For more than two decades, actress and singer Queen Latifah has run an artist management company, Flavor Unit, out of a converted firehouse in downtown Jersey City. In addition to starring in films like Hairspray and Chicago, recording albums of standards and rap, Queen Latifah has helped manage the careers of stars like LL Cool J, Terrence Howard, and Naughty by Nature.
This summer, homegrown author Helene Stapinski caught up with the38-year-old first lady of hip-hop (aka Dana Owens) after she took the red eye home to Jersey from her second home in Beverly Hills.
Helene: There have always been these urban legends surrounding you, like “Queen Latifah lived in Dixon Mills, she built Dixon Mills, she had a video store in Dixon Mills, she had a video store in Newport.” I read your autobiography, Ladies First, so I do know that you did live in Jersey City. But I’m wondering when it all began in Jersey City for you.
Queen: I moved to Jersey City when I was 21. That was my first apartment that I ever had under my name. Before that I had moved out of my mom’s house in East Orange and in with a couple of my friends who were dancers for me when I first started out in hip-hop. We lived in the Bronx in Co-op City, but I kinda wanted to get back to Jersey, so I found Dixon Mills. I loved the contemporary architecture in that classic flipped warehouse feel.
H: I live in an old warehouse myself now.
Q: So you know what I’m talkin’ about. It had big decks and skylights and a lot of light. I just thought it was a cool place. So I moved into Dixon Mills. I think we got our office over here shortly before that. Yeah. I liked it a lot. I liked the flavor. I liked the fact that it was close to New York City but not in New York City. I could come right back across that tunnel to a little more peace and quiet than what was happening in the city. It was more neighborhood. I liked my neighborhood. I liked my neighbors.
The day I moved into Jersey City, my neighbors were on the deck across from me and they were this couple. They were like, “Hi. We’re you’re neighbors, Mike and Rob. Why don’t you come over for some white wine spritzers?” I didn’t even know what a white wine spritzer was! But I loved that. (Laughs.) Me and my roommate Ramsey went over and had a glass of wine with them. And it was just cool. I loved the whole vibe.
H: Out of all the places in the world, how did you decide to put the business in Jersey City?
Q: My partners and I worked a lot in our first office in Newark (where she grew up), then we moved to East Orange to Harrison Street. We did a lot of business in New York. My record label’s in New York. Most of the record labels our artists were signed to were in New York. We were always going through the tunnel. It just seemed like a physical thing. So we started looking around for locations, and our real estate guy, Paul Del Forno, showed us this firehouse which had been converted into an office building and we just sort of fell in love with it. The price was right. We were able to do a deal directly with the owner of the building instead of having to go through the bank for our mortgage, so that was convenient.
And of course, some of our artists that were under our management company grew up or lived in Jersey City, such as Apache, Latee, Chill Rob G, Double J, Lord Alibaski, they were all from Jersey City. So it was kind of their stomping ground, too. For artists who lived in New York or came from out of town, it was close to Manhattan. So it was easy to find. And I just felt like Jersey City was a cool community. It was up and coming. There was a lot of potential, being so close to Manhattan. Knowing so many people who worked in Manhattan and lived in Jersey City who had the same feeling, wanting to come home to this kind of feel, this neighborhood, different cultures and types of food. You know, it’s just been growing for so many years.
H: Do you get there much now?
Q: Yeah. When I’m home. I live out in New Jersey, close to the shore, out in the country. There’s nothing around me but horses and orchards and big ass houses. But it’s kinda cool, because it’s a farming sort of place, a lot of horses. People are into their horses. (Laughs.) But anyway, when I come home, I get by the office or flow through the area on my way to the city. Or make a pit stop at Komegashi for some good sushi. Or Puerto Rican food, which I gotta have once in a while.
H: Your nickname, Latifah, which you took when you were eight years old, is a Muslim name that means “kind.” One of the things I read about you is that you’re still living up to that name. You have a charitable division of Flavor Unit named after your brother. A scholarship foundation for city kids? Tell me about that.
Q: The Lancelot H. Owens Foundation. Yeah. We have an annual luncheon where we give away scholarships and awards. We still have six kids a year who we give partial scholarships to. They have to maintain their GPAs and come back and volunteer somewhere to give back to the community. That’s been going great. It’s in its 13th year.
