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The Culture Corner: 35 years of Queen Latifah's 'All Hail the Queen'

Queen Latifah's All Hail the Queen
courtesy of the artist
Queen Latifah's All Hail the Queen

35 years ago, hip-hop got a new queen.

Queen Latifah released her debut album, All Hail the Queen, in November 1989, and today, World Cafe correspondent John Morrison talks about how that album shook things up.

"Rap music historically has, of course, been a male-dominated space — not just demographically but, like, in perspective. Queen Latifah, with this record, really came onto the scene and challenged that."

Morrison talks about how Queen Latifah carved out a space for women in hip-hop and changed the way women were seen by the men in the industry. Plus, he'll get into the legacy of that debut album.

Set List

  • "Dance for Me"
  • "Ladies First (feat. Monie Love)"
  • "Wrath of My Madness"
  • "Come Into My House (with Quasar)"

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She is also involved with Canada's highest music honors: Since 2017, she has hosted the Polaris Music Prize Gala, for which she is also a jury member, and she has also been a jury member for the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.
World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).