Biography
An underground favorite of Hip-Hop heads, Rita J is a fresh young talent from Chicago, IL. Her intelligent, positive raps have been a huge part of her success. Rita J has blessed the mic with some notable people in the industry like DJ Spinna, Digable Planets, J-Live, Jungle Brothers, Stacy Epps, Stahhr the Femcee, and Black Spade. Her precise, smooth delivery makes for an easy listen. She finesses the tracks as if she's been rhyming since birth. She cites Nas, Black Thought, MC Lyte, and Buckshot as some of her main influences growing up, the list continues on as genres change.
With so many musical genres to vibe to, her favorite form of expression became hip-hop, which she never saw happening until later in college while taking an engineering class. Her passion for creating became more and more apparent and the encouragement of others provided her with confidence. She graduated from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale with a Bachelor of Arts Degree. "Education is very important to me and runs very deep in my family."
"Growing up there was little to no positive female representation besides the greats of MC Lyte and Queen Latifah." She strives to change that void and represent the female emcee that has been rarely seen or heard in the past decade. She wants to be a voice and image of power that everyone can relate to and respect. Her integrity remains intact, while rocking amongst mostly males in this dominated industry. She shows women their value of self-worth and that they can have both a combination of beauty and skill without being overtly sexual to reach success.
She has been featured in independent films such as "What Ever Happened To Hip-Hop" alongside KRS-ONE, Nikki Giovanni, and Jean Grae, just to name a few. She is also featured in an upcoming film entitled "Pathways" directed by Eljay Williams. Rita J continues to inspire others with her outstanding talents and common topics, she relates to the everyday hustle as most people do.
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