Latifah—and later her protégé Monie Love—upset that concept in different ways: Latifah was interested in turning a lens toward the layers and complexities of black womanhood. It would be reductive to paint Latifah as a matriarch in contrast to the skilled and rambunctious group of young men making up the rest of Native Tongues. To be aware that your presence in a space is political is to sometimes assume and take on the
