TV Review - Queens (2021)

Following ABC's Nashville (2012) and FOX's Empire (2015), we have another series on broadcast television that is about people in the music industry. Both Nashville and Empire featured older artists and younger artists in the music industry, sometimes at odds with each other, often in tandem. This series, created by Zahir McGhee who was a writer on Scandal, does the same thing here with both the Generation X and Millennial perspectives. In fact, the series focuses an all-girl, hip hop group who broke out in the 1990's. They broke up and the four members went their separate ways, living separate lives. 20 years later, the four women decide to get the band back together, go on tour again and record a new album of music.

The first episode was really incredible. It was an incredible pilot that introduces the girl group and the hit song that propelled them into fame in 1999, as well as establish the four women as individuals 20 years later. The series is about how these women, now in their 40's, are handling all that life has dealt them over the decades. The four women represent a diversity of different experiences.

Eve Jihan Cooper (Eve and Barbershop) stars as Brianna, a woman who was known as "Professor Sex." She's now a married woman with five children. For the better part of 20 years, she's been raising her kids and being a housewife, after being a provocative figure in music. Things take a turn for her when she discovers that her husband has been having an affair.

Naturi Naughton (Really Love and Power) co-stars as Jill, aka "Da Thrill." She's a lesbian who has been in the closet for the past 20 years. She used to be married to a very religious man who wants her to have a baby, which Jill doesn't want. Jill is herself a religious person. She's actually Catholic and the daughter of a deacon. However, she's secretly dating a woman who wants her to come out.

Nadine Velazquez (Major Crimes and My Name Is Earl) also co-stars as Valeria Mendez, aka "Butter Pecan." She's the one Latina in the group. She's Puerto Rican. She's the one member of the group who doesn't really write her lyrics. She's more of a pretty face, but she's fierce. She does whatever she has to do to get what she wants, even if it means using under-handed tactics. After leaving the group, she went on to have a career in television. She's haunted by the fact that she doesn't know who her biological mother is.

Brandy Norwood (The Game and Moesha) also stars as Naomi, aka "Xplicit Lyrics." She's actually an amazing songwriter who not only does hip hop but other kinds of music as well. When the group broke up, she started to pursue other genres, including pop, R&B and even folk. She pursued it, even despite having a daughter. She did her best as a single mom, but she wasn't always there for her daughter, which has made her relationship with her daughter very tense. Unfortunately, when she pursued a solo career in a different genre, she didn't achieve any success.

Each has a reason for wanting to come back to the band. The series then becomes about the four of them navigating their return into the limelight, while also juggling their own personal issues. The music that the show gives to the women is really catching and insightful, if mostly on-the-nose. Yet, it's rap from a female perspective that's of a certain age, which isn't often heard on the music scene. Most female rappers tend to be under the age of 30. The rap music here is rather refreshing in that regard.

It's simply a matter of whether or not one wants to keep up with the soap opera-like tactics that the show is utilizing to keep the momentum going. I like soap operas, but even I have my limits. A mystery involving a person who shoots one of the women ramps up the soap opera nature of this thing rather quickly, but the worry with Empire is that it was ramping things up and thus burning through story too fast to be sustainable. Empire did manage to last for four seasons, so this has potential.

Rated TV-14-DLS.
Running Time: 1 hr.
Tuesdays at 10 PM on ABC.