Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
While I can’t tell you exactly where I was the first time I saw the video for Queen Latifah’s biggest and most important song, “U.N.I.T.Y.” — video was how I remember learning about most new hip-hop songs in the early ’90s — I do remember feeling like it was a song that was about to matter. For one, Queen Latifah mattered. Queen Latifah was a rapper of note; she was one of the women who rapped and seemed to be universally loved, which was not an easy feat in 1993. But also, the song put everybody who listened on notice. Right after saying “I love a Black man to infinity” all you hear is an aggressive opening bar from Latifah that is both a question and a threat, “Who you callin’ a bitch?!”
It was most certainly not I, Queen.
Aside from a dope beat, produced by Kay Gee of Naughty By Nature fame, the subject matter of “U.N.I.T.Y.,” the first single from Latifah’s third album “Black Reign,” felt necessary. I was 14 at the time and fully enamored with the music from the Death Row camp from the West Coast, which, looking back, was some of the most misogynistic music ever. I knew it was bad then but I can’t even listen to it the same way nowadays. But to hear a song addressing the negativity head on, well, that seemed powerful. Queen Latifah seemed like a woman you did not mess with. And the song wasn’t just for men who put their hands on women or even disrespected women, there was also a verse for the women out there trying to be hardcore and putting themselves in harm’s way. She really covered a lot of ground.
