The Blog of Awesome Women/ Queen Latifah: Playing with the Big Boys

When Jersey girl Dana Owens renamed herself Queen Latifah and started rapping, she broke the barriers in the very male world of hip-hop. Taking up the mantle of an African Queen, her music efforts—Ladies First, All Hail the Queen, Nature of Sistah, and Black Reign—proved to everyone that women could rap, rap well, and find a huge audience across gender lines. Queen Latifah crossed over mediums, as well, starring in the popular television series Living Single and in feature films Set It Off, Jungle Fever, and Juice for starters. She paved the way for a new wave of female rappers such as breakout hip-hop stars Foxy Brown and Lil’ Kim, with the intention of establishing a woman-positive place within the musical style she claims is to the eighties and nineties what rock and roll was to the fifties and sixties. “My thing was to start with the ladies and get the self-esteem up.”

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.