Hip-Hop artist MC Lyte does not want any of the women comprised of her audience in the Great Hall on Feb. 28 to feel like they can not accomplish their dreams and goals.

“People take the short road in life, not knowing what the consequences are to their careers,” MC Lyte said. “You’re this generation that there’s nothing you can’t know, even about yourself.”

Lana Michelle Moorer, aka MC Lyte, spoke to a well receiving audience of both Ames and ISU residents as well as the guests from the Big 12 Conference. Despite the snow, the Great Hall was filled with students who wished to hearing from one of the most successful female hip-hop artists in the genre’s early years.

“MC Lyte was a pioneer of hip-hip,” Selma Sims, senior in agronomy, said. “A lot of students here were younger, but a lot of her topics that everybody, regardless of age or ethnicity, could apply to their life about having faith and in believing in yourself and you have to keep your dream alive because no one else will.”

MC Lyte, the first solo female rapper to release an album, discussed a range of different topics, including the image of hip-hop in today’s society, explaining that the genre is what people make of it.

“When I go to speak to schools, many of them are upset with hip-hop, that it’s a bad influence,” MC Lyte said. “That’s not hip-hop. It’s not a dictatorship. It belongs to us.”

Instead, she argues that it’s the lack of balance in the genre that people should be concerned about. Radio, she argues, has been the worst for female rappers.

“There are some many great female rappers out there, without radio play, without record contracts,” MC Lyte said. “We need people to demand what we expect from hip-hop.”

For Precious Rucker, senior in communications from Western Illinois University, having the hip-hop MC speak was a great way to reach the audience of largely black women.

“I appreciate her, being a woman, coming in to talk with us,” Rucker said. “You have a lot of male speakers on topics like hip-hop, but to hear it from a woman, helps us as well being a minority and a woman.”

MC Lyte, who was raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., with little opportunity for success or fame, serves as role model for her audience, as Rucker explained.

“MC Lyte comes from a similar place as many of us,” Rucker said. “We see her and we can see why you can be great no matter where you come from.”

The keynote speaker for the Annual Big XII Conference on Black Student Government, MC Lyte is the CEO of Sunni Gyrl, founder of the nonprofit Hip Hop Sisters, and author of “Unstoppable, Igniting the Power Within to Achieve Your Greatest Potential. In 2013, she was awarded the “I am Hip-Hop Award” at the BET Hip-Hop Awards.