March is Women History Month and tommorow it’s her birthday. So I had to pay respect to Dana Elaine Owens  aka Queen Latifah. In September 2008, The Source  put her (for the fifth time) on the cover and ran a long feature . The article, titled “Love the Queen,” was photographed by the great Spike Lee and looked back at a career that had already stretched far beyond rap.

The Source was celebrating its 20th anniversary and Latifah had already conquered everything : music, film, television and business. In 2006, she was the FIRST hip-hop artist ever to appear in the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

The first question journalist Aimstar is about her definition of the culture. The Queen’s answer is immediate, total :

« Hip-Hop to me is obviously a cultural thing, but it’s also heavily a music thing — the beat, the rhyme and the content. It’s talking about whatever you’ve got going on in your respective lives. It’s also about energy. »

At the time of the interview, she was preparing a return to rap with an album entirely produced by the talented duo Cool & Dre. The project was still under wraps in 2008 and would eventually drop in 2009 under the title Persona.

When the « industry » (and the public ? but that’s another conversation…) tried to trap female rappers in narrow boxes, she built something different for her. Trough her Flavor Unit imprint ( music, films, television….) she gains independance. Long before representation became a marketing argument, Dana Owens was already reshaping the system from the inside. She did it without adopting the dominant female rap archetype that would emerge in the mid-1990s. When the « bad bitch » era exploded (Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown,…. ) Latifah didn’t position herself as anyone’s moral authority…. The Queen even exchanged bars with Foxy Brown on the fiery Name Callin’ Pt. 1 and Pt. 2. She didn’t reject sexuality, that beautiful and smart woman simply never needed it as the sole foundation of her legitimacy.

« To me, Hip-Hop has to grow up, otherwise that would be the biggest travesty of all. »

In 2026, that line reads like a thesis. What Latifah built is legacy and longevity. And in hip-hop, longevity is rare : even more so for a woman. Her trajectory places her in a restricted class of artists who successfully crossed into Hollywood with real careers: Ice-T, Ice Cube, LL Cool J and The Fresh Prince aka Will Smith. Latifah is the only woman in that group : not as an exception, but as an equal. And in some ways, her achievement is even more remarkable: She navigated both Hollywood and hip-hop while facing the double ceiling of gender and race. The results ? A Grammy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, and … a nomination for an Academy Award. I’ll say this again : we should give her the respect that she deserves.

Long Live Queen Latifah !