When I think of the icon Queen Latifah, I refer to Oprah Winfrey’s quote about Gayle King: “she is the mother you never had. She is the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I simply do not know a better person!”
For her birthday, we’re celebrating Queen’s over three-decade-long acting career and how her repeated role as a love interest put Black women’s beauty front and center on screen.
We saw glimpses of her potential as a rom-com lead in her starring role as Flavor Magazine founder Khadijah James in Living Single. In between her demanding career and kicking it with her girls in a 90s kind of world, she was entertaining a bevy of very fine and successful lovers, from Morris Chestnut, to Cree Williams’ Scooter.
Queen Latifah as Kadijah James on Living Single
CREDIT: EVERETT COLLECTION
It wasn’t until the early 2000s however when Queen would be able to fully embrace her fate as a love interest on the big screen.
In the hip hop centered love story Brown Sugar, Queen plays the best friend to Sanaa Lathan’s main character. While only appearing in a handful of scenes, the scene towards the end when she shares a brief flirtatious encounter with Mos Def’s character deserved to be explored further in its own spinoff film.
Queen would eventually land her own spinoff film with Beauty Shop, the sister film to Barbershop. One of the through lines connecting all of Queen’s characters have been their authenticity. Actress and writer Mindy Kaling once joked about how romantic comedies are akin to science fiction. Fans of the genre find that the suspension of disbelief is a part of its charm. Be that as it may, there’s a lived-iness about the world in which Queen’s characters occupy that feels familiar to me: The communal space of a beauty salon, where the older Black women kiki’d while the much younger girls eavesdropped only to half understand what’s being said anyways; the sound of women’s laughter that punctuated the conversation alongside the sound of running water, and hair dryers and hair curlers.
During a time when the rom-com genre was dominated by thin white women named Meg, Julia, and Sandra, there was a comfort to see a full figured Black woman who wasn’t remotely interested in adhering to those standards. It was always wonderful to see Black women who were reminiscent of my mother and the women in my extended family be loved on in film.
In Just Wright, she plays a basketball-loving physical therapist to Common’s NBA star character who can't get enough of her brains, beauty and heart. In her 2006 Christmas comedy Last Holiday, she plays Georgia, a woman who is propelled by a false medical diagnosis that tells her she only has a short time left on earth to leave her old life behind and live her life to the fullest. Despite its dark premise, we spend about two hours being charmed along with the rest of the characters who have the fortune of crossing paths with Georgia, including LL Cool J’s character who confesses his undying love for the Queen. And while her comedic timing is everything, she is never the butt of any joke.
Even in films like 1996’s Set It Off where she played badass janitor Cleo and 2015’s Bessie where she starred as the legendary blues singer Bessie Smith, Queen showcased Black lesbian love and sex on screen, representing the Black queer love that’s often erased from Black mainstream stories.
Queen’s presence on screen has always felt like a balm without feeling overly twee. She wasn’t an ingenue, a young clumsy woman looking for a man to steady her. She wasn’t a cynic whom love just sort of happens to against her will. Queen carved a career out of playing characters who were fully realized even as they dealt with their struggles. She invited a generation of Black women who were neglected by mainstream film to envision themselves as being worthy of love, or just as her name says, as worthy of being Queen.
Exclusive: Melanie Fiona On Making High-Vibrational Music & Saying Yes To Partnership
Melanie Fiona is back! After taking a little more than a decade-long hiatus, she has officially made her return to music and blessed us with two singles, “Say Yes” and “I Choose You.” While both singles are very different from each other, they both reflect who she is today and the type of music she wants to make. In our conversation, the mom of two expressed what she learned during her time away.
“It's interesting, even when I said it is like coming back, I don't ever feel like I really left because I was always still performing. I've still been public. It's not like I went into being this recluse person or version of myself, but the thing that I really learned in this process is that I think things take time,” Melanie says in a xoNecole exclusive.
“I think often we're so caught up in it, being on the timing of demand or popularity, or, like, striking while the iron is hot and the thing that I've learned is that everything is on God's time. That's it. Every time I thought I would have been ready, or, like, things were taking too long, I had to reship some things, personally, professionally, in my life. I also gave myself permission to make a living, not just make a living, but make a life for myself.”
Making a life for herself included getting married to Grammy-nominated songwriter Jared Cotter, starting a family, and embracing new landscapes, such as podcasting as a co-host of The Mama’s Den podcast. She also began doing more spiritual work and self-care practices like meditation, sound healing, Reiki, acupuncture, and boundary setting, which allowed her to get in touch with her inner voice.
“I wasn't putting out music, and I wasn't experiencing a number one record, but I was being a number one mom,” she says.
“I was experiencing things that were allowing me to heal and get in touch with myself so that I could make new music from a space of joy and freedom, and excitement again because I definitely feel like I did lose some excitement because of just politics and industry and what it can do to your mental health and even your physical health. So giving myself the space to really just say, ‘Hey, it's okay. Everything's right on time.’”
