“There was a large concern about the album being sort-of released via grainy video and leaked out online,” said Wesley Schultz, the band’s lead singer.

So the band decided to lock up people’s phones — not take them away, exactly, but just lock them up for the show. Like a timeout.

At the concerts, The Lumineers started working with a company called Yondr, which created a locking pouch for people to hold their phones in during performances. Audience members keep the pouches with them, and they stay sealed as long as they’re inside an established “phone-free zone,” but unlock outside of that.

Schultz said he was surprised at how well it works.

“If you can set it up so that people can’t get to their phones as easily or are deterred, people actually really welcome that,” he said. “It’s just such a strong force of habit in our lives right now.”

Schultz has taken it a step further and adopted the mentality in his personal life: At his wedding, he and his wife asked guests to check their phones at the door.

“It wasn’t because of any sort of a, ‘I don’t want photos of anyone at the wedding’ — it was more, we wanted people to be present,” he said.

That’s become somewhat of a mantra for entertainers these days.

As Beyonce herself told fans at a recent show, “Y’all gotta put the camera phones down for one second and actually enjoy this moment.”

Adele, too: “Yeah, I want to tell that lady as well, can you stop filming me with a video camera? Because I’m really here in real life — you can enjoy it in real life.”

Smartphones may be ubiquitous, but there are still limits to common courtesy. Recently the movie theater chain AMC backed off a proposal to allow texting in cinemas after it garnered enormous public backlash.

Schultz thinks that sense of decency should extend to live music.

“I think of it like, if we had that same attitude and you went to see Hamilton, people would be totally up in arms about that,” Schultz said. “But for some reason it’s completely acceptable to do at shows.”

(That said, Hamilton isn’t immune to cellphone faux pas either. As The New York Times reported, the musical’s star Lin-Manuel Miranda once chastised a certain celebrity on Twitter for incessant texting. Meanwhile, Patti LuPone grabbed a phone away from one audience member in the middle of Shows for Days.)

In this environment, Yondr has found fans of its own in artists like Alicia Keys and comedians like Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K. and Hannibal Buress.

It’s not just about cutting the distractions of glowing screens and, worse, ringing phones. For some, there’s also a concern of creative security.

According to a Washington Post article, Keys hired Yondr for a concert where she planned to premiere new songs from her first album since 2012’s Girl on Fire. Louis C.K. did the same when he was trying out a new set at the Comedy Store in West Hollywood.

A new patent granted to Apple — for infrared technology that could disable smartphone cameras remotely from the stage — might make those pouches obsolete one day. But the idea is the same.

Not everyone has reacted positively to the idea of a “phone-free zone,” however.

“Even at one of the shows, a guy brought in a knife with him — just, he usually carries a knife, I guess — and he tried to stab through the case,” Schultz said. “And it’s got steel, I think, woven into it. So his knife got stuck in the thing, and then when he had to leave, he had the embarrassing deal of having to tell the people that he tried to open it, and they had to pry his knife loose.”

Will Yondr, or methods like it, eventually become the norm in entertainment? Schultz thinks so: “Something tells me in a little while we’ll kinda look back and say, ‘We were a little out of control with our use of phones — we didn’t really know boundaries. We were sort of working it out.’ ”

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Husney became Prince‘s first manager and helped negotiate the deal that would lead to the release of his early albums. Following Prince’s death Thursday at the age of 57, NPR’s Audie Cornish asked Husney to share a few memories of the boundary-smashing artist he knew as a precocious teenager. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below.

What was Prince like when you first took him on as an artist? Because I think one thing that set him apart from really all others is that he seemed to straddle a lot of different genres, and he did that across racial boundaries as well as musical ones.

Owen Husney: Yes, and he never wanted to be pigeonholed into one specific genre of music, because he always felt that he was capable [of more]. Even at that young age, he was very focused, very directed and highly intelligent. And he just wasn’t mimicking his influences — he was combining their sounds. He was making a whole new sound, which later would be defined, I guess, as the “Minneapolis sound.” He had the rare ability to not just mimic the sound of an artist that influenced him but to take it another level.

