Malaysian female hip hop artist Sya, whose debut single is a satire of macho stereotypes, doesn’t fit rap’s alpha-male image

A Malay, Sya is the first female artist to sign with Def Jam Southeast Asia, a branch of the Manhattan hip-hop label, and says, ‘I never saw it coming’

Her debut single with Singapore’s Yung Raja is the story of a girl becoming a confident woman. ‘I’ve been a victim of male supremacy for so long,’ she says

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Malaysian rapper Sya says she’s challenging a status quo “built on the basis of the patriarchy and toxic masculinity”. Photo: Def Jam Southeast Asia

Published: 2:45pm, 31 Jan 2021Updated: 7:32pm, 31 Jan 2021

Guns, hot cars and a harem of girls: like it or not, the globalisation of hip hop has also brought the genre’s alpha-male attitude to music scenes all over the world, making rap a difficult genre for women to thrive in.

But girls do rap, and keep reaching milestones regardless of machismo and the coronavirus pandemic. In May 2020, American female hip-hop artists Nicki Minaj, Doja Cat, Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion reached the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. Now comes a mean, tongue-in-cheek answer to the genre’s dominant stereotypes from the most unlikely of places: predominantly Islamic Malaysia.

“All my ladies throwin’ it back, jiggle jiggle them millions/Have him spend couple hunnids /Then I David Cop’ field him [ …] I made a big boy cry/I mean I had to do it to ’еm,” 24-year-old Kuala Lumpur-based Sya raps in her debut single PrettyGirlBop, featuring Singaporean Indian actor and hip-hop stalwart Yung Raja.

Sya is the first female artist to sign with Def Jam Southeast Asia, a branch of the historic Manhattan hip-hop label that launched in Singapore in late 2019, attracted by the region’s burgeoning musical talent. “I never saw it coming,” says Sya, who grew up listening to R&B and hip hop, and started writing spoken-word poems and free-styling in 2018.

The next year, her Berzerk freestyle video on Instagram landed on the radar of French-Malaysian singer-songwriter and rapper SonaOne, and things snowballed from there. “It felt almost surreal in the beginning, […] but more than anything, I feel […] honoured that they saw potential in me, a young female rapper, to represent Southeast Asia,” Sya told the Post.