The early nineties, for a lot of us here at JazzandSoul, were the golden days of hiphop, as we were offered a treasury of new rap music through television programmes like Yo MTV Raps back in the days. During those years we were given, what I still believe to be, some of the best hip hop albums ever made. During the mid 90's we experienced a slight shift when a lot of, more R&B orientated bands, found their way to European audiences with their hip mix of old school soul, R&B and hip hop.
One of the first tracks to hit the charts was Blackstreet's supercut No Diggity, which featured (the already legendary) Dr. Dre and introduced a female rapper (protege of Teddy Riley) named Queen Pen.
Now, it wasn't till 1997 that I came across that name again (that floated in my brain somewhere), when I discovered her debutalbum My Melody, while I was 'digging for gold' back than. Without a listen I bought the CD and till today I still consider the My Melody purchase as one of the best I ever made.
To be honest, I never really was a big fan of female hiphop artists ... Queen Pen changed that with her fantastic set of songs. A bit exceptional even, as a lot of hiphop albums always consisted of a minority of truly dope tracks with a lot of 'useless filling' ... My Melody was different as almost all compositions really stood out as classy jams with good beats, intelligent lyricism, wicked (80's) sampling and the steady flow Queen produced.
Queen Pen received a Soul Train nomination as best new artist in 1998 and released a second album, Conversations with Queen, in 2001. Nowadays I've heard, that Queen earns her money as a novelist and if the quality of her writing, even approaches the addictiveness of her music, I'm determined to open me another chapter of what will always be the real queen of hip hop to me.

An impression by Teach

Ronny Jordan Linxxx

> Queen Pen Official Website
> Queen Pen on Myspace
> Buy My Melody by Queen Pen