Queen Latifah

CTL-E-5664 · Person · musician · 1989–present

STRONG EVIDENCE evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-02592 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-P-0803 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5664. Master record source: Soul Train Awards build 2026-10-16 — sourced from Wikipedia ceremony pages.

Queen Latifah (born Dana Owens on March 18, 1970, in Newark, New Jersey) is the rapper and actress who carried hip-hop's Afrocentric first wave into the mainstream and then into Hollywood's top rank. Her debut album All Hail the Queen (1989) announced a regal, Afrocentric persona pointedly at odds with the misogyny around her. Her third album, Black Reign (1993), became the first album by a solo female rapper to be certified gold, and its single "U.N.I.T.Y." won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance. On television she headlined the sitcom Living Single (1993–1998) as Khadijah James, and on film she broke through in Set It Off (1996) before earning an Academy Award nomination for Chicago (2002). In 1998 she became the first rapper to perform at a Super Bowl halftime show, and in 2023 she was named a Kennedy Center honoree — only the second hip-hop artist so honored. CultureTechLens profiled Latifah in Short #156.

The record

• Also known as: Dana Owens
• Role(s): recording artist

Notes

STAGED 2026-10-16 (747 Program, Shorts Reverse-Gap Wave 5) — not merged; awaits founder merge go. Gate A: no match in the live graph (3,381 entities) under exact, normalized, alias, or token-containment screening, 2026-10-16. Reverse gap: CTL Short #156 catalog record carries no publish date before any entity record existed. Vital status: Living; active performer and producer at staging (verified October 2026). Photo HELD — candidate requires file-page-level license verification. Project ID: PPL-001 per wave precedent (staged 'CULTGRAPH' ID is not registered). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Person records carry no map slot under the media-layer rule; maps attach to places and institutions.) | visual_assets = HELD: No file-page-level PHOTO-001 license verification completed at staging; slot held rather than filled with an u | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG built only from this record's sourced facts and statistics; CTL-branded palette (black / deep ) | video = FILLED | audio = HELD (No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio exists at staging; the subject's own recordings and progr)

Relationships

• Girls Trip — starred in
  Queen Latifah is one of the film’s four leads, per the synopsis and cast in the Box Office Mojo and TheWrap pages opened for the film’s record. starred_in runs Person→Work and is minted from the Person side at assembly.
• Living Single — starred in
  Queen Latifah starred as Khadijah James on the Fox sitcom Living Single across its five seasons (1993–1998); the work record Living Single (CTL-E-5446) was found homed by Gate A in this pass.
• MC Lyte — collaborated with
  Queen Latifah and MC Lyte were both featured, alongside Yo-Yo (CTL-E-5666), on the remix of Brandy's "I Wanna Be Down" (1994).
• Soul Train Music Awards 1995 — honored by
  STRONG EVIDENCE

Sources

• NPR, Fresh Air, "'Fresh Air' celebrates 50 years of hip-hop: Queen Latifah" (2023) — Black Reign first solo female gold album, Super Bowl first, Kennedy Center Honors, Living Single, Chicago Oscar nomination [primary] (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, 'Queen Latifah' — cross-checked against NPR and award reporting, October 2026 (birth date and place, Flavor Unit, The Equalizer run) (build store)
• CultureTechLens, Shorts Link Map §C catalog record, short_no 156 (CTL Short; url_status: recorded) (primary source · build store)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Soul_Train_Music_Awards (verification source · master store)

Evidence note (master store)

Won Sammy Davis Jr. Award for Entertainer of the Year at the Soul Train Music Awards 1995 — per the published Soul Train Music Awards winners lists (per-year lists fetched in full during recovery Phase C, 2026-10-17)

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Browse the full directory: all entity records

Record CTL-E-5664 · Combined Graph record U-02592 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 4 sources · 4 mapped relationships.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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