You knew him as Prince Rogers Nelson — when he first came on the scene, before he became just Prince. Can you remember something, an anecdote or a story from that time that really drove home to you that he knew who he was?

You know, he had just turned 18, and it was very much a co-working atmosphere between he and I at that point. Once he went on to his second album and all the subsequent albums, obviously, he became Prince, and he was very much in charge. But he was very willing to listen to me and to take my direction, which I think is probably the only time that ever happened, to be honest with you [laughs].

We had had a fight early on about something, and he walked out of my house in a huff. He called me several hours later, and he had written a song — you know, not about me or anything. It was a song called “So Blue” that went on the first album. And he played me the song, and it just was his way of saying, “I know what happened between us and I’m sorry.” I just remember sitting on the kitchen floor and listening to that song and getting tears in my eyes. And then we were patched up and on we went.

The thing that always strikes me about Prince is his ability to focus and have a direction of where he wants to go, and then making it happen. He was exhibiting the work ethic of a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He was beyond anybody that I had ever met.

He’s someone who was both very private and at times appeared very eccentric. What can you remember of his personality?

Well, all I can tell you from that level is that I consider myself to be a sensitive manager. And I think all managers need to be this way, but when Prince came along I noticed he was shy and a little bit removed. And I never sought to change him into something else — to say, you know, “Why can’t you be more like Sly Stone?” or something. I saw who he was, and there was a mystery about him even then. And so as a manager I noticed that, and I was able to just make that a part of who he was in all of our publicity and everything going forward. We did a first press kit with him that said very little, because Prince said very little. Because his music does the talking.

Is there a song you’d like us to remember him by?

I think, more than a song, you should remember … what he did to break down barriers. There are only a handful of artists that have broken down barriers between all the musical genres, and I think that’s how he should be remembered. I think he just has to be understood for the body of work he’s going to leave us — and I’m talking beyond just what we call traditional rock ‘n’ roll and funk and everything else. I think he’s got things that are in the vaults at Paisley Park that we will be unpacking for years to come, and we will be amazed.

I understand that, as his first manager, you helped him arrange his contract with Warner Bros., which allowed him a good deal of creative control over his music — considered, I think, unprecedented at the time. Can you talk about his legacy there? Because it seems, over the years, he has always been an advocate for creative control.

There has been no doubt. And when we signed the deal with Warner Bros., I had the great job of going to the chairman of Warner Bros. and saying that an 18-year-old artist, who has never made an album before, is going to be producing his own album and having complete creative control. I didn’t relish that meeting!

We kind of organized a test where they watched him in the studio. And at the end of him maybe getting halfway through the song, Lenny Waronker, who was president of Warner at that time, he pulled me out in the hallway and said, “We’re going to give him the complete control that you’re asking for.” So there’s an inner talent, a drive, and then there’s this ability that’s — you either have it or you don’t.

Prince is, to me, one of the greatest artists of our time. And I think he’s one of those legacy artists of which there’s maybe 10 or 11. I put him up there with Miles Davis, with Hendrix and Dylan. I put him up there in that stratosphere.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

“It is with profound sadness that I am confirming that the legendary, iconic performer Prince Rogers Nelson has died at his Paisley Park residence this morning at the age of 57,” publicist Yvette Noel-Schure said. “There are no further details as to the cause of death at this time.”

Reporting from Paisley Park on Thursday, Andrea Swensson tells Minnesota Public Radio that she was among a few dozen people who had gathered at Prince’s estate after hearing of a death there — and that “even the journalists are hugging each other” after hearing that Prince died.

Swensson, who had met Prince and spent time with him as part of a retrospective about his film Purple Rain, described him as being “shy, sensitive — and flirtatious.”

News of Prince’s death emerged after police said Thursday that they were investigating a death at his compound in Chanhassen, Minn., with the Carver County Sheriff’s Office saying that deputies were on the scene.

The department said via a statement, “When deputies and medical personnel arrived, they found an unresponsive adult male in the elevator. First responders attempted to provide lifesaving CPR, but were unable to revive the victim. He was pronounced deceased at 10:07 am.”

