Nicki Minaj: “Just her name alone defines greatness, right? That push that every woman wants to be … that driven.”
JoJo: “I think she’s incredible as an entertainer, a role model, and a writer. I think she can do it all.”
Nicole Scherzinger: “I am inspired by women like Beyoncé who wear costumes that aren’t much but they are real artists and they put real artistry into what they do and that is how I pride myself.”
Adele: “I don’t know her but she’s a huge part of my life … Everything I refer to has always got something to do with Destiny’s Child or her. She just knows what she wants. She’s in control of it all. She’s classy. She’s still totally fucking relevant. And just a nice person.”
Ricki-Lee coulter: “She’s so driven, she pushes herself to the limits and she’s achieved so much but she’s always looking for what the next thing is and how she can improve from what she’s done in the past. She’s really setting the benchmark for female artists and I think she kind of is the Michael Jackson of this generation.”
Simon Cowell: He said that Beyoncé is “ambitious, talented, competitive. She defines this new breed of what I call super popstars, and they are all girls at the moment. It’s like a new super species who literally want to rule the world.”
To further honor Beyoncé, a species of horse fly found in northern Queensland, Australia, was named Scaptia Beyoncéae. Bryan Lessard, the scientist who named the fly did so because of its unique golden hairs on its abdomen, and called it “all-time diva of flies.”
* * *
Beyoncé has certainly no plans of retiring yet despite spending the past 15 years or so under the spot light. And for these past years, she had been surrounded by her family, but now she is no longer the girl of No, No, No. She is a wife, a mother, and still very much the artist she was when she began as part of the all-girl group Destiny’s Child.
Today, Beyoncé is seen as a worldwide phenomenon and has made a name for herself. Only time can tell how long Beyoncé will remain in the world of music, but even then she has already outlasted the TLCs and the En Vogues. Even she herself was amazed at how far she had come since she was 7 years old. “I never imagined I’d have as much success as I’ve had. I thought it would be great just to get a record out. I never imagined the extent of what I’ve achieved… I still can’t believe it.”
Beyoncé can be called a successful woman, not only for her successful albums and singles, or to the numerous awards under her belt. She has achieved the goals she had set when she was just a beginner in her field. To sum it all up, Beyoncé said in 2011,
“At this point, I really know who I am, and don’t feel like I have to put myself in a box. I’m not afraid of taking risks – no one can define me.”
J.Lo: All Around American Idol
Jessica Jayne
Platinum Publishing
Table of Content
Chapter 1 - Hailing from the Bronx
Jennifer from the Bronx
Young Ambitions
A Budding Dancer
Chapter 2 – Growing Pains
Chapter 3 – The Time Is Right
Chasing her Dreams
The Road to Hollywood
Film Debut
El Norte
Money Train
Chapter 4 – The Big Break
Selena
Chapter 5 – From Film Star to Pop Star
More Films
The Start of Music Career
On the 6
J. Lo
J to tha L-O! The Remixes
Chapter 6 – J. Lo’s Rebirth
Rebirth
First Spanish Album
Brave
Chapter 7 – The Comeback Queen
American Idol
Other Projects
Chapter 8 – The Businesswoman
Chapter 9 – A High-Profile Love Life
Chapter 10 – No Stopping With Success
Accolades
One Busy Lady
Recommended Resources
Chapter 1 - Hailing from the Bronx
The single Jenny from the Block can best sum up Jennifer Lopez’s rise to stardom, remaining true to her roots even after she got her “rocks.” It’s a testimony to the values she has learned from the time she began her career until success came. She has gone places ever since, and no matter where life leads her, she will always look back on where she came from: the Bronx.
Jennifer from the Bronx
The Bronx is just one of the boroughs that make up New York City, home to immigrants from Europe and from the tenements of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The area was fast becoming an upwardly mobile community. The Bronx boasts two of New York’s most elegant neighborhoods, Riverdale and Fieldston, and the borough has the New York Botanical Garden and the Wildlife Conservation Society, more popularly known as the Bronx Zoo.