H: I know you’re out in L.A. a lot, and I didn’t know if that gets distracting.
Q: It does. I was not even able to attend this year’s luncheon. But my mom is the chairman of the board. And she and everybody else was there. But I had to work this year.
H: Are you working on a new record?
Q: Yeah … This is a hip-hop album.
H: Did you miss hip-hop?
Q: Yeah. It’s something that’s in me, so I’m never too far away from it. If anything, I step out further into different avenues or different things that I also enjoy, but I feel like everywhere I go and everything that I do, I’m still representing hip-hop. Just showing how we get down, how we can take it, where we can go, you know. Bend it and fold it and make it into who we are. My version of it. Each individual. So that’s what I do.
H: I read a New York Times article from about 10 years ago, when the movie Set It Off came out. You were being interviewed in Jersey City, you said your company was sort of a backup plan just in case your acting career didn’t really take off. Reading it in retrospect, it’s funny, because you’re an A-list celebrity now. Since you’re so successful in the L.A. scene, why keep the company going in New Jersey now?
Q: Oh, why not? Just because you’re successful as an actor doesn’t mean that’s all life is about. My life is not all about acting. It’s also about producing. And that’s home base. If we want to create other film projects or manage other actors, which we do, like Terrence Howard or Big Boi, we need a place to have all that. And that’s that little firehouse on Morgan. Not to mention, we have a lot of other businesses, like the real estate company, investing in properties. There are just so many different things we do that we have to keep our office.
H: What was it like filming The Secret Life of Bees? I heard you were a little worried about the bees.
Q: It was a bit nerve wracking working that close with bees. We worked in cold temperatures. Bees don’t really like the cold. We were in North Carolina, but it was definitely not warm. We actually shot in the wintertime. The movie is set in the summertime. I’m the type of person who can do a lot of different things without being fearful, whether it’s driving 150 miles an hour, jumping off of something, sitting on a ledge five stories up. But beeeeees. (Laughs.) I just didn’t want to get stung. Unfortunately we didn’t have a whole lot of time to shoot this thing. It came out great. But I didn’t have a whole lotta time to work with the bees. But I had just enough, you know. Julian, the beekeeper, was really cool, trying to make me relax. But there were a couple of times where I was like, “Oh man. I gotta get up outta here.” There’s nowhere really to go, though. (Laughs.)
H: Did you get stung at all?
Q: No. I didn’t get stung. And I’m thankful. I’ve been stung before. I grew up in kind of the city and the country.
H: Your mom used to send you and your brother down to Virginia in the summer, right?
Q: Yeah, and Maryland. So you get stung sometimes. Playing in fields. You step on a beehive, you know, you get stung … But I actually love bees. I love what they do. Out of all the things I have done and do in my career, that was probably the thing that made me the most nervous, performing with those dag-gone bees. It was funny. But it doesn’t look like that on screen.
H: You play a beekeeper, after all, the heroine of the story. When you read the script, were you like, “That’s me, August Boatwright”?
Q: I kind of identified with every character. It’s really weird. I was able to connect with all the ladies in the story.
H: And the little girl, the Dakota Fanning character, has your same last name, too. Owens, right? Lily Owens.
Q: Yeah. It was so weird. That happens sometimes in movies. A character will have my first name or last name and I don’t have anything to do with it. It almost seems like this is where I’m supposed to be. August, I think, is so full of love and such a nurturing person, she reminds me of my mom in certain ways. My mom was a high school teacher in Irvington, so I have so many brothers and sisters who basically my mom took under her wing. They started calling her mom. It’s funny, because that’s how August is. She opens her doors to people and shares with them, to be there for them. To create this nice world. My mom always made a nice home, a beautiful home environment, a peaceful environment for us.
H: No matter where you were.
Q: It didn’t matter if we were in the projects. Once you came inside our doors, it was a whole different world. Maybe because she was an art teacher. She had an imagination. She would really make things smell nice and look nice. She worked with what we had.
H: You wanna be a mom? I hear you want to adopt at some point.
Q: I want to have and adopt them. That’s something I’m definitely focused on making happen. But we’ll see.
H: You’ve come so far from your days growing up in Newark. Do you ever kind of pinch yourself and say, “How did I get from there to here?”
