Queen Latifah, “Ladies First”

“Ladies First” by Queen Latifah ft. Monie Love

by Danielle Martin | March 12, 2021

Kyle Adams’s “On the Metrical Technique of Flow in Rap Music” explores how a rapper’s flow is created through placement of rhyming syllables, placement of accented syllables, and the degree of correspondence between syntactic units and measures. He analyses various styles of flow by comparing the methods of various rappers. In my own analysis of “Ladies First” by Queen Latifah featuring Monie Love, I wish to discuss the differences in the two rappers’ metrical and articulative techniques and how it influences each rapper’s overall flow.

“Ladies First” was written in 1989 and was one of the most popular tracks of Latifah’s first album All Hail the Queen, which was released when she was just 19 years old. The track was part of the Afrocentrism and Black nationalism movement that occurred within hip-hop during the late 80s as a direct result of the South African apartheid. References to this movement can be observed in both the music video for this track and its lyrics. “Ladies First” also demonstrates a passionate feminist message. This can be heard in the lyrics of both Latifah and Love, who both assert that women have much to contribute to both the hip-hop scene and the Black, anti-racism movement. Thus, “Ladies First” functions as an intersectional anthem that advocates for the voices of Black women both politically and culturally.

Within the first verse, Queen Latifah uses a great deal of internal rhyme. Queen Latifah places stress on these internal rhymes and the end rhymes by placing them on a tie. Even though her placement of the end rhymes is extremely regular and strictly placed on the end of beat 3, the internal rhymes occur in more randomized positions within the lines. This allows her to still create some unpredictability within her rhyme scheme. Furthermore, Queen Latifah uses the strategy of syncopating words/rhymes she wants to stress. This creates the effect of a slowed down the rhythmic pace, thus highlighting the rhymes and creating a dramatic effect. This can be seen on the ties found on “kick”, “wicked”, “knows” and “pros”. She later uses a similar method in her second verse when she interrupts the musical line with rests between the words “bear you, break you, take you”. She gives these words of action more agency by halting her flow completely through the use of rests.

“Ladies First” is in 4/4 time, with each beat subdivided into sixteenth notes. Throughout Queen Latifah’s verses and most of Monie Love’s verses, the general rule seems to be no more than one syllable per sixteenth note (maximum 4 syllables per beat). Monie Love manipulates this steady sixteenth-note pattern, adding triplets over sixteenth notes. Thus, she changes the scheme, hitting six syllables per beat. This allows her to reach her end rhyme consistently on the third beat and achieve a rhythmically symmetrical rhyming scheme. The beauty of her flow here isn’t in the unpredictability of when the rhyme will come but how Love still is able to arrive at the rhyme on the same beat despite adding additional syllables to the line. This allows her verse to be more syllabically dense making her verses seem more slick and almost melismatic. For instance, she runs over the words “merrily, merrily, merrily” without stressing an individual syllable to achieve the speed she needs. Her diction is smooth and light allowing her to be able to move through the line quickly and unimpeded by heavy consonants. This makes her rhythmic pattern seem audibly less predictable than Queen Latifah’s first verse even though her rhymes also consistently arrive in the same spot for her entire first verse. Love also uses inflection patterns to further highlight her end rhymes. In the first two lines of her first verse for instance, she ends her rhymes with raised inflection on the words “do” and “due”. On the next two lines, on the end rhymes “clue” and “you” she completes these lines with a lowered inflection. This mirrored inflection between the two sets of end rhymes shows how Love musically underscores the rhymes.

In her final verse, Monie Love uses internal rhyme to create a more complex rhythmic pattern. For instance, this is demonstrated on the lines “I’m the daughter of the sister who’s the mother of the brother of another.” Though the word “another” does arrive on the third beat like the previous end rhymes of that verse, the use of such dense internal rhyme deemphasises this arrival. Also, unlike of the previous end rhymes of that verse that take place on ties, Monie Love does not pause on a tie. She instead quickly moves onto the next line. Within this verse, Love uses an interesting technique of spelling out specific words within her lines. Love spells out “London”, her name, and “Ladie”. She spells out the words quickly and on a stream of quick sixteenth notes without taking breaks. The spelling out of London is a clever tactic as it also allows her to rhyme the “N” in London with the “can” of American. Later, she also spells out her name in the verse, creating a kind of musical graffiti tag within the song. She rhymes her spelled out named “M-o-n-i-e” with “L-a-d-i-e”. This rhyme functions both as a clever play on words that the listener can catch while smoothly referencing the title of the track.

On her last verse, Queen Latifah’s rhyme scheme is much more unpredictable than her previous verses. One of the reasons is this verse contains more internal rhyming. Also, the end rhymes don’t come at a consistent point within the bar. For instance, this can be seen in the metrical placement of the end rhymes within the lines “Contact and in fact style it gets harder” and the next “Coolin’ on the scene with my European partner”, where “harder” comes in on beat 4 and “partner” comes at the end of beat 3. The placement of many of the end rhymes of this verse is inconsistent. This has to do with differing lengths of each line. Monie Love manipulated the rhythm through use of triplets to arrive on the beat consistently. Queen Latifah, on the other hand, displaces the end rhyme and sometimes this causes the lines to blend into each other. This can be seen in the line “doesn’t make a difference keep the competition’”. The only rhyme in this line is the internal and imperfect rhyme between “difference” and “competition” which Queen Latifah achieves through stressing the similar vowels sounds in each word. Yet, even though “competition” is not the last word of that line, it still serves as an end rhyme.

“Ladies First” is an interesting example to analyze as Monie Love and Queen Latifah both bring their own unique flow and technique to this track. Each artist manipulates the rhythm, meter, and rhyme scheme using different methods. Monie Love’s rhyme scheme tends to focus more heavily of syllabic density and rhythmic manipulation. Queen Latifah’s use of internal rhyme, displacement of end rhyme, and the use of stresses help her develop her own flow. Together, the duo creates a powerful feminist, anti-racist track that demonstrates the diversity found within rap and a rapper’s flow.