This weekend, as I was attending the rally we organized for Heather Ellis, the 24-year-old college student facing 15 years in prison for cutting a line at Walmart, I saw an amazing performance by Shanelle Walker, an incredibly talented spoken word artist.

One thing that the brilliant minds in hip-hop are going to have to confront is the fact that, with all the money made and opportunities created within hip-hop, we have yet to see hardly any successful, well-respected female artists in the game. That is a tragedy, since hip-hop was an art form designed to give a voice to the oppressed. As the industry has become institutionalized, though, hip-hop itself has become that much more oppressive toward women.

Here are some thoughts on the issue:

1) The lyrics have got to grow up:

I am not sure who decided that hip-hop should become one of the least creative art forms in the world. It is the only genre of music where every song is about either money, sex, clubbin' or how great you are. Can't we find something else to talk about? Also, we are all guilty, as a society, of letting artists refer to women in the most derogatory ways without consequence. If a man can say what he wants about women and receive even more female attention as a result, then he has no incentive to change his behavior. So in that regard, any woman who listens to disrespectful music and then complains about it under her breath is just as much to blame as the artist. The women at Spelman College set a good example by fighting an appearance by Nelly, after he swiped a credit card through a woman's butt in a video. If women want their voices to be heard, we should all help them to use it.

2) A woman has value even when she's not in a G-string:

When I think about the artists who get a shot at making a dime in this game, it usually turns out to be women like Lil Kim, Nikki Minaj and Trina. Many of these women end up making their money by referring to what men want the most: sex. Ok, that's not a problem, since sexual liberation is arguably a good thing for both genders, but you shouldn't have to be able to resort to such tactics in order to get a record deal. Why can't a woman be as strong, bold and respected as the men in her profession?

"So many of us have come a long way, and it's time that we demand the music industry allow us to hear the voices of positive female MCs," said T. Denise Manning, a well-known hip-hop activist and motivational speaker. "Give me a FEMALE common, a female Kanye, a female Pac, a female T.I..... give me motivation and upliftment!"

3) There is probably a market for a strong female MC, or is there?

When Kanye West wanted to rap about Jesus, they told him that no one would buy the records. When Gangsta rap hit the scene, no one would fund the projects, even though the industry was set to earn billions. Maybe music industry executives are too blind to see that a strong female artist might have a great following. At the same time, it could be the case that they know something that the rest of us do not. Perhaps they've tested the market and found that female artists don't sell records. If that's is true, then we are all to blame, since this would imply that we don't respect female artists enough to support them. Either way, we should all be ashamed of ourselves. Hip-hop has grown old and it's grown out, but it certainly hasn't grown up enough to realize that women can be great artists too. Like every other powerful movement that has come out of black America, hip hop must evolve to include all of us, not just the men.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University and founder of the Your Black World Coalition. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.