The sheriff’s office later released a transcript of the 911 call that brought personnel to the scene. The dispatcher had to press the caller — who was on a cellphone — for a street address, which the caller didn’t know. Eventually the caller said it was Paisley Park, and the dispatcher knew where that was and was able to send an ambulance. Authorities have given no indication that any delay affected the outcome.

TMZ reports that Prince had recently had health problems:

“The singer — full name Prince Rogers Nelson — had a medical emergency on April 15th that forced his private jet to make an emergency landing in Illinois. But he appeared at a concert the next day to assure his fans he was okay. His people told TMZ he was battling the flu.”

Prince was just 19 when he released his first album, putting out For You in 1978. In the decades that followed, he went on to develop a unique sound and style that endeared him to generations of audiences — all while exploring new ground as an artist.

Anthony Valadez, a Los Angeles-based DJ and producer, tells NPR’s Here and Now that Prince also endeared himself to those he encouraged: “African-Americans rocking out.”

“You had to be stuck in a box,” Valadez says of 1980s music culture. “Even Michael [Jackson] faced a lot of that, trying to get his videos on MTV. And you had this African-American man standing with a guitar, and, man, it was just powerful, you know? It was just really powerful.”

Prince’s fifth album, 1999, exploded onto America’s music scene. Released in 1983, it included such hits as “Little Red Corvette” and “1999.” It also set the stage for Purple Rain, the 1984 movie and soundtrack packed with songs such as “When Doves Cry” and “Let’s Go Crazy” that became fixtures on the radio and established Prince as a pop culture icon.

As Swensson wrote for MPR about Purple Rain for the film’s 30th anniversary in 2014, “it grossed $7.7 million in its opening weekend, beating out Ghostbusters — and racked up comparisons to movies like the Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night and Citizen Kane in glowing reviews from major media outlets.”

Prince also won two Grammys and an Oscar (for original song score) for Purple Rain. In 2007, he won a Golden Globe Award for best original song, “The Song of the Heart” from Happy Feet.

From 1985 to 2007, Prince won a total of seven Grammy awards — most recently for “Future Baby Mama.”

Praising Purple Rain and other Prince projects, Jesse Carmichael of the group Maroon 5 told NPR in 2009, “The reason Prince is an inspiration to me is that he’s obviously writing from the heart, and somehow he’s able to take these personal feelings, turn them into poetry and present them in a way that’s accessible and weird at the same time.”

Prince’s career was marked by a famous standoff with Warner Bros., the music company from which he split in 1996. Changing his name to a symbol, he was referred to for years as “the artist formerly known as Prince.”

In a sign that the rift had finally healed, Prince made a deal with Warner two years ago that gave him control of his own music catalog (during his career, Prince recorded well over 30 studio albums).

When he changed his name, Prince rejected the major-label system. In an interview with reporters last August, he echoed that idea again, saying “Record contracts are just like — I’m gonna say the word — slavery,” as NPR’s Eric Deggans reported.

As Eric wrote, Prince urged artists to get paid “directly from streaming services for use of their music, so that record companies and middlemen couldn’t take a share.”

News of Prince’s death spread on social media, sparking tributes from fans, fellow artists, celebrities and even President Obama, who released this statement:

“Today, the world lost a creative icon. Michelle and I join millions of fans from around the world in mourning the sudden death of Prince. Few artists have influenced the sound and trajectory of popular music more distinctly, or touched quite so many people with their talent. As one of the most gifted and prolific musicians of our time, Prince did it all. Funk. R&B. Rock and roll. He was a virtuoso instrumentalist, a brilliant bandleader, and an electrifying performer.

” ‘A strong spirit transcends rules,’ Prince once said — and nobody’s spirit was stronger, bolder, or more creative. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, his band, and all who loved him.‎”

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

According to the statement, Weiland died in Bloomington, Minn.; other details, such as the cause of death, were not revealed, citing his family’s desire for privacy.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

“Jamie Weiland, the singer’s wife, confirmed the news of his death to The Times in a brief conversation Thursday.

