulness fill the home. We had this file participant, and as soon as I began with the ability to uncover music by myself and thru my sister, it felt like I used to be taking cost of my very own and with the ability to virtually curate my id via listening to hip-hop information.

I used to be a toddler of the ’90s rising up on radio, Scorching 97, “Video Music Field,” all of the historic archives that mainly helped train me about hip-hop. I noticed artists being interviewed on these reveals, administrators speaking about why they made a sure video, or would hear interviews with Da Brat or [Lil’] Kim on the radio. There have been all of those ways in which I might study hip-hop whereas I used to be discovering it, and I feel that planted a seed of wanting to try this myself. I additionally beloved studying, going to the library, and soaking in info. I needed to know every thing about hip-hop, so in that manner, as soon as I started a profession in journalism and was in a position to flip that in the wrong way, it was pure curiosity that allowed me to have the ability to be a vessel for these ladies’s tales as a result of I grew up listening to them.

I cared about them and the way they had been dealt with within the trade, and I care about documenting and archiving and having locations the place we will study in an natural manner that there is not one model of the story. There is perhaps 100 variations of the story, and every of them helps inform the complete [narrative]. You truly made me understand that connection of how I am mainly documenting in a manner that I used to be receiving that documentation after I was youthful, so thanks.

PS: Did you study something new whereas revisiting your e book for this audio collection?
CH: Yeah, there are undoubtedly artists that I found that I hadn’t identified about earlier than. After which tales about artists that I already knew that I discovered extra about. Like MC Lyte, who I knew as a result of my discovery of hip-hop, it got here on the tail finish of when she was transitioning into a distinct section of her profession. So there was stuff about her upbringing that I discovered and the way she educated her voice. The rationale that we’ve this voice, that she could be a narrator on this collection, an announcer for award reveals, and issues like that, goes again to these teenage years when she was coaching.

The concept was, if I do not know the ladies — and I have been in hip-hop for nearly 20 years now writing about it, after which even longer as a fan — then there’s one thing extra that different individuals can study, whether or not they’re followers, lovers, or an on a regular basis listener of hip-hop. There are a variety of nuggets and factoids sprinkled all through the audio collection.

PS: For the individuals who have already learn your e book, what else are they going to get out of this audio collection?
CH: Effectively, you get MC Lyte studying Cardi B lyrics. These moments the place the narrators themselves carry the data and the tales alive. What I have a tendency to like about something that has to do with audio is how intimate it may be. That is a type of issues you could simply placed on and actually get misplaced in. And I feel that intimacy that it permits is one thing completely different that even if in case you have learn the e book, you would possibly need to hear Angie Martinez studying about Azealia Banks. Or these little nuggets of data as you are washing dishes or commuting or nevertheless you expertise it. There is a shock round each nook, and I feel that component of shock, pleasure, and a bit little bit of sensuality — additionally in the subject material is typically ladies speaking about intercourse. That is fascinating to me, so hopefully it is fascinating to different individuals.

“The Motherlode: 100 + Ladies Who Made Hip Hop” audio collection is obtainable on Audible now.