Every year, MTV focuses a lens on pop culture shaping women rappers in a week-long celebration of both legacy and emerging emcees during Women In Rap Week. From new exclusive performances and interviews with today’s rising stars to artist partnerships highlighting heavy hitters, and even archival gems straight out of the MTV vault, the goal of this stunt week is to create engaging content for fans to salute their favorites and get a comprehensive look at the current landscape of women in the genre, plus the icons that paved the way for today’s artists in the culture. To bring 2024’s 5th anniversary celebration to a whole new level, we set out to bring fans closer to their favorite artists through an in-person showcase, simultaneously live-streamed across social platforms for an even wider audience to enjoy. With our 2024 campaign, we continued our initiative to solidify MTV platforms as the bridge for fans to uplift and connect with the industry’s wide variety of women in rap.
The top priority in making MTV’s 5th annual Women In Rap Week the biggest yet was reaching fans on more platforms than ever before. In order to achieve this goal we planned custom content highlighting women emcees, ranging from those just gaining momentum to the first ladies of Hip-Hop. These women were honored through features in our hit MTV Brand Social artist discovery series ‘MTV PUSH’, archival content from the MTV vault, multimedia pieces created by an outstanding visual artist partner, social fan engagement opportunities, and more. From having 2024 rap standout GloRilla detail her friendships in the industry to recognizing Doechii’s critically acclaimed ‘Alligator Bites Never Heal’ mixtape to giving new life to one of Da Brat’s first MTV interviews via social, and so much more, Women In Rap Week 2024 was jam-packed with culture-shaping gems.
For this iteration, the pinnacle of our campaign was an in-person talent showcase live-streamed for social coined “MTV Live: Women In Rap”. We planned to bring a few of social media’s favorite women emcees together for a celebration of Hip-Hop and the women emcees that add unique flavor to the genre, and we did just that. With 2024 viral sensations Cleotrapa, Young Devyn, and Lady London confirmed to perform, we turned MTV’s NYC headquarters into a trendy club for an intimate audience of their super fans to witness them hit the stage and live-streamed the show across MTV’s TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube simultaneously for their fans all around the world to join in on the party. These talents of the rap game performed and completed interviews surrounding their projects and inspirations, all while honoring the trailblazers of the genre that came before them. Throughout their time with us, each talent shared special messages with fans in the room and those watching live. These showcase moments created an avenue for fans of each performing artist to feel closer to their faves, whether in person or through their phone’s screen.
Throughout the entirety of Women In Rap Week 2024, we reached the fans directly with content published across social platforms of TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, Facebook, and Threads, as well as extending the celebration to linear MTV music channels. Each piece of content created for the week was optimized with different versions for every platform.
Having met fans right where they were, we saw the immediate impact of our 2024 Women In Rap Week campaign. Fans not only publicly commented their joy to see their favorites receive the flowers they deserve through the artist partnerships, archival video, exclusive interviews, and more, but also expressed that they felt energized by each woman that hit the MTV Live: Women In Rap showcase stage. The sentiment was extremely positive, with special energy in the room and on the livestream creating lasting bonds between Cleotrapa, Young Devyn, Lady London and the audience. Popular female rap fan accounts on social reposted multiple clips of Women In Rap Week content, including MTV Live: Women In Rap performances, interview sound bites, and intimate moments between participating talent and fans in the room. Both legendary and up-and-coming women emcees including Foxy Brown, Da Brat, YoYo, Flau’Jae, Anycia, and others shared our content throughout the week on social, expressing their gratitude for the recognition from MTV.
Following its November 2024 conclusion, MTV’s Women In Rap Week content garnered 20M views and 1.8M engagements overall – a 40% and 114% respective increase from the previous year’s campaign. After witnessing the cultural impact created across social communities and achieving a highly positive fan sentiment, these numbers were the cherry on top for our Women In Rap Week 2024 efforts to be considered a huge success.