” ‘I can’t deal with this right now,’ she said, sobbing. ‘It’s true.’ ”

Weiland, whose career was marked by both Grammy Awards and drug and alcohol abuse problems, was the lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots, which had numerous hits in the 1990s, and of Velvet Revolver, a supergroup that paired him with former members of Guns N’ Roses.

Weiland’s hits with Stone Temple Pilots include “Interstate Love Song,” “Creep,” “Plush” and “Big Empty.”

At the time of his death, Weiland had been touring with his new band, The Wildabouts. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the band’s Thursday night show “was canceled nine days ago because of slow ticket sales.”

It was a far cry from the heights of Weiland’s career, when he became famous both for reeling off chart-topping rock songs and for his wide-ranging fashion sense — from shirtless to shirt-and-tie. Over his career, Weiland sold tens of millions of records worldwide.

His struggles with heroin and other drugs often derailed Weiland over the years, even as he kept performing. Visits to rehab and police stations were also a distraction from the singer’s powerful voice, a gravelly bass that he tamed to sing rock ballads such as Velvet Revolver’s “Fall to Pieces” — a song about a singer struggling with demons, and whose video includes the depiction of a seeming drug overdose.

Stone Temple Pilots broke up in 2003 and got back together in 2008 — only to split for good in 2013.

During Stone Temple Pilots’ hiatus, Weiland found success again with Velvet Revolver, with the single “Set Me Free” from the Hulk soundtrack and the aforementioned “Fall to Pieces” and “Slither” from the band’s album Contraband.

In 2012, Weiland published a book called Not Dead & Not for Sale, in which he described being the victim of rape as a schoolboy, and in which he detailed his struggles with addiction.

From the prelude:

“Every time I try to catch up to my life, something stops me. Different people making claims on my life. Old friends telling me new friends aren’t true friends. All friends trying to convince me that I can’t survive without them.

“Then there are the pay-for-hire get-off-drugs professionals with their own methods and madness. They help, they hurt, they welcome me into their institutions … and, well, their madness.

“Welcome to my life.”

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

“I’ve never done this, walk around and count them,” Muller says, as he begins counting a row of jukeboxes tucked under a shelf of records.

He walks through the add-on garage, porch, living room and foyer. So far, he’s counted 62 jukeboxes, just in his own house — plus 40 in stock at his store, and plenty more in storage elsewhere.

“I’ve been telling people we have over a hundred,” Muller says. “Now, I know it’s even way more than that.”

Most of these jukeboxes are part of his company, Jukeboxes Unlimited, which he’s owned since 1971. He guts many of them to salvage their parts for assisting with repairs. Others, he fixes up to sell, while still others — the nicer looking ones, especially those that light up — he rents for parties and dances.

And some, Muller simply falls in love with and keeps for himself, like his 1948 Seeburg M100A. It sits in the corner of his living room at home.

“This machine is 100 percent original, every single aspect of it: the original cartridge, the original needle and original old 78 rpm records,” he says before playing Frankie Lymon’s “Goody Goody.”

Back when he got his start in the 1970s in Los Angeles, there were a lot of guys like him in the jukebox business — but he set himself apart by selling to the stars. His famous clients include Steve Martin and Mick Fleetwood, and their notes and copies of checks still fill books and albums of his. He even used to go to the Playboy Mansion to repair a jukebox owned by Hugh Hefner.

Muller, now 72, has seen many of his competitors go away. The business has gotten less glamorous, but he keeps busy through his online store.

“I get so many emails. I get ’em from all over the world, and it’s the same thing. It’s like, ‘Can you tell me what gear goes with this gear?’ And you know, for me to just get back to them and say, ‘What jukebox are you even talking about?’ I just don’t have time,” he explains.

He drives 50 miles to visit one of those people who contacted him online — Aline DeGroote, in Anaheim, Calif. She has promised to give him some records if he can take her jukebox off her hands.

Muller doesn’t need more records. The add-on to his house is full of them; he has hundreds and thousands already. Many are duplicates, and most aren’t worth that much — but he’s excited about the records DeGroote is offering anyway.

