Yolanda Whitaker came up out of South Central and got her start guesting on Ice Cube's 1990 debut, with Cube returning the favor on her own 1991 debut single "You Can't Play with My Yo-Yo." She founded the Intelligent Black Women's Coalition as her crew and built a catalog around female empowerment at a moment when gangsta rap's mainstream was almost entirely male-voiced. Beyond four studio albums, she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on gangsta rap labeling and founded the Yo-Yo School of Hip-Hop for at-risk students in her community.
