Sometimes a crown is an awfully heavy weight to bear–just ask Princess Di.
Queen Latifah’s trademark African crowns are long gone, but among the hip-hop family, the 26-year-old, overachieving Grammy Award-winning rapper/actress/singer/TV sitcom star/role model is still considered royalty.
Which can make being human a tricky proposition.
By all accounts, it has been the best of years: There’s an upcoming action chick flick, “Set It Off,” scheduled to open in November, directed by hip-hop music video and feature film director F. Gary Gray (“Friday”) and co-starring Jada Pinkett, Viveca Fox, Blair Underwood and Clarence Williams III.
There’s also a co-hosting gig, along with Peabo Bryson and Veronica Webb, for “The Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards” TV special airing Monday and honoring–what else?–female R&B singers.
And there’s a long-awaited and almost-completed CD produced by a host of hip-hop heavyweights from Kenny Smooth to Easy Mobe. Not to mention, her two day jobs, acting in Fox TV’s “Living Single” and running her own management and record company, Flavor Unit, with her partner, Shakim.
Then again, it has been the worst of years: an arrest in February on charges of carrying a loaded pistol, driving without a license and possession of marijuana. (According to the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office, Latifah pleaded no contest to the weapons and license charges. She paid $810 in fines and penalties and also paid $2,500 to a local charity, the Watts-Willowbrook Boys and Girls Club. She was not prosecuted for marijuana possession.)
“There was a lot of paranoia after that incident,” Latifah said during a recent telephone interview. “That was a wakeup call. It woke me back up. Sometimes you get too comfortable.”
But comfort is not a realm in which she travels easily. If anything, she’s not content to rely on the tried and true. So if that means playing a gun-toting lesbian in her feature film debut, then so be it.
Still, she says, she’s not about to pull a Will Smith and morph from a rapper into a full-time feature film star. Yet.
Here’s more from Latifah:
On crossing the line from rapping to singing on her upcoming CD: “There’s a song that Faith wrote that I actually sing on. I’m nervous about that. Rapping, I’m comfortable with. My voice is kind of classic. It’s kind of soulful, but it’s not a 100,000 riffs voice. I can sing; I can hold a note. Shakim (her partner) had the track. He was like, `Yo, La, you could sing the song. Yo, you really need to do this.’ I was nervous about singing a song that someone else wrote. I told him, `If it doesn’t come out right, yo, I’m not doing this. I’m not playing myself.’ “
On acting:
“It’s a natural kind of thing. I did school plays when I was coming up. I was always in front of the TV, mimicking people’s accents. . . . It’s a challenge for me; I haven’t had a challenge in a long while. I won’t do anything that’s just average.
“I want to be De Niro, straight up. Where I can control my craft, control every movement. That’s going to take studying. I can act, and I can do movies. I can make my albums and it’s all good. And I can still run my company.”
On playing a lesbian:
“I play the most buck wild character. Cleo is an extremist in every sense. She’s definitely die hard. If she’s gay, she’s straight-up gay. There’s no crossing the fence. Initially, there was a lot of anxiety over that, just the way society views that issue. But I’m here to act, I’m here to make you believe this character is a real human being. In order to do that, I have to give 150 percent to the character. If I didn’t, you would see my lack of commitment to it.”
On feminism:
“I don’t know if I’m a feminist. When I was younger, growing up, every time they talked about feminism on the news, it was always these white women screaming, marching. I didn’t know what that was about. That turned me off to the whole term. I don’t think I need to be categorized in order to feel strongly about things. I was raised by a strong black woman and a strong black dad. My mother brought out the queen in me, she brought out the womanhood, being a lady, the gracefulness, the principles, moral fiber, moral caliber, how to be communicative about what you feel. My father, if anything, he’s the feminist. He never treated me like a girl. Whatever my brother did, I did. I was allowed to just be a kid.”
On the arrest:
“That was one night that never ended. I worked 14, 15 hours that day. I was kind of in Cleo mode (the character in her upcoming movie). I went through a traumatic scene that night (on the movie set). I had to recall all the things that were sad (in order to do the scene). That night was like Murphy’s law, whatever could go wrong did go wrong. . . . I was down, it was that time of the month, it was a full moon, and I had all that stuff in my car. I was carrying a gun for protection. . . . I didn’t have any security with me. I don’t carry a gun anymore. I’ve chilled on (the marijuana) too. But I wasn’t high when (the police officer) stopped me.”
On being a role model:
“I’m human. I don’t know why people think I don’t go through the same things. (Before my arrest), I took things for granted, trying to roll like that. I felt like people would understand about the gun.
“But having marijuana in that car, I was mad about that. I don’t want to show that to people. I don’t want every kid in America to think that’s cool. A lot of people reached out and supported me, and forgave me. They told me, `Don’t worry about that, it’s all good. Queen, no matter what you do, it’s OK; you’ve done so much positive stuff.’
“My apologies were to my family. Everyone else, I didn’t feel like I had to explain myself to the world. They were completely supportive of me. They know me and love me. They were like, `We’ve had your back through the great stuff you’ve done, why would we not support you through this?’ And that made everything OK for me.”
