Queen Latifah is an American actress, rapper and singer. She has received various accolades, including a Grammy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two NAACP Image Awards, in addition to a nomination for an Academy Award. She's often considered Hip-Hop's First Lady. In 2006, she became the first hip hop artist to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Biography[]
Born Dana Elaine Owens, on March 18th, 1970, in East Orange, New Jersey. She is the daughter of Rita and Lancelot Owens, Latifah witnessed both sides of Black urban life in the USA while growing up. Latifah began singing in the choir of Shiloh Baptist Church in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and had her first public performance when she sang a version of "Home" as one of the two Dorothys in a production of The Wiz at St. Anne's parochial school.
In her first year of high school, Latifah began informal singing and rapping in the restrooms and locker rooms. After a temporary job as a Burger King employee, she soon found herself making waves in the hip-hop music scene. In her junior year, she formed a rap group, Ladies Fresh, with her friends Tangy B and Landy D in response to the formation of another young women's group. Soon the group was making appearances wherever they could. Latifah's mother was a catalyst; she was in touch with the students and the music. Latifah made her mark in hip-hop by rapping about issues of black women. Her songs covered topics including domestic violence, harassment on the streets, and relationship problems.
She invited Mark James, a local disc jockey known as D.J. Mark the 45 King, to appear at a school dance. The basement of James's parents' house in East Orange, equipped with electronic and recording equipment, became the hangout of Latifah and her friends, who called themselves the "Flavor Unit." James, who was beginning a career as a producer, gave a demo record of Queen Latifah's rap Princess of the Posse to the host of Yo! MTV Raps, Fred Braithwaite (professionally known as "Fab 5 Freddy"). The recording captured the attention of Tommy Boy Music employee Dante Ross, and in 1988 the label issued her first single, "Wrath of My Madness." The track met with a positive response, affording Latifah the opportunity to launch a European tour and to perform at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater. The next year, Latifah released her first album, All Hail to the Queen, which went on to sell more than 1 million copies.
After working as the human beatbox alongside Ladies Fresh, she was just 18 years old when she broke through in the late 1980s with a style that picked selectively from jazz, reggae, and soul traditions, from beats produced by D.J. Mark the 45 King. Her debut single, "Wrath of My Madness," was released in 1988. A year later, her debut long-player, "All Hail the Queen," enjoyed favored reviews: an old, wise head was evident on the top of her young shoulders.
She would soon turn to acting, Latifah made her big-screen debut in Spike Lee's interracial romance drama Jungle Fever (1991). The following year, she appeared in the crime thriller Juice, with Omar Epps and Tupac Shakur. Latifah soon landed a leading role on the small screen, appearing in the sitcom Living Single as Khadijah James from 1993 to '98. The comedy, which also starred Kim Coles, Kim Fields and Erika Alexander, proved to be a groundbreaking show. It remains one of the few sitcoms to focus on a group of African-American women. Afterwards she's been in various films and had her own talk show twice.
She portrayed Aunt Em in the ABC made-for-television movie The Muppets' Wizard of Oz (2005).
On December 3 2015, she portrayed the Wiz in NBC's The Wiz Live!
Portrayal of The Wizard[]
Before she was the Wizard she was nothing more than a magicians assistant, At night they'd before Magic and in the day time they'd give rides in a hot air balloon. She loved her job but hated being an assistant to her boss. To teach him a lesson she rides off in the hot air balloon leaving him alone, but without knowing a storm arrived and blew her into the clouds and the she fell right into Oz where they people were amazed at the sight. So she wouldn't disappoint them She put on her bosses suit and top hat and they proclaimed her the new wizard to protect them from Evillene.
Gallery[]
Discography[]
Studio albums
- All Hail the Queen (1989)
- Nature of a Sista' (1991)
- Black Reign (1993)
- Order in the Court (1998)
- The Dana Owens Album (2004)
- Trav'lin' Light (2007)
- Persona (2009)
Trivia[]
- In The Muppets Wizard of Oz, Queen Latifah played alongside Ashanti who would portray Dorothy in the film and in a 2009 production of The Wiz and David Alan Grier who portrayed Uncle Henry, worked alongside Latifah in The Wiz Live ! as the Cowardly Lion. He also portrayed The Wizard as well in a different production of The Wiz.
- In The Wiz Live!, though never sharing stage time, she acted with another former co-star Common, who five years prior together worked on a movie Just Wright
- First female rapper to be nominated for an Academy Award.
- Played power forward on the Irvington Public High School girls' basketball team and led them to two New Jersey state championships.
- She was nicknamed Latifah (Arabic for delicate and sensitive) by a cousin while she was in her teens.
- She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6915 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California, on January 4, 2006.
- First woman to host the Independent Spirit Awards.
- Co-founder of Flavor Unit Entertainment.
- Ranked #72 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women of Rock N Roll.