“I don’t collect records: I amass records,” he explains as he drives to DeGroote’s home. “I don’t even know what we’re getting today. I’m sure I already have 20 copies of what she’s got, but it’s an addiction.”

DeGroote’s jukebox is from the early ’60s, and she’s had some trouble selling it. She tried Craigslist and thrift stores.

“When I first tried to sell the jukebox, people were like, ‘Well, does it play CDs?'” DeGroote says.

Her dad, who died five years ago, used to keep the jukebox in the pool room. She grew up listening to it. But now it’s broken, and she’s selling it to Muller for $75.

“I wanted it to go to someone who would appreciate it for what it is,” she explains. “It’s a jukebox that plays old music.”

When she pulls out seven boxes of records, Muller’s face lights up. There are at least 2,000. He sorts through the records, putting them in other boxes he brought himself — “banana boxes,” he calls them, since he picked them up at the local grocery store.

“A packed banana box is 400 records,” he explains. “Four hundred 45s in a banana box.”

As he sorts through them, he gets excited when he sees a record by The Fleetwoods. He begins to sing “Come Softly To Me,” and DeGroote joins in.

Muller says he could make decent money if he sold his collection of over 400,000 records. But he doesn’t plan to unless someone comes along with a huge offer, because the records aren’t for his business.

They’re for his collection. And eventually, he’ll give them to his son.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Filmed Entertainment Inc., which owns Columbia House, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday in a Manhattan court after more than two decades of declining revenues, according to a company statement.

Although Columbia House moved exclusively to DVDs in 2010, it could not stay afloat in an industry crowded with streaming services. The company’s annual revenues peaked in 1996 at $1.4 billion, but by 2014, revenues had dwindled to just $17 million.

Columbia House “started in 1955 as a way for the record label Columbia to sell vinyl records via mail order,” according to the A.V. Club, which adds that it “continually adapted to and changed with the times, as new formats such as 8-tracks, cassettes, and CDs emerged and influenced how consumers listened to music.”

Columbia House once set the bar for the music-club subscription business model, becoming a household — or at least high school — name through its famous deal: piles of CDs and tapes for a penny.

But with giving away CDs nearly free, how exactly was Columbia House turning a profit?

“The phrase you want is ‘negative option,’ ” Piotr Orlov said, referencing the idea of hooking people with a good deal and then roping them into a contract. (Orlov is a contributing editor for NPR music and former Columbia House director of A&R and marketing between 1996 and 1999.)

“You had a contract that was over a short period of time — two, three or four years — you had to buy a number of titles under regular prices,” he said. “And these regular prices put CD store prices to shame. Like $19.99 [instead of] $11.99. It was an enormous markup.”

Orlov also said Columbia House signed multimillion-dollar contracts with companies such as Sony, Warner Music and others that allowed it to obtain the raw materials and produce its own CDs.

“[Columbia House] was partially owned by major music distributors. [It] would get the music parts — the art and the master tape — and manufacture it themselves.”

Columbia House, however, wasn’t the only one cashing in. Because the CDs came in the mail and customers could pay with cash or check, Orlov said the subscription process lent itself to what he called “low-grade mail fraud.”

“People would fill out a real address with fake names and get 12 free CDs,” he said. “The punch line to this joke is that everybody who worked at Columbia House had done this too [earlier in life]. It really was like an inside joke.”

For another NPR music denizen, Stephen Thompson, Columbia House also represented more than mere music.

“For generations of people, Columbia House was a huge rite of passage — your first foray into maybe wrecking your credit rating, or at least running afoul of an authority beyond your hometown. I was never a member myself, because my parents filled my head with horror stories, but I always look back on Columbia House as, like, Baby’s First Mail Fraud,” he said.

Its business model wasn’t perfect, Orlov said, but Columbia House was valuable in its time.

“What it did do was serve a purpose. If you didn’t have a record store, this was the closest you got to having a good music selection. It put in front of you the ability to buy CDs and send them to your house even if you lived in [the middle of nowhere].”

The FEI statement said the decline was “driven by the advent of digital media and resulting declines in the recorded music business and the home-entertainment segment of the film business.” While streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify surely cut into Columbia House’s profits, Orlov said the main reason for the company’s downfall is something else entirely.

