Blacc is a vivid expressionist known for his gritty, true-to-life trap music which is catching on quickly in the streets. Listen to the album below and follow on Instagram: @lolifeblacc 

ABC recently announced the cast for The Little Mermaid Live, which includes Queen Latifah, Shaggy and Auli’i Cravalho, who played the voice of Disney’s Moana, on Monday, August 6.

Cravalho has been cast as Ariel in the live concert production, while Queen Latifah is set to play Ursula, according to People. Singer Shaggy will play Sebastian. Additional casting announcements are said to be made at a later date.

According to ABC, the production will “take viewers on a magical adventure under the sea as live musical performances by a star-studded cast will be interwoven into the broadcast of the original feature film.” The press release continued, “This never-before-seen hybrid format will feature beautifully intricate sets and costumes, with music from the original animated film and the Tony Award-winning Broadway stage version.”

This news comes after Disney’s announcement of its live-action feature adaptation of the film, which will star Halle Bailey as Ariel. The actress is known for her role as Sky on Freeform’s Grown-ish. Harry Styles is also in talks to play Prince Eric. Other actors in contention to costar include Awkwafina as Scuttle, Melissa McCarthy as Ursula, Javier Bardem as King Triton, and Jacob Tremblay as Flounder.

Karey Burke, ABC’s president of entertainment, said the network is not worried about the TV version overshadowing the upcoming movie.

The live event is seemingly “unlike anything that any network has done before in terms of live-action musical.” She added that the vision is “kind of mind-blowing.”

The live musical event is set to air on ABC on Nov. 5 as apart of The Wonderful World of Disney franchise honoring the 30th anniversary of The Little Mermaid.

Hip Hop Icon Queen Latifah is mourning the death of her mother Rita Owens. Queen made a statement to E! News on Wednesday of her mother’s passing.

“It is with a heavy heart that I share the news my mother, Rita Owens passed away today. Anyone that has ever met her knows what a bright light she was on this earth.”

“She was gentle, but strong, sweet, but sassy, worldy but pragmatic, a woman of great faith and certainly the love of my life,” Latifah continued. “She had struggled with a heart condition for many years and her battle is now over. I am heart broken but know she is at peace. Thank you for your kindness, support and respect for our privacy at this time.”

Rita had been fighting Heart Failure for 14 years. She and Queen Latifah appeared on a PSA called “rising above” heart failure during the film break  Queen shared with People magazine her role as her mother’s caregiver.

“I’ve just learned how much you can love a person and just how strong my mother is. I’ve come to respect her in ways you can’t even imagine.”

“As a caregiver,” the Girls Trip star reflected, “it’s just like being a parent, like some things really don’t matter. All the kind of frivolous things sort of fall to the side because there’s something way more important than all that. And when we go through these things together as a family, I realize, these are the important things, these are the important moments.”

Our prayers go out to the Queen and her family during this difficult time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Cxr7txpuo

Ford Motor Company celebrated the July Fourth weekend in New Orleans as part of the annual ESSENCE Festival®. As exclusive automotive sponsor for the ninth consecutive year, Ford provided attendees the opportunity to get up close and personal with its latest lineup of vehicles, including the all-new 2018 Ford Expedition and 2018 Ford F-150.

ESSENCE Festival delivered a star-studded lineup this year, with Ford hosting the most exciting and chart-topping talent at the Superdome lounge and at the Ford booth all festival weekend. Legendary singer Chaka Khan debuted the world premiere of her latest single during her live interview with SiriusXM from the Ford booth at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

The cast of Girls Trip including Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina Hall, Larenz Tate and Tiffany Haddish were also spotted onstage at the Ford booth.

R&B singer’s Tank, India Aire and Elle Varner graced the Ford booth stage as well as Empire stars Bryshere Y. Gray and Ta’Rhonda Jones. Letoya Luckett and Joseph Sikora also stopped by for an interview. R&B singer’s Tank, India Aire and Elle Varner graced the Ford booth stage as well as Empire stars Bryshere Y. Gray and Ta’Rhonda Jones. Letoya Luckett and Joseph Sikora also stopped by for an interview.

Festival goers had the opportunity to register to test drive the newest vehicles in the Ford lineup, including the 2017 Ford Explorer, 2017 Ford Escape and 2017 Ford Fusion. One lucky registrant was presented keys to a brand-new 2018 Ford Mustang on Sunday by comedienne and daytime talk show host Loni Love and Raj Register, Ford Multicultural Communications Manager.

White Girl…Iggy….That’s not her name, but you’ll be sure to remember it by the end of season three of The Rap Game.

