Queen Latifah
Photo: Iceposter.com
Latifah was born in Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of Rita, a schoolteacher who worked at Irvington High School, and Lancelot Owens, a policeman. Her parents divorced when Latifah was ten. Latifah performed the number "Home" from the musical The Wiz in a high school play. Her stage name, Latifah (لطيفة), meaning "kind" in Arabic, was given to her when she was eight by her cousin. Latifah was raised in the Baptist church, and, while in high school, was a power forward on her basketball team.[
Latifah started her career beatboxing for the rap group Ladies Fresh. Latifah was one of the members of the original version of the Flavor Unit, which, at that time, was a crew of emcees grouped around producer DJ Mark the 45 King. In 1988, DJ Mark the 45 King heard a demo version of Latifah’s single "Princess of the Posse" and gave the demo to Fab Five Freddy, who was the host of Yo! MTV Raps. Freddy helped Latifah sign with Tommy Boy Records, which released Latifah’s first album All Hail the Queen in 1989, when she was nineteen. That year, she appeared as Referee on the UK label Music of Life album "1989—The Hustlers Convention (live)". Her debut managed to be both a critical and a commercial success and was followed by the albums Nature of a Sista and Black Reign, which contained the Grammy Award winning hit single, U.N.I.T.Y. In 1998, Co Produced by Ro Smith now CEO of Def Ro Inc. she released her fourth hip-hop album Order in the Court.
Raised in East Orange, New Jersey, she has been a resident of Rumson, New Jersey. Latifah’s older brother Lancelot Jr. was killed in 1992 in an accident involving a motorcycle that Latifah had recently bought him. Latifah still wears the key to the motorcycle around her neck, which can be seen throughout her performance in her sitcom Living Single. She also dedicated Black Reign to him. In 1993, Latifah was the victim of a carjacking, which also resulted in the shooting of a friend. In 1996 she was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana and posession of a loaded handgun, resulting in a fine and two years’ probation[citation needed]. In her 1999 autobiography, Ladies First: Revelations of a Strong Woman, Latifah discussed how her brother’s death led to a bout of depression and drug abuse, from which she later recovered.