Those who have watched the 1981 movie Fort Apache – The Bronx will be presented with a visual image of urban blight. The movie portrays two policemen who work out of a precinct in the South Bronx, an area teeming with violence and crime. The storyline was fictional, but what the movie shows is enough to plant an image of the urban decay and disaster that is South Bronx.
During the 1970s, the immigrants and their families who had made their homes in the Bronx hoping to have a better life were fleeing the South Bronx for the suburbs, leaving the poor ones and some ghost neighborhoods. It was estimated that the Morrisania and Mott Haven sections had lost 150,000 residents. And with these people gone, the bad elements of the society took over. There were drug dealers, gangs and arsonists. In fact, in one particular year, more than 13,000 fires erupted in one twelve-square-mile area. The once-handsome neighborhoods became one large ghetto.
It was in the Castle Hill of the South Bronx that Jennifer Lopez, the middle child, was born on July 24, 1970. Her parents, David Lopez and Guadalupe (Lupe) Rodriguez, both emigrated from Ponce, Puerto Rico, when they were young and later on met in New York City. David had found a job at the Guardian Insurance Company, working the night shift, before he became a computer technician at the firm. Lupe, on the other hand, was first a hall monitor at Holy Family School before she became a kindergarten teacher at the same school after she took night classes to earn a degree.
The house where Jennifer Lopez grew up
Jennifer clearly remembers how life was hard even with both her parents working. When she was born, the family was living in a small apartment that was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. But she recalls with much fondness, “Hey, there was always rice and beans.”
Her parents were finally able to buy a modest two-story house after saving up money, and being able to buy their own house was a big deal for a relatively poor family.
And home was the safe haven for Jennifer and her two sisters, Leslie and Lynda. Leslie was a year older than her while Leslie was two years younger. Their parents were both practicing Catholics who ensured that their children received a parochial-school education. Their new home was just across the street from their church, where the girls attended mass every Sunday.
And Lupe, who was keen on not letting her daughters fall in with the bad crowd, was strict with them. As a result, the girls experienced a well-disciplined life at home and at school. David and Lupe wanted them to be well mannered, to not be late for school and to faithfully attend church. But it was for the best, for Jennifer said,
“I was a good kid. I was always hugging people. I was very close to my grandparents and I listened to my mother and didn’t do bad things. I didn’t curse and I didn’t run around. I was never naughty, but I was a tomboy and very athletic. I’d always be running around and playing sports and stuff. I did gymnastics, competed nationally in track, and was on the school softball team.”
Outsiders may have these ugly impressions about living in the South Bronx, but it isn’t what they think it was. Jennifer told Martyn Palmer of Total Film, “They made this movie called Fort Apache – The Bronx and everybody thi
nks that’s what the Bronx is really like, some kind of war zone or something. It’s just like any other inner city. I grew up in what I consider to be a nice neighborhood and for me it was… well, it was normal.”
But Jennifer also acknowledges that living in the Bronx was tough and one could not be a hundred percent safe while walking through the streets, but she feels that this atmosphere coughed to be more aware and strong in dealing with all aspects of daily life. She explained, “Growing up there made Hollywood a piece of cake, because I had the street smarts and sensibility, and I didn’t grow up in that [film colony] environment. I also have perspective, because I know what it is to live in the Bronx.”
Young Ambitions
Even from an early age, Jennifer knew what she wanted, and that was performing. Their mother had once dreamed of becoming a professional entertainer herself. She would sing and dance about the house and encourage her girls to have little performances at home.
Jennifer recalls, “We used to do little shows, even if it was just cartwheels. Whatever made them clap, we did.” At times, the girls would perform songs from Broadway musicals in front of their relatives. Lupe, who raised her children on musicals, would often sit them in front of the television for Broadway musicals and Jennifer loved the shows.
