FEATURE:
Groovelines
PHOTO CREDIT: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
Queen Latifah (ft. Monie Love) – Ladies First
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OVER the course of this feature…
I am spotlighting songs that are important or have made a big cultural impact. In the case of Queen Latifah’s Ladies First, both are true. The 1989 track featuring Monie Love is an all-time classic. The song is taken from debut album from Queen Latifah, All Hail the Queen. The album and the single are both enormously significant:
“All Hail the Queen is the debut studio album by hip-hop artist Queen Latifah. The album was released on November 28, 1989, through Tommy Boy Records. The feminist anthem, "Ladies First" featuring Monie Love remains one of Latifah's signature songs.
All Hail the Queen peaked at no. 6 and no. 124 on the Billboard Top Hip Hop/R&B Albums and Billboard 200 charts, respectively. "Wrath of My Madness" was the first single from All Hail the Queen, and was later sampled in Yo-Yo's "You Can't Play With My Yo-Yo". "Mama Gave Birth to the Soul Children" peaked at no. 14 in the UK. In 1998, the album was selected as one of The Source's 100 Best Rap Albums. It was also featured in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
In 2008, the single "Ladies First" was ranked number 35 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs Of Hip Hop”.
I am going to drop the song in soon. I love Queen Latifah and feel that it is one of her greatest tracks. I feel it is so strong because she and Monie Love combine so seamlessly. It is an anthem that resounds heavy and powerful today. I still feel women are having to fight to have their voices heard. It means that (sadly) Ladies First has not dated and is so relevant today.
It is a shame that Hip-Hop and Rap, even in 2021, are struggling against gender imbalance, sexism and misogyny. Maybe the problem is not as pronounced as it was in the late-1980s, though there is still a way to go until things are where they need to be. Ladies First was a bold and brilliant anthem from a Hip-Hop queen who definitely was not going to be pushed aside. As this article from 2014 explains, Ladies First was an important breakthrough:
“Hip-hop was, at first, pretty much a guy thing. And it still is, in many ways. But many women, along the way, have made their presence felt, and one of the first was Queen Latifah.
“Ladies First,” a track from Latifah’s 1989 “All Hail the Queen” album that featured British rapper Monie Love, was a bold declaration, in the days when hip-hop was still defining itself, that women could hold their own:
The ladies will kick it, the rhyme that is wicked
Those that don’t know how to be pros get evicted
A woman can bear you, break you, take you
Now it’s time to rhyme, can you relate to
A sister dope enough to make you holler and scream?
It’s a serious point, but the tone of the song isn’t dry or humorless. The music has a wild, funk- and jazz-influenced edge: Latifah is making a joyful statement, not an angry one.
Latifah, who grew up in Newark, East Orange and Irvington, has stuck to the song’s philosophy throughout her career. Just as she wouldn’t take no for an answer as a rapper, seeking hip-hop glory at a time when few women did, she has not conceded to any limits in her career, distinguishing herself as a singer (not just a rapper), an actress, a talk show host, a writer (whose 1998 memoir was titled “Ladies First: Revelations of a Strong Woman”) and, perhaps most significantly, as a businesswoman who has both taken firm control of her own career and helped bring others, including Naughty by Nature, to the attention of the world”.
Last year, the AMC series, Hip Hop: The Songs That Shook America, focused on six individual Rap songs that changed the genre. The season finale concerned Ladies First. This okplayer. article explains more:
“Songs That Shook America concluded its first season on AMC on Sunday (November 17th.) The series has delved into the hip-hop songs that defined a movement, a region of America, and times in history. For the season finale, Queen Latifah’s anthem of women empowerment, 1989’s “Ladies First,” gets the final dissection. As with every other song, “Ladies First” is exalted but ultimately used as a vessel for a deeper dive into the sexist history of hip-hop.
In the episode, Jessica Lynch, the president of Tommy Boy Records when “Ladies First” was released, recalls being mistaken for a prostitute at the Jack The Rapper’s Family Affair convention because she was a woman. Latifah gives first-hand accounts of the lack of money put towards female rappers for marketing and music videos compared to male counterparts. Her “Ladies First” collaborator Monie Love recalls labels only choosing to have one female MC at a time, adding credence to Lyte’s statement later in the episode of “women being pitted against each other.” This episode hammers the point of sexism being the industry standard in hip-hop during the 1980s, often leaving an indelible imprint in the viewer’s mind that reshapes their view of the episode and the series as a whole”.
I am a big fan of Ladies First. It is a confident and vital track that definitely helped pave the way for women in Hip-Hop. Over three decades since its release, the song is still being taken to heart by artists. If things have slightly improved in Rap and Hip-Hop since the time Queen Latifah and Monie Love dropped a classic, we are still experiencing problems. In 2021, I think that the tremendous Ladies First should be…
HEARD and respected.