Queen Latifah and Monie Love release 'Ladies First'

Why it matters

Queen Latifah, then nineteen, released "Ladies First" in November 1989 on Tommy Boy as a single from her debut LP All Hail the Queen. The track features Monie Love, a then-nineteen-year-old British MC who had moved to New York to be part of the Native Tongues scene. The producers were DJ Mark the 45 King (who had cut Latifah's first records) and Daddy-O of Stetsasonic. What "Ladies First" did is make the argument, in commercial form on commercial radio, that women had been in rap since the start, were in rap now, and were not asking for permission to be in rap. Latifah and Monie Love trade verses; neither of them shrinks. The chorus is two words long. The video, shot in Pan-African color blocks with Latifah dressed as a queen, was on Yo! MTV Raps in heavy rotation. Plenty of women had been making rap records by November 1989: Shanté had been doing it since fourteen. Salt-N-Pepa had two gold albums. MC Lyte had a debut LP. But "Ladies First" is the song that consolidated all of it into one statement and said: this is the floor, going forward. You can hear every female MC who came after running on top of this floor.