Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 7, 1994 TAG: 9405090112
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-16 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LYNN ELBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
But the self-confident Latifah is determined to add yet another job description: entrepreneur. In no-nonsense tones, the 24-year-old woman born Dana Owens outlines her future:
"I want my life to grow in certain ways," she says.
How?
"Financially. That's how. There's a lot of things I'd like to do and not just in the entertainment industry. There's real estate things I'd like to do, business things."
Affluence is the goal, she says, but not self-indulgence.
"There's a lot of things I'd like to do if I had the money," she says. "I could see myself doing things in my community ... community development. Housing - homes, not apartments.
"I think people need a sense of something to care about. Your home can be something you care about."
The entertainer saw firsthand how difficult it can be for a black American to be a homeowner when she decided to buy a house in Wayne, N.J., to share with her schoolteacher mother.
"My mother couldn't get loans before," she says. "I couldn't get a mortgage. Queen Latifah, who you think is large, could not get a mortgage on my house. I had to go through three different companies.
"If I had to go through this, I can imagine what everybody else has to go through."
It's up to black Americans to look past excuses and discover if they are facing discrimination, Latifah says.
She recounts the experience during a lunch break, nibbling on halibut in a studio trailer. Her look is new: Her short coif has been traded for fake braided locks. Turns out to be strictly pragmatic, done for the May 15 season finale.
"The show's a cliffhanger, so I figured the safest thing to do is get the [hair] extensions, and I could just get it done exactly the same way at the start of next season," she says.
"It's business."
Business is good for "Living Single," the Fox Broadcasting Co. series which stars Latifah, Kim Coles, Kim Fields and Erika Alexander as four young women making their way in New York City.
The series, which airs at 8:30 p.m. EDT on Sundays (on WJPR/WFXR-Channel 21/27), was named the No. 1 show among black viewers in a recent survey and was Fox's highest-rated new show for the 1993-94 season.
Sunday's episode is a family affair: Latifah's mother, Rita Owens, makes a guest appearance, as does Fields' mom.
Family is important to Latifah, who grew up a policeman's daughter in East Orange, N.J., along with brother Lance, who became an officer. He died in a 1992 motorcycle accident, a loss that is still painful for Latifah.
"We had kind of the model family," she says. "My mother and father would take us to the park, we'd play karate with my father."
But her parents split when she was 9, and her mother carried the major burden of child-rearing, Latifah says.
"She sacrificed a lot to make sure we had the things we needed," she says. "We had love in our family; that's the most important thing."
Latifah was a standout in her school days. The 5-foot-10 student was a power forward on the Frank H. Morrell High School basketball team in Irvington, N.J., and appeared in plays.
Burgeoning rap music also drew her in - although she saw it as just a lark.
"Everyone who could rap wanted to be a rapper," she recalls. "But I was going to college. I just wanted to hear my record on the radio."
Her college days were cut short by an auto accident, and she says the several months she lost during her recovery "just threw me off. ... I lost my spirit for it."
Music also began to pay off. She had signed a modest record contract at 17 and began developing a stage image. When other rappers flaunted a "gaudy" look, she says, she adopted an African one.
"I wanted to separate myself and be on a different level," she says. "I didn't want to follow what everyone else was doing."
Grammy nominations and record hits like "U.N.I.T.Y." followed, as did movie roles in "Jungle Fever," "Juice" and "House Party 2." Her newest album is "Black Reign."
by CNB