“Don’t I look like a Halle Berry poster?”

This chapter considers humor and irony in women’s hip hop from the 1990s through early 2000s. Because much of women’s hip hop is intertwined with traditions and trends in men’s hip hop, I explore the different ways men and women have employed humor and irony in their music, looking in particular at the work of Missy Elliott, Nicki Minaj, Lil’ Kim, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, and Busta Rhymes. To understand these differences, I turn to African-American entertainment across several decades, looking at traditions among the slaves, in black minstrelsy, vaudeville, blues of the 1920s and 1930s, and the humor of black comedians in the first half of the twentieth century.