June is Black Music Month, Countdown of Shamontiel's Top 30 African-American Artists

President George W. Bush had a lot of screw-ups during his eight-year term, but he did do a couple things right. One of them was proclaiming June as Black Music Month on May 31, 2002. June is here, and to celebrate Black Music Month, I'll be featuring one of my favorite artists each day, sharing my first or most personal memory of them, explain what their accomplishments are and why I felt they should make the Black Music Month Top 30 list. There will be some oldies, some newbies and some artists who are in between stages.

My June 24 selection is Dana "Queen Latifah" Owens.

Black Music Month Heat Factor "Why's this artist hot?": Today's female hip-hop artists seem like a carbon copy of each other or make you wonder whether Mattel or Sierra Leone should have stock in their records as much as they rap about diamonds and Barbie dolls. Then there's the female rapper who rhymes about how she's had sex with "five or six best friends" but doesn't want to be classified as promiscuous or the female rapper who rhymes "I really like your kitty kat and if you let me touch her" but seems frustrated when people wonder if she's a lesbian. When hip-hop's creation was in effect, female rappers were coming harder, able to just be themselves and actually rapped what they were doing, not random lies just flying out of their mouths.

There was no one rhyming while wearing full African attire in one video and Daisy Duke shorts with a T-shirt in the next. Queen Latifah was one of those rappers who wasn't forced into wearing one outfit or another or talking about one topic or another, outside of doing feminist style rhymes big-upping womanhood. Queen Latifah created her own brand and has managed to stay relevant when rap is constantly making folks as funky as their last hit. How many other rappers could match soul star Al Green on a magnetizing song like "So Beautiful" or even get the opportunity to work with one of the R&B greats? Many female rappers can sing, but there's a difference between holding a note and really being able to "sing."

And if you've heard "The Dana Owens Album" or even heard her brief singing moments as Khadijah James on the hit sitcom "Living Single," you know she is multi-talented. If you've smelled Queen by Queen Latifah perfume, you know she can do fragrances, too, because that perfume is one of the best on the market. She took singing, rapping, acting, perfume and then modeling on. She has a Cover Girl deal to help black women celebrate their own shades of beauty, and she's clearly a great example of that being a Cover Girl herself.

First Memory, Most Personal Memory of the Artist: Generation Y knows her as an actress in movies like "Chicago," "Just Wright," "Brown Sugar" and "Set It Off," but Generation X was fortunate enough to see her in her earlier days when she was rhyming as hard as the fellas. I have so much respect for her being able to hold her own and for making songs like "U.N.I.T.Y." showing young, black ladies that it's not cool to let a man put his hands all over you and disrespect you. She was pretty, had that grown "sista" thickness that brothas could appreciate and she was a guy's girl. She could rhyme on the same level with Public Enemy and Naughty by Nature but smooth it out with songs like "Just Another Day" to let you know she was all woman...ahem, queen...too. Between her, MC Lyte and Salt n' Pepa, they were demanding respect and letting hip-hop know women had a firm stamp on it. And she did it without disrespecting herself and making everybody look at her like a joke. I miss those days badly. I get them with artists like Missy Elliott, but talented female rappers are so few and far between. I'm curious who Queen Latifah comes up with on her current search for female lyricists.

Accomplishments from the Artist: Queen Latifah is one of the most successful female hip-hop pioneers, and she did it without trying to conform to what someone else's idea of success should be. She also hit the hip-hop charts with "U.N.I.T.Y." (24 weeks), "Weekend Love" (13 weeks), "Just Another Day" (11 weeks), "Paper" (10 weeks) and "It's Alright" (4 weeks). Under her birth name, Dana Owens, "The Dana Owens Album" was on the Billboard Top 200 for 29 weeks and the top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums for 39 weeks. She also won a 1994 Grammy award for Best Rap Solo, in addition to hosting the Grammy awards in 2005.

Other Black Music Month Selections:

June 1 Trey Songz

June 2 Marvin Gaye

June 3 Rakim Allah

June 4 Brandy Norwood

June 5 Tina Turner

June 6 MC Lyte

June 7 Lyfe Jennings

June 8 Bill Withers

June 9 Wyclef Jean

June 10 Erykah Badu

June 11 Chaka Khan

June 12 Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott

June 13 Ne-Yo

June 14 Michael Jackson

June 15 Mos Def

June 16 Aaliyah

June 17 Angie Stone

June 18 Salt n' Pepa

June 19 Nas

June 20 Musiq Soulchild

June 21 James Brown

June 22 Heather Headley

June 23 Whitney Houston