Blonde bombshell with a Tennessee twist, Tally is a force to be reckoned with in the music industry moving forward. After being booted from the second season of The Rap Game, produced by Jermaine Dupri and Queen Latifah, Tally made the ultimate comeback in the first challenge on the third season by throwing her notebook and reinforcing her ability to play. Tally is ready to join the SoSo Def Winners’ Circle with Miss Mulatto (Season One), Mani (Season Two), and Shad Moss, formerly known as Lil’ Bow Wow, who launched his career with Like Mike featuring Morris Chestnut and hit singles, “Bounce With Me” and “Basketball”.

Tally is anything, but shy, of the entertainment industry. Being related to Jasmine Sagginario, winner of Disney’s Next Big Thing, definitely broke the 17-year-old high school senior out free of any stage fright and allowed her to gain knowledge moving forth in her own career. Jasmine made a song for the Disney Channel Original Movie, StarStruck featuring Sterling Knight (Sonny With a Chance), called “Make a Movie” (2010).

Tally recently released a music video called, “Hush”, which released over a month ago and racked up nearly 200k views on YouTube. Her joint account with her sister – Jaz&Tally – includes covers of Bruno Mars’ 24k Magic and Amine’s Caroline. With only a few weeks left in this season of The Rap Game, Tally has proved that she is more than fair skin, a beautiful face and blonde hair and is a force to be reckoned with with or without the contract. Are you #TeamTally?

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXFFRa_JJ8Q[/embedyt]

FOX presents a not-to-be-missed night of music and drama.  Airing one night only at a special time, EMPIRE’s Season Three fall finale (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) kicks off the night, followed by the special premiere of STAR (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT). From Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee Lee Daniels(EMPIRE) and Tom Donaghy (“The Whole Truth”), STAR will then premiere in its regular time period with an all-new episode Wednesday, Jan. 4 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT).

Featuring a soundtrack of original music and stunning music performances, STAR is an emotionally powerful drama that follows three talented young singers — desperate for a new start and with ambitions of stardom — as they navigate the cut-throat music business. The series stars Academy Award nominee and Emmy Award, Grammy Award and Golden Globe Award winner Queen Latifah (“Bessie,” “Bringing Down The House”) as CARLOTTA and Emmy Award nominee Benjamin Bratt (“24: Live Another Day,” “Law & Order”) as JAHIL, and newcomers Jude Demorest as STAR, Ryan Destiny as ALEXANDRA, Brittany O’Grady as SIMONE and Amiyah Scott as COTTON. The series also will feature guest stars Grammy Award winner Lenny Kravitz (“Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” “The Hunger Games”), supermodel/actress Naomi Campbell (EMPIRE) and Grammy Award-nominated musician and actor Tyrese Gibson (“2 Fast 2 Furious”).

Source: Vaughn Alvarez

Celebrity correspondent and former member of the platinum selling group Crime Mob’s Princess hosted the red carpet coverage for Hip Hop Enquirer and she did an outstanding job interviewing some of the biggest names in Black Hollywood. From Keri Hilson to Danny Glover, the Princess was never lost for words when she talked with them. Princess spoke with actress Gabrielle Union who is a co-star of the movie “Almost Christmas.” Union revealed how her own life prepared her for the role of playing Rachel in the movie. Check out the video below.

The Grammy award winning, platinum-selling hip-hop trio Naughty By Nature has launched their official 25th Anniversary Kickstarter campaign! After 25 years of collaborating with prominent artists in the industry ranging from Queen Latifah to The Roots, the super-group is ready to work directly with all their supporting fans in efforts to unleash their new record later this year. The veteran rappers have listed a variety of exclusive, limited-edition rewards for each pledge which includes signed memorabilia, dinner with Treach, Vin Rock and Kay Gee, partying on stage with Naughty By Nature during select dates of the tour, and so many more. For more information on the campaign and browse the rest of the incredible rewards, head over to Naughty By Nature’s Official 25th Anniversary Kickstarter page now, here: http://kck.st/1UcjV9r.

In regards to kicking off the campaign, Naughty By Nature said: “What this campaign is about is just the celebration of our 25 years in the music industry. We’re inviting you to celebrate with us… Kickstarter is the sign of the times… We felt like this would be the perfect time to [release] new music but we needed the support from the fans. We wanted to see if they really wanted the new album? Now that we’re veterans, we can go directly to the fans.”

Kickstarter is the world’s largest community of people dedicated to bringing creative projects to life. – It’s a place where people come together to make new things – like films, food trucks, board games, and innovative technology. Creators (ranging anywhere from emerging to established artists) enjoy the freedom to create on their own terms and the ability to build a community of support around an idea. Backers enjoy the agency to voice the kind of culture they want to see exist and a closer connection to the creative process.

Earlier this month, the group premiered their music video for “God Is Us”! The video was shot in Los Angeles, CA with the team at Itchy House Films. Fans can watch the music video featuring Queen Latifah on the group’s YouTube channel, now, here: http://bit.ly/1RRvHsn.

