Iandoli's book is rigorous, insightful, and authoritative — but it's also deadly personal ... The opposing forces of sisterhood and competition propel Iandoli's narrative ... It's an interplay, Iandoli argues, that adds just one more level of complexity to the already fraught landscape that has faced woman rappers throughout the past 40-plus years. And she does so through compelling, vivid portraits of the key players in the game. In particular, her rendering of the young Roxanne Shanté — fierce, complicated, still in braces, and spitting rhymes — is masterful. And throughout the book, Iandoli maintains the measured hand of a historian while making no bones about who her personal heroes are ... As penetrating and passionate as God Save the Queens is, it feels a bit rushed in its buildup to Shanté ... it's hard not to feel that the earliest era of women in hip-hop is being given short shrift ... Ultimately, though, the book's minor imbalances pale before its primary message ... Iandoli wields an illuminating fury. But she also never loses touch with the power of hip-hop itself — an artform that so many women have seized as their own, and changed the world by doing so.
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