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Meet the woman behind some of hip-hop’s biggest songs

This segment originally aired Dec. 1, 2016, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.

Glenda Proby has been writing songs for famous men since she was 17 years old. Now 28 and rapping under the name Gizzle, she’s recording her debut album, The Jump, for Puff Daddy’s Bad Boy label. It drops in January.

“I always rapped my experiences,” Proby told VICE News Tonight. “I never thought of myself as a female rapper, or a female gay rapper, or queer rapper, but I know there’s all these categories that people are going to put me in so they can digest who I am and what’s going on.”

She often raps about what her life was like growing up in South Central L.A. on Exposition Blvd.

“Battle rapping, you know, it’s more of a masculine thing,” she said. “I feel like you either got it or you don’t.”

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