For some of the younger cats, Queen Latifah may be known as an actress who stars in Fox's Starz, as well as Girls Trip, Beauty Shop, Just Wright among other warm-hearted films, but the truth of the matter is that Queen got her start as a rapper. The "Ladies First" music maker signed with Tommy Boy Records in 1989 and released her debut album All Hail the Queen in the same year.
Her first acting gig was starring as Khadijah James on the FOX sitcom Living Single, where she continued to put out music after the fact. Since creating her own talk show in 2004, she released a couple more album and took on more acting roles. The last album my Queen was 2009’s Persona and now she's announced that she'll be dropping off another this year.
The Blast caught up with Queen where she told the crew that she's readying a release to drop “hopefully this year.” She detailed how it wouldn't just be a hip hop album, but will have some jazz influences as well. Queen, born Dana Elaine Owens, previously explained how she grew up on jazz thanks to her father's musical preference.
"Somewhere along the line, that jazz gene kicked on somewhere in the hip hope years it kicked in and I kind of immersed myself in more and more jazz," she said. "Especially as people would sample jazz records for. hip hop. So I would find out what sample that was and I’d get turned on to some whole artist and their whole repertoire."