“No one cares about owning CDs anymore,” he said.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Mitchell “regained consciousness on the ambulance ride,” her website says.

No other details have emerged about why the 71-year-old singer required medical attention. We’ll update this post with any news that emerges about Mitchell’s condition.

The eight-time Grammy winner has written songs such as “Chelsea Morning,” “Help Me” and “Big Yellow Taxi,” and she recorded classic albums such as Blue and Clouds. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

In December, Mitchell spoke to Morning Edition in a lengthy interview covering matters from what she calls her “helium voice” to her struggle with polio as a child in Canada.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Womack began putting out records in the early 1960s as the lead singer of The Valentinos. He straddled styles ranging from R&B to country.

The Valentinos’ hit “It’s All Over Now” was recorded by the Rolling Stones and went to No. 1 on the U.K. singles charts.

Variety says Womack was “a gutsy singer and a superlative axe man” who “charted nearly 50 hits, the majority of them self-penned, during his career of more than 40 years.”

The magazine says:

“Born in Cleveland to a musical and religious family, Womack began singing and playing guitar at an early age. He toured the gospel circuit with his brothers. Cooke — also a product of gospel music, and the former lead singer of the Soul Stirrers — took the act under his wing, and recorded for SAR with a new moniker. After scoring a No. 8 hit in 1962 with ‘Lookin’ For a Love,’ the group reached No. 21 in 1964 with ‘It’s All Over Now,’ which the Rolling Stones turned into a top 30 pop hit the same year.

“After Cooke was shot and killed in an incident in a Los Angeles motel in 1964, the Valentinos disbanded. Womack scandalously married Cooke’s widow Barbara three months after the singer’s death.”

Rolling Stone writes:

“In 2012, Womack began a career renaissance with the release of The Bravest Man in the Universe, his first album in more than 10 years. Produced by Damon Albarn and XL’s Richard Russell, the album made Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Albums of 2012 alongside numerous other critical accolades. ‘You know more at 65 than you did at 25. I understand the songs much better now,’ Womack told Rolling Stone at the time. ‘It’s not about 14 Rolls Royces and two Bentleys. Even if this album never sells a nickel, I know I put my best foot forward.’ Upon his death, Womack was in the process of recording his next album for XL, tentatively titled The Best Is Yet to Come and reportedly featuring contributions by Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart and Snoop Dogg.

“Womack was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. ‘My very first thought was — I wish I could call Sam Cooke and share this moment with him,’ Womack said. ‘This is just about as exciting to me as being able to see Barack Obama become the first black President of the United States of America! It proves that, if you’re blessed to be able to wait on what’s important to you, a lot of things will change in life.’ ”

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

2014. This, we are told, is the year female rappers are going to break their way back into the mainstream, ending a long period of silence for women in the industry. Now, it’s true that many people had high hopes for 2013, too. And 2012 was also said to be promising. But 2014, with anticipated releases from a bevy of up-and-coming women artists and a couple of established veterans, is going to be different. That’s certainly the hope anyway, and the narrative, once again, as we head into the spring of a new year.

I’m not so sure.

I am sure, however, that the perennial discussions about whether, at long last, we will see a resurgence of women artists within the hip-hop industry raise important questions. While there are plenty of talented women rapping today, you’d be hard pressed to name them if your sense of the industry is shaped by radio rotations, music videos, or Billboard charts. Indeed, when Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday was certified platinum at the end of 2010, it was the first solo album by a female MC to reach that milestone in eight long years. Minaj went platinum again in 2012 with Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, but her commercial success over the last decade has stood as an exception to the unwritten rule that women rappers no longer have a place among elite artists.

It wasn’t always like this. While there’s no escaping that rap music has been dominated by men, there was a time when women were a far more significant presence, allowing (or forcing) the genre to be defined, at least in part, by a woman’s perspective. Consider, for example, the decade leading up to 2003, the last year a female artist (Lil’ Kim) had a platinum album before Nicki Minaj. In that time, a number of women went platinum, including Salt-n-Pepa, Da Brat, Foxy Brown, Eve, Lauryn Hill and industry powerhouse Missy Elliott.

