Rah Digga: Dirty Harriet : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Rah Digga looks like a supermodel and raps like a very, very hard woman. Her voice is low but laser thin, more of a holler than a bellow, and she has a loose, unpredictable flow, spitting syllables ahead of the beat, behind the beat and all over the beat, as if she were swarming her own music. After an early career as half of Twice the Flava and a series of memorable guest spots, Digga -- also known as Newark, New Jersey, native Rashia Fisher -- reintroduces herself on her solo debut, despite the fact that most who have heard her never forgot it. On "What's Up Wit That," she yelps that she's "the sweetest person, and I'm still the rhyming queen, with a half-ounce of goodie stashed in my Tommy jeans."

As a persona, Digga's Dirty Harriet is neither virgin nor whore but literally a tough mother, and a superwoman to boot, a glamorous piece of work who can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, then cold-cock her man and tell him to fix his own damn dinner while she busts a ballistic rhyme. She's a twist on the traditional bad girl but also a nod back to rap godmothers like Roxanne Shante and Queen Latifah, whom she samples to head-bobbing, tongue-trippingly wonderful effect on "Lessons of the Day."

Dirty Harriet has a steely, raw sound; Digga favors bleak, unrelentingly minor-key samples, which gives the album a feel more akin to DMX and the Wu-Tang than to the tracks of most other female MCs. "Showdown" rolls with a sneaky organ hook, then Digga raps "So Cool" in a drone that recalls Ozzy Osbourne's lower registers; the tune is about the ephemeral nature of being, well, extremely fly. "Break Fool" may be the most evil metal-rap headbanger of the month -- the way Rah Digga freaks the chorus, "Smoke it up, trick it up!," is so muscular, it oughta send Fred Durst back to the StairMaster. Digga subverts her own power in places, reminding us repeatedly and unnecessarily that she writes her own rhymes and telegraphing her hardness by hosting the lyrical fag bashing of the Outsidaz, which just seems straight-up offensive. But she never plays off her sex appeal ("Ho's might oppose, but most chicks happy I can rap without taking off my clothes," she rhymes on "What They Call Me") and never flames competitors like Lil' Kim or Foxy Brown. Mostly, Dirty Harriet is a snapshot of roughneck sisterhood: Few rappers have used the word bitch with such empowerment. (RS 839)

PAT BLASHILL