The female revolution of the beginning of the decade was carried by the so-called pop princesses: Britney, Christina, Beyonce, Pink, Alicia and several others who were teenagers as the decade began. But all around them there were other women nurturing them, and they were the ones who gave their pop such variety, edge and bite. A few singers who were a bit older but still young enough to be part of the wave, like Kylie, Gwen and Shakira, introduced a more sexy and stylish dimension, which the girls were quick to adopt. Rappers with a raw and tough style like Missy Elliott, Lil Kim and Foxy Brown injected street lingo and dirty talk, which the princesses sometimes sampled from. Neo-soul singers like Eryka Badu, Lauryn Hill and Angie Stone brought soul and female sensitivity, which had a lot of influence. Rockers like Courtney Love and Alanis Morissette offered power and rebelliousness. Divas like Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey dictated a larger then life approach to performance and image, which the princesses had the good taste to adopt only in certain situations. And there were also two singers who were around since the eighties, and continued to be a model for sexy and independent femininity, which all the princesses saw as their guideline: Janet Jackson, and Madonna.
Madonna, in 2000, returned just in time from her journey in mystical realms, to connect to the spirit of the time and release a record that pretty much heralded the entire decade. First of all, the message about the unifying power of music, which at that time, after years of almost complete disengagement between black and white pop, of self-centered tribalism in the dance community, of gangsta-rappers shooting each other down, and of many records filled with woman-hating and man-hating, sounded to me like a bad joke. But Madonna heard better, and detected the change in the direction of the wind. She introduces her cowgirl look, a style that signifies down home Americana, but the music was a kind of a housey version of G-funk, which hinted at the adoption of hip-hop by America, and the reopening of dialogue between black and white pop.
Secondly, the video (always Madonna's strongest suit), which took the mystical girl back to her roots. Debbie Mazar, fondly remembered from some of the sexy vids in Madonna's past, returns to be part of a Sex and the City-style rapacious woman pack, and take Madonna back to dealing with sex. But Madonna, as always, deals with sex in a very campy way: she is basically parodying the pimpy vids of gangsta-rap, with all the misogyny and the Don-Juanism and the bitches, which ends with her and her lady friends going into a strip-club, getting down a little, packing all the strippers in the Limo, and on to the hotel. This was a shift in the feminine approach towards male fantasies: rather than disapprove and try to reprogram the men, why don't we accept male sexuality as it is, and seek ways to enjoy it. The power of gangsta-rap lay in providing boys with the fantasy of banging as many chicks as possible without any commitment, but here the sting is removed from it: when the women start to treat noncommittal sex as one of life's perks as well, it is no longer fun to treat them as objects to be conquered, and more fun to enjoy a shared experience.
Finally, even the most prominent comedian of the decade introduces himself here. To the non-British audience, this was the first meeting with Sacha Baron Cohen, and with Ali G, himself a gangta-rap parody. Gangsta-rap would never be the same after the treatment Madonna gives it here.
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