Additionally, Naughty By Nature is gearing up to kick off their 25th Anniversary Tour that is set to hit 26 major cities across the U.S. in 2016. After kicking off the international leg of the tour in November last year, the group will return to the states on January 28th to kick off their first show in Charlotte, NC. When asked about celebrating 25 years of their career as a trio, Naughty By Nature said: “We’re recording a new project, got that classic merchandise, we are a legendary brand and group. We put on one of the best live shows in the business, and after 25 years we are still here!”

Watch The Music Video For”God Is Us” Ft. Queen Latifah above.

In Real Divas: Living & Loving Out Loud, Black female celebrities talk about finding and/or maintaining love while living a public life. Editor-In-Chief and Publisher Cynthia Horner teams with Author and Publisher Darryl James to ask the difficult questions of Black Women who face certain challenges while pursuing their love lives under the microscope of the public eye.

All hail the Queen.

Queen Latifah has grown from a rapper to a media mogul, but as we all know, it did not happen over night.  The Queen has shown us many shades of her as we saw her once as a pioneering female emcee in the 80s, and since have seen her as a singer, songwriter, actress, model, television producer, record producer, comedienne, and talk show hostess.  Her work in music, film, and television has earned her a Golden Globe Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Image Awards, and a Grammy.

Today you can find Queen Latifah on newsstands with all smiles as she appears on the latest cover of Jet Magazine.  In this issue Queen Latifah opens up about her family, faith, and new business ventures.

“The biggest thing to ever test my personal faith was the loss of my brother in a motorcycle accident… I believed it ruined my life. I probably had a five-year interruption in any type of personal growth.  There were some things I didn’t learn in my twenties because I was disconnected emotionally.  I could only get so close or feel so much.” ~ Queen Latifah

Readers can read the article in its entirety and more in the April 21 issue of JET magazine, on newsstands now.

 Follow us on Twitter @hiphopenquirer

In 1988, Queen Latifah made a huge splash in the hip hop scene. Aside from the fact that the Queen was talented enough to stand among the men, but her message was positive and empowering to young women across the world.

Queen Latifah teamed up with UK rapper Monie Love for the official music video to “Ladies First,” featured on Latifah’s debut album All Hail The Queen, released in 1989.

What do you thin makes the women of hip-hop’s past so different from the ones of the present?

Follow us on Twitter @hiphopenquirer

Queen Latifah and her Flavor Unit Entertainment company announced that a deal has been worked out with online media provider Netflix which is classified as a ‘first look deal’ whereby any films that are being produced by Flavor Unit if selected, will show exclusively on Netflix’s subscription services after a short theatrical release.

Founded by Latifah and her business partner Shakim Compere in the mid 90’s,  Flavor Unit has been responsible for hip-hop acts like Outkast and Naughty By Nature. They jumped into films with their release of “The Cookout” in 2004. Flavor Unit Entertainment has gone on to produce “Beauty Shop,” “Just Wright,” and “Steel Magnolias.”

Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer of Netlfix said in a press release, “We are delighted to work with Queen Latifah to be the exclusive destination for what are sure to be relevant, entertaining movies. Queen Latifah has a long track record of creating hits and Flavor Unit Entertainment is a fresh and exciting voice in the industry.”

Hip Hop Enquirer Magazine|Follow us on twitter @hiphopenquirer

Thank you, Frank Ocean.

It’s true, we are a lot alike… “spinning on blackness. All wanting to be seen, touched, heard, paid attention to.” In your opening few lines, you simultaneously established your humanity, a burden far too often asked of same sex lovers, and acknowledged that in this age of hyper self- awareness, amplified in no small part by the social media medium in which you made your announcement, we are desperate to share. You shared one of the most intimate things that ever happened to you – falling in love with someone who wasn’t brave enough to love you back. Your relieving yourself of your “secret” is as much about wanting to honestly connect as it is about exhibition. We are all made better by your decision to share publicly.

You and Anderson Cooper have the same coming out calendar week in common, but in many obvious ways, you couldn’t be more different. Anderson Cooper is an heir to one of America’s great Industrial Age fortunes and a network professional whose maleness and whiteness backed by his considerable accomplishments guarantee him work. You are a young Black man from New Orleans who fled your still struggling city. You didn’t arrive in Los Angeles with generational wealth and privilege, only the beautiful lyrics and melodies that danced through you and your dream of making it in a music industry whose sand castles were crumbling.