Q: When I was sitting in the theater at the Oscars and I’m nominated for an Oscar (for Chicago) and my new movie is the number-one movie that weekend-Bringing Down the House-it was extremely surreal. I’m lookin’ at Jack Nicholson and Denzel, who I know now, but I’m still a fan of his. Tom Hanks is over here. Meryl’s there. Yeah. There are those times when I’m like, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” At the same time, it feels like this was the path. Everything went the way it was supposed to go. I really can’t imagine doing anything else. This is the way everything was supposed to happen. Things were kind of put in place at an early age that made it all make sense.
H: Are you going to write a sequel to your book, Ladies First?
Q: Eventually I might. I thought about writing another book, but I don’t know if it would be an autobiography. That would have to wait a little longer.
H: You need more material?
Q: Oh no. I don’t need more material. I just need the balls to say it. (Laughs.) I’ve done so much. But I had a purpose and a reason for sharing my life in that first book. I wanted to inspire young girls particularly. But I also felt like I was so out there afterwards. That I was kinda being judged at the same time. It was a weird kind of thing. But I would definitely do it again if it would help someone else.
H: It was beautiful because it was so direct and so out there.
Q: You have to be real in order to really connect. If anybody’s going through some of the things I went through, they’re going through real situations and real challenges and real joys and successes. So you gotta be real about it. What’s the point of sharing fluff? That’s not gonna help anybody. Or inspire anybody. What’s the point? Just go ahead and talk about things and make it make sense hopefully. But I would love to write something else, some stories maybe. Take people on a journey somewhere else.
H: Short stories maybe?
Q: Yeah, maybe some short stories. Something fun and fantastic.
H: I think that feeling that you do put yourself out there and talk directly to people is why people love you so much. That you do keep it real … Is it hard, or do you want to sometimes just crawl up in a ball and say, “Leave me alone”?
Q: I think everybody wants to do that sometimes. It’s more a matter of trying to watch what I say sometimes, like not say everything. I realize I have to be more protective of my life. Even if I don’t say anything, people write their own stories anyway. The media has changed since the beginning of my career. People used to want to take a picture of you at an event. Now they want your whole life on camera. They don’t have a right to my whole life as far as I’m concerned. That’s the battle you have to deal with when you’re in my position.
H: Just looking you up on the web, it’s just insane what’s out there.
Q: I had to tell so many people this week, “I’m fine, I didn’t get into any accidents. I didn’t fall off a moped or a motorcycle. I’m fine. I’m not pregnant. I’m not getting married. I’m not this. I’m not that.” There’s so much stuff. I don’t really care about it. You gottta have some sort of thick skin in this business. But I’m not gonna deny it. I definitely want to fight back. Not so much for me, but for my family. I already lost a brother to a motorcycle accident (her brother, Lancelot, died in 1992 while riding the motorcycle she’d given him as a birthday gift). So to have someone create a story about me having a motorcycle accident or a moped accident and being injured, my family hears that stuff before me. I don’t look myself up online. But other people do. People call my family members and tell them what they’ve seen or heard and then they freak out. So for those reasons, I don’t like it at all. It’s just ridiculous. There’s no limit to how far people go with it.
H: Well, I think that’s it. I’ve run out of questions.
Q: Anything else? Double check now.
H: Maybe one more. Any wisdom for the kids growing up in Jersey City today?
Q: I would say stay strong. Stay positive. Try to surround yourself with positive people who want to do something with their lives. Don’t do drugs. I know it sounds simple. But our communities are so inundated with drugs and alcohol that we really need to try our best to stay away from that. Everybody can’t experiment and keep moving. Some people experiment and become drug addicts. Some people experiment and become alcoholics. All the dreams and all the potential gets ruined. It becomes a generational thing. It continues on and on and on.
I encourage kids to dream. Because anything they think of that they wanna be can become a reality if they work hard and put their minds to it and just focus on those things. Yeah. You’re gonna have a thousand million obstacles. But once again, if I can do it, anybody can do it. Keep your head up. If you’re gonna be having sex, use protection every single time. Don’t fall into that pressure of, “It’s uncomfortable.” It doesn’t matter. AIDS is ravaging our community, and it will touch you. No one’s immune to it, just because they don’t want it to happen. So just protect yourself. Be smart. Dream big and go for it.
H: Thanks so much.