MC Lyte has one of the industry’s most identifiable voices. From smaller events like the Black Music Collective Honors’ dinner to grandiose shows like the BET Awards and the 2023 GRAMMY Awards, the Brooklyn-bred rapper has voiced it all. Finally, Lyte has revealed how her time as a voiceover sensation came to be.
On Thursday (Feb. 2), Mastercard and Femme It Forward hosted the Pass The Mic…Hustle & Grow panel featuring Lyte, alongside Lil Kim, Misa Hylton, Jozzy, and Rhonda X—moderated by VIBE contributor Naima Cochrane. The panel was part of the ‘She Runs This’ series.
When discussing her career transition from rapper to acting and voiceover work, Lyte, 52, explained, “Everything that I do is everything that I wanted to do when I was 7 years old. I wanted to be on radio, I wanted to use my voice. I saw Tootie [played by Kim Fields] on The Facts of Life, and I was like, ‘I got to get to Los Angeles because I need to do some acting.’ I wanted to do all those things, but I also realized I had to prepare myself.”
She continued, “I couldn’t just show up because [I’m] MC Lyte; I had to know the skill set. I went to acting school, I went to voice-over coaching classes and workshops. I was just prepared for the moment so as the opportunities lined up, I was able to show up and show out.”
Lyte later spoke on the importance of sisterhood and working with women. “All that I’d heard was that working with women wasn’t a good thing because they were so emotional,” she said. “I adopted this thought, but the truth was, I had to become responsible in the way that I communicated.”
The pioneering rapper—whose debut album, Lyte as a Rock, turns 35 this year—added, “There is a way that you can communicate with love and care and kindness, and I had not learned that when I [first started out]. What I can say now is this business that I’m in is the best for me because I know what sisterhood is.”
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Mya Abraham