You are in fact, connected to one of hip-hop’s great cadres, in the tradition of Oakland’s Heiroglyphics, The Native Tongues and The Juice Crew. Your music family, like all the rest, will likely grow apart, but in this moment Odd Future bends hip-hop’s imagination with utter abandon. You fulfill hip-hop’s early promise to not give a fuck about what others think of you. The 200 times Tyler says “faggot” and the wonderful way he held you up and down on Twitter today, Syd the Kid’s sexy stud profile and her confusing, misogynistic videos speak to the many contradictions and posturing your generation inherited from the hip-hop generation before you. I’m sure you know a rumor about Big Daddy Kane having AIDS and with it, the suggestion that he was bisexual, effectively ended his career. You must have seen the pictures of pioneer Afrika “Baby Bam” from the Jungle Brothers in drag and read the blogs ridiculing him, despite the fact that he’s been leading a civilian life for nearly two decades. I know as a singer you love Rahsaan Patterson and bemoan the fact that homophobia prevented him from being the huge star his talent deserves. Only last month Queen Latifah unnecessarily released a statement denying that her performing at a Gay Pride event meant she was finally affirming her identity for thousands of Black girls. Imagine if Luther had been able to write, as you closed your letter, “I don’t have any secrets I need kept anymore…I feel like a free man.”

But you’re not an activist. You’re a Black man in America whose star is on the rise, working in hip-hop and soul, where gender constructs are cartoonishly fixed. Your colleague Drake is often attacked with homophobic slurs when he simply displays vulnerability in his music. He seems to respond by following those moments of real emotion with bars that put “hoes” in their proverbial place. But you’re a beautiful songwriter (your question to Jay and Kanye, “What’s a King to a God?” on their own song on an album about their kingdom, was brilliantly sly). Your letter is revolutionary not least of all because it is about love. It is about falling in love and feeling rejected and carrying both that love and rejection with you through life. The male pronoun of the object of your desire is practically incidental. We have all been in a love that felt “malignant…hopeless” from which “there was no escaping, no negotiating.” Your promise to your first love, that you won’t forget him, that you’ll remember how you changed each other, is so full of love and grace.

You were born in the ’80s, when gay rights activists were seizing the streets of New York and other major world cities, fighting for visibility and against a disease that threatened to disappear them. The cultural shifts created from those struggles in some ways make your revelation about your fluid sexuality less shocking than it would have been decades before. Still, there are real risks with coming out as a man who loved a man. I hope you hear and are reading the hundreds of thousands of people who have your back.

We admire the great courage and beauty and fearlessness in your coming out, not only as a bisexual Black man, but as a broken hearted one. The tender irony that your letter is to a boy who was unable to return your love love until years later because he was living a lie is the only truly tragic thing about your letter. A million twirls on this spinning ocean blue globe in this vast endless blackness for you my love.

After writing the letter to Frank, dream sent over her open letter for her good friend Jay-Z to read. Within minutes, Jay-Z posted her “Thank You” letter to Frank Ocean on his site in sign of his support.

Source: Global Grind

Celebrity Journalist, Cynthia Horner, who has interviewed music royalty such as Michael Jackson, Prince and Queen Latifah will be honored by Wyclef Jean’s younger sister, Mely Jean’s Carma Foundation. Horner who has held positions such as editor of Right On! Magazine, will also be announced as the new Editor-In-Chief of Hip Hop Weekly Magazine at the Carma Foundation’s Jingle Bell Masquerade Ball on December 17th in New York.

The mission of Mely Jean’s Carma Foundation is to improve the conditions of women and children in Haiti. Horner will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, along with actor Michael Williams of “The Wire”.

Follow us on Twitter: @HipHopEnqMag

We all know Queen Latifah, born Dana Elaine Owens, as a musician, television and film actress, a label president, an author, model and entrepreneur. Now she’s added one more thing to her resume… clothing designer.

Queen Latifah is launching her own line of fashions, The Queen Collection, on the Home Shopping Network. Her brand will include apparel, denim, handbags and clip-on hair extensions, for women size 2 and up. “It’s for all sizes,” she told Women’s Wear Daily.

“The truth is, we all like to wear the same clothes. We all want to wear beautiful, fly clothes no matter what size you are,” she said.  “For me it was important to match with a company that understood and respected that ideal.”

“I wanted my collection to reflect my personal style while giving women the tools to build a wardrobe they can feel good in,” Queen Latifah said. “I partnered with HSN because it’s the ideal platform to share my story and the stories of women who inspired me.  I hope to instill confidence in hundreds of thousands of women across the country.”

The clothing will be priced under $100 and the handbags $170 to $300.

She will make her first appearance on HSN on August 27 and return in September to debut a custom line of Natural Wavy Clip-On hair extensions with the network.

“HSN and I have worked closely together to create a high quality hair product for women who are interested in reinventing their look,” continued Latifah. “Since my brand philosophy is about instilling confidence in women everywhere, I want to help them transform their look from head to toe.”

Source: AP