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

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Queen Latifah's All Hail the Queen Photo by NPR - Courtesy of the artist

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.

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.

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