Alongside these artists, critically acclaimed performers like MC Lyte and Queen Latifah were also releasing albums on major labels, often achieving commercial success in the process. And many of the major crews had a woman artist (even if just one): Death Row had Lady of Rage, Flipmode Squad had Rah Digga, Native Tongues had Monie Love (and Latifah) and so on. There were enough women recording, touring, and getting radio airplay that, in 2003, the Grammys took notice and created a new category for Best Female Rap Solo Performance.

Just two years later, however, that category was eliminated, with Grammy representatives citing a precipitous decline in the number of female artists in the industry who could compete for the award. BET and VH1 made similar arguments for dumping female categories from their hip-hop awards shows as well.

While cutting these awards undoubtedly exacerbated the decline in the years to follow, there’s little doubt that women were indeed vanishing from mainstream hip-hop. According to Ana DuVernay, who directed the 2010 documentary My Mic Sounds Nice: The Truth About Women in Hip Hop, the numbers tell it all: Whereas in the late 1980s and early 1990s there were more than 40 women signed to major labels, in 2010 there were just three.

With the emergence of several new artists — including Angel Haze, Iggy Azalea, and Azealia Banks — things are certainly looking up, but the long-term prospects for women artists are still precarious. Recently, I spoke with hip-hop pioneer MC Lyte, who in 1988 was the first woman to release a solo rap album with a major label, and she expressed genuine concern with the state of women in hip-hop today.

“We’ve gone backwards,” she said, noting that the space she and others helped open up for women rappers appears to have closed off. “This is pretty much what it was like when women weren’t able to get major recording and release opportunities.”

She offered a number of explanations for the shift, but one of her points in particular caught my attention. According to Lyte, it’s far more risky to sign women artists today because of the costs associated with their physical appearance. Hair, make-up and wardrobe all add up, she said, and therefore women — who already face an uphill battle when it comes to selling records — become an even more questionable business proposition.

It’s an argument I’ve heard before, not only from other well-known artists, but from industry executives who cast themselves as the victims of unfortunate circumstances. It’s a shame that we don’t have more women recording, these executives lament, but they are just too expensive. While I have doubts about this to begin with — are we really supposed to believe that the crushing cost of hair and make-up has pushed a multibillion dollar hip-hop industry away from women? — it does reveal a disturbing assumption about women in hip-hop: that what they look like is at least as important as their musical talent.

And, frankly, for some fans that may be true. Miami-based Trina, who has achieved enduring success with her highly sexual lyrics and provocative videos, puts the male perspective of women artists this way: “You a female; I’m a dude. I’m not learning nothing from you. I just want to see you. So whatever you’re talking about, I probably don’t really care. I wanna just look at you.” As Trina has demonstrated, she is more than willing to oblige. But accepting, and even embracing, male desire in the formation of an artistic persona is hardly unique to her. Iin the last decade or so, we’ve seen artists like Lil’ Kim and Nicki Minaj combine the roles of rapper and video vixen as part of their formula for success, too.

We might read these artists’ use of explicit sexuality as pure business savvy, or even their willingness to confront American taboos against female, and specifically black female, sexual expression. But it also dovetails nicely with the crude exploitation of women that, as Professor Tricia Rose argues, has become “almost required” in mainstream hip-hop. For years, dominant male artists have made a fortune demeaning and degrading women, often portraying them in lyrics and videos as interchangeable objects of sexual pleasure, while increasingly limited radio and television rotations have made alternative representations of women harder to find.

After years of this, when do we concede that mainstream hip-hop has become largely defined by the negation of female voice and perspective? And what does that mean for new women entering the industry? Addressing precisely this, MC Lyte argues that hip-hop’s ongoing disrespect of women has “literally broken down our character,” creating a market that is predictably hostile to female performers. “It has gotten to the point that we have been subjected to such harsh verbal treatment — assassinated even — that who would want to listen?”