The Lopez family, with Jennifer, center
One particular show that she could vividly remember is West Side Story, one of Lupe’s favorite films. The movie focuses on life in New York’s Puerto Rican community. Jennifer was immediately drawn by Rita Moreno, a Puerto Rican-born actress who stars in the film. “I loved West Side Story, and that says it all right there. I identified with it. It was my favorite movie and I wanted to be Rita Moreno. Not Maria: she was kind of wimpy and she blamed her brother for things.” Jennifer also said in 1997, “There were Zero Latinos on TV, so Rita Moreno was the only one I identified with.” And that brought her to conclude, “If you don’t see anybody like you there, it’s like, ‘Well, I guess I don’t exist.’”
But in her young mind, she was determined about following her dreams. She said, “I just knew it was something I wanted to do … I always wanted to sing and dance and be in movies, but when you’re little, you don’t really understand what the ‘rich and famous’ part is all about – it’s just a catchphrase that means ‘I wanna be doing what they’re doing up there.’ And ever since I as three that’s how I was – I always felt all this drama inside of me.”
Fortunately for Jennifer, her parents encouraged her and her sisters to participate in activities to keep them out of trouble. She took singing and dancing lessons when she was five. And when she was seven, she toured New York with her school.
Jennifer as a toddler
Jennifer remembers, “My mom took us to dance classes when we were young. My mother might have been a little bit of a frustrated actress, but she wasn’t a stage mom. We went to dance classes every weekend. But it wasn’t til I got older that I started to pursue it myself.”
One thing that Jennifer shared with her sisters was their love of the TV series Charlie’s Angels. They would sometimes act out the show when they were playing. Lynda told People, “When we would play, I was always Jaclyn Smith. Leslie was Kate Jackson. Jen was whoever the blonde was – Farrah or Cheryl Ladd.”
Despite growing up with her mother’s strict teachings and confessing to be a “good kid,” Jennifer still learned to handle herself out in the world and to stand up for herself when needed. One example was when she was in the fourth grade. She recounted the experience: “There were these two best friends and I started getting on with one of them. The other got jealous, so she told me that the other girl was always talking about me. In the end, I confronted her; she denied it, so I pushed her in the face. We started fighting and I knocked her down. It was pretty ugly, and although I’m not proud of the event, I did win the fight. Nobody ever messed with me after that, and I graduated from school unscathed.”
But Jennifer quickly pointed out that she’s not a violent person. “But I can, and would, defend myself if I had to. I’m not going down without a fight, that’s for sure. I started that fight in fourth grade, but I’ve matured since then.”
A Budding Dancer
With the support of their parents, Jennifer and her sisters took dancing classes. It was more significant for Jennifer who was very much excited to take the lessons a few times weekly after school at the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club. Harold Maldonado Jr., the club’s director, could vividly remember Jennifer because “there was something about Jennifer and the way she was determined to come here every day, work hard, help out the younger kids. After class, she’d stick around and ask questions. She was so dedicated.”
The club would often put on musicals, one of which was My Fair Lady. Jennifer’s classmate and good friend Arlene Rodriguez recalls, “She played a hobo or a drum, a poor kid, wearing little knickers. She wasn’t the star, but she was the one who stood out. She was always good at everything.”
And even if her parents didn’t see performing as a real career choice, they had enrolled Jennifer in the Ballet Hispanico. Lupe would drive her daughter each weekend to her dance classes.
When Jennifer was 13, she was involved in a car accident that nearly took her life. In her own words, she said, “A truck carrying compressed gas cylinders hit my mom’s car. The only thing that saved my life was the fact that I was bending down tying my shoes in the front seat, because his headlight flew through the windscreen and ended up in the back of the car. It would have smashed my face in. I don’t even remember exactly how my nose got fractured, but that’s why it looks like it does. People always tell me I look like I was hit by a hammer, but I like my nose. In profile it’s good, but if you look straight at me or touch it, you can see the flatness.”
But her broken nose and how it gave character to her face only served to enhance her beauty.
It was about this time that Jