Bikini Kill - Pussy Whipped

Few debut albums have mattered as much as this one. Released in 1993 on Kill Rock Stars, Pussy Whipped is the first full-length from Bikini Kill, the Olympia and Washington DC feminist punk band credited with igniting the Riot Grrrl movement and permanently altering the landscape of underground music. Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail, Billy Karren, and Kathi Wilcox arrived with a record that was as confrontational and politically charged as their legendary live performances, and just as impossible to ignore.

Formed in 1990 and active until 1997, Bikini Kill built their reputation through incendiary shows, self-published zines, and lyrics that tackled gender, power, and autonomy with a directness that punk music had rarely seen before. Pussy Whipped distills all of that energy into record form, raw and urgent and completely uncompromising from start to finish.

The album includes "Rebel Girl," one of the defining anthems of the era and a song that Rolling Stone ranked number 27 on their list of the most excellent songs of every year since 1967. It remains one of the great punk singles of any decade, and a perfect entry point into a record that still sounds like a call to arms thirty years on.