The joy and excitement are felt in one of two new singles, “I Choose You,” which is more of a lovers rock vibe, a tribute to Melanie’s Caribbean roots. While the Grammy award-winner is known for ballads like “It Kills Me” and “Fool For You,” she is becoming more intentional about the music she makes, calling it high-vibrational music. She says her music is a “reflection of my life,” as it captures every facet, from hanging out with friends to riding around in her car.
“Say Yes” has the classic R&B vibe Melanie is known for. However, both songs are inspired by her relationship. Melanie and Jared got married in December 2020, and the Toronto-bred artist dished on their relationship. Fun fact: he is featured in the “Say Yes” music video.
“When we first started dating, I had come into that relationship post a lot of self-work. I had gotten out of a long-term relationship, I had a year and a half to date and be by myself and do a lot of work on myself alone. And when we met, I remember feeling like this has to be my person because I feel it,” she says.
“And so when we went into that relationship, and we started dating, I was very clear. I was like, I know what I want. I'm very clear on what I need, and I'm not going to withhold my truth about myself in this process because of pride or fear of rejection. I know you love me, but I'm coming with my heart in my hand to let you know that if we're gonna get there, we have to put fear aside and say yes. So that was kind of like my open letter to him, which is why the video is us having a conversation.”
Melanie also shares that saying yes to her partner has empowered her in many ways, including motherhood and showing up for herself. Her new EP, also titled Say Yes, will be available at the top of 2025.
Check out the full interview below.
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Feature image by Franco Zulueta
The 'Success' Salary: Is $588,000 Per Year Reasonable For Black Women?
According to a recent survey by Empower, a financial services company, many Americans say a yearly salary of $270,214 means you’ve made it. It’s the kind of earnings that reflect success. That sum, which is three times more than the median household income, accounts for just 10% of U.S. households that earned more than $234,900 last year, according to CNBC. When broken down by age, millennials (ages 28 to 43) set their “success” salary at $180,865, while Gen Z (ages 18 to 27) set their expectations even higher. They said it would take $587,797 to be successful, according to the Empower findings.
The research also found that 49% of Americans feel “less financially successful than others,” which is “part of the reason they say they’d need such a high salary to feel accomplished, " Rebecca Rickert, head of communications at Empower, told CNBC.
In terms of overall net worth that defines a “successful” life, Gen Z noted the average at more than $9.4 million, while millennials noted more than $5.6 million. The numbers reflect unreasonable, pie-in-the-sky notions about success, with 47% indicating that “they’ll never achieve the level of success they’re seeking” and 42% of women considering themselves financially successful right now.
Black Women and the Wealth Disparity
Black women professionals, in particular, face a major challenge to this perception of a successful salary in the form of the wealth gap, earning 66 cents for every dollar white males make and earning $96 for every dollar their Black full-time counterparts make.
Black women's weekly median earnings were $935 in the third quarter of 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is more than $44,800 gross yearly. Elder millennial women (ages 35 and older), as a whole, earned median weekly earnings of $1,160, which is more than $55,600 yearly. Gen Zers ages 16 to 24 had the lowest median weekly earnings at $720 (or more than $34,500 per year).
And of course, the salary increases based on education and experience, but numbers still did not reach the “success” salaries of respondents in the Empower survey.
Alternate Pathways to Wealth
For Black women, the traditional path of just keeping a “good job” for 30 years doesn’t align with the “success” notions from the Empower findings, however, there are other paths to wealth building. Based on the success of high-net-worth Black women, the common themes are ownership, investing, and entrepreneurship. Women like Oprah Winfrey, Sheila Johnson, Rihanna, Serena Williams, Emma Grede, Fawn Weaver, Iman Abuzeid, and several others, all have those three things in common.
While there are still very real barriers to Black women reaching a multi-million-dollar net worth (and the aforementioned women are indeed outliers), investing in stocks, real estate, art, and other methods of making your money work for you are ways to increase one’s income as a full-time employee. And, according to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, home equity has accounted for the largest share of Black wealth since the start of the 20th century.
Starting a lucrative side hustle, launching businesses, buying into a franchise, or owning a proprietary trademarked process or service can also be a great way to double or even triple your net worth.
Redefining Definitions of Success
While it is great to strive for wealth or riches, the way you define success is directly connected to your worldview and values. Not all of us link an abundance of money to success. The same respondents from the Empower research said their personal definition of success is “often at odds with what society prizes,” with 43% defining financial success as “having a certain amount of money or assets.”
Only 27% ranked “wealth” as the “highest measure of financial success,” with 59% stating that “happiness” is the most important benchmark (i.e., having the ability to spend money on the things and experiences that bring the most joy, doing what you love.) Thirty-five percent indicated success is defined by “the luxury of free time to pursue personal passions.”
If there's a yearly salary that denotes success, what happens if, when you finally achieve it, you can't really enjoy it? What do you think the salary of a "successful" person is? Is "success" truly defined by how much money you earn? The jury is out on that one.
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