Queen Latifah

Dana Elaine Owens (born March 18, 1970), better known by the stage name Queen Latifah, is an American rapper, actress 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.

Dana Elaine Owens was born in Newark, New Jersey, on March 18, 1970, and lived primarily in East Orange, New Jersey.

At age 19, Latifah released her debut album All Hail the Queen (1989), featuring the hit single "Ladies First".

The song got the attention of Tommy Boy Music employee Dante Ross, who signed Latifah and in 1989 released her first single, "Wrath of My Madness".

More recent artists, like Ice Cube and Lil' Kim, would go on to sample Latifah's track in their songs "You Can't Play With My Yo-Yo" and "Wrath of Kim's Madness" respectively in later years.

Latifah has a two-octave vocal range.

She is considered a contralto, with the ability to both rap and sing.

Latifah made her mark in hip-hop by rapping about issues black women face.

She wrote songs about topics including domestic violence, street harassment, and troubled relationships.

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 second album Nature of a Sista' (1991), was produced by Tommy Boy Records.

She received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1992.

The single "Ladies First" featuring Monie Love became the first collaborative track by two female rappers not in a group.

Her third album, Black Reign (1993), became the first album by a solo female rapper to receive a gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and spawned the single "U.N.I.T.Y.", which was influential in raising awareness of violence against women and the objectification of Black female sexuality.

The track reached the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, and won a Grammy Award.

Latifah starred as Khadijah James on the Fox sitcom Living Single from 1993 to 1998 and landed a leading role in the action film Set It Off (1996).

In 1993, she released the album Black Reign, which was certified Gold in the United States and produced the Grammy Award-winning song "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, which was released by Motown Records.

Her fourth album Order in the Court (1998), was released with Motown Records.

She created the daytime talk show The Queen Latifah Show, which ran from 1999 to 2001, and again from 2013 to 2015, in syndication.

Her portrayal of Matron "Mama" Morton in the musical film Chicago (2002) received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

She has also starred or co-starred in the films Bringing Down the House (2003), Taxi (2004), Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2005), Beauty Shop (2005), Last Holiday (2006), Hairspray (2007), Joyful Noise (2012), 22 Jump Street (2014), and Girls Trip (2017); and provided voice work in the Ice Age film series.

She has since released the albums The Dana Owens Album (2004), Trav'lin' Light (2007), and Persona (2009).

In 2006, she became the first hip hop artist to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Latifah received critical acclaim for her portrayal of blues singer Bessie Smith in the HBO film Bessie (2015), which she co-produced, winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie.

From 2016 to 2019, she starred as Carlotta Brown in the musical drama series Star.

She is the daughter of Rita Lamae (née Bray; d. 2018), a teacher at Irvington High School (Dana's alma mater), and Lancelot Amos Owens, a police officer.

Her parents divorced when she was ten.

She was raised in the Baptist faith.

She attended Catholic school in Newark, New Jersey and Essex Catholic Girls' High School in Irvington but graduated from Irvington High School.

After high school, she attended classes at Borough of Manhattan Community College.

She found her stage name, Latifah (لطيفة laţīfa), meaning "delicate" and "very kind" in Arabic, in a book of Arabic names when she was eight.

Always tall, the 5 ft Dana was a power forward on her high school basketball team.

She performed the number "Home" from the musical The Wiz in a grammar school play.

She began beat boxing for the hip-hop group Ladies Fresh and was an original member of the Flavor Unit, which, at that time, was a crew of MCs grouped around producer DJ King Gemini.

DJ King Gemini made a demo recording of Queen Latifah's rap song Princess of the Posse, which he gave to Fab 5 Freddy, the host of ''Yo!

MTV Raps''.

In 2020, she portrayed Hattie McDaniel in the miniseries Hollywood.

Since 2021, she has held the lead role on CBS's revival of the action drama The Equalizer.