And so, thanks to a climate of its own making, the recording industry is understandably reluctant to back female artists, and even when it does, it often tries to pigeon-hole them into roles that put sexual style over musical substance. For example, in a recent interview, Sharaya J, an up-and-coming artist working with Missy Elliott, recounted that after she had presented her work to a group of record executives, one of them suggested that she put on some heels, get a weave, and “sell them with sex.” In other words, record executives seem to be encouraging women to peddle an image that caters to the sexual desire of fans — which serves to further reinforce them as objects rather than credible rappers — even as they complain that the costs of maintaining this image are prohibitive since women don’t move enough units.

None of this bodes well for 2014 as the year of the female rapper. Even if all of the artists who are expected to release their albums actually do — several have been plagued by agonizing delays — it remains to be seen whether they will get a fair shake from a male-dominated industry that Lil’ Kim protégée Tiffany Foxx recently said “doesn’t want the girls involved.”

Consider Angel Haze, who in December did what rapper M.I.A. had only threatened to do earlier that year. Frustrated with delays, she uploaded her debut album to SoundCloud, making it free to the public. It was taken down within hours, but her label did capitulate, sort of, by agreeing to move up the release date to Dec. 30 — during what is arguably the worst week of the year to put an album on the market. Given the timing, her initial sales were predictably dismal, invoking comparisons to Kreayshawn, another female MC whose highly anticipated debut album landed, after delays, with a thud.

Angel Haze’s situation is instructive, though, not only because it’s indicative of the difficulties other artists seem to be having with their labels, but because once we strip away the drama surrounding the release, we have a new album from a highly anticipated artist that we can listen to. And it’s a good one, showcasing polished production, as well as Haze’s lyrical dexterity and an ambitious attempt to tackle serious subjects without alienating a mainstream audience. Is it perfect? No. But it’s a solid debut from a talented young artist who clearly takes her music seriously.

And yet, reviews from XXL, Spin, and Pitchfork — important, if dubious, arbiters in the industry — were surprisingly harsh, with reviewers taking her to task for, among other things, disappointing lyrics or confusing messages. That’s especially ironic given that all three magazines gave significantly higher ratings to 17-year-old Chief Keef for his lyrically-vapid 2012 debut album and routinely award higher scores to rappers like 2 Chainz, Waka Flocka Flame, Rick Ross, and Lil Wayne. What these rappers have in common, aside from lyrical skills that range from dreadful to mediocre (the exception being Lil Wayne earlier in his career), is that they routinely degrade women, sometimes to shocking extremes, and appear to be doing little to elevate rap as an art form.

Importantly, though, they do manage to dominate major channels of distribution, don the covers of glossy magazines, and, collectively, play a considerable role in defining the future trajectory of rap music. Meanwhile, the space for women has gotten so cramped that we’re left to question whether a commercial scene that will allow them to succeed even exists anymore. To hear artists like Rapsody tell it, even if they release good music, women are treated like they don’t belong among the community of rappers, but rather they are relegated to a less-than-equal “femcee” subcategory in which they are expected to perform with, or compete against, other women.

And yet there are still some glimmers of hope. One is that we’re seeing established artists like Missy Elliott, Lil’ Kim, and others provide mentorship for new female MCs — in defiance of the conventional wisdom that a woman needs a male rapper’s endorsement and support to break into the industry. More important is that, as with hip-hop generally, there’s a vibrant scene for women outside the mainstream that is in many ways more interesting, diverse, and talent-rich than what we have been finding in traditional venues. It’s hard to talk about gifted rappers, for example, without mentioning Jean Grae, who’s been making records for years and has generated a significant fan base as an independent artist, and there are a number of talented MCs across the country who are charting their own course as well — Nitty Scott MC, Awkwafina, Gifted Gab, and Ruby Ibarra, just to name a few.

In other words, if fans are waiting for the major media outlets to make 2014 the year of the female MC, I worry that they will be disappointed. But if they do a little searching, they will find that some of the best hip-hop music today is being produced by women who have created their own space to perform. Hopefully, their work will force the industry, one seemingly bent on creating a men’s-only club, to think twice.

Maybe 2015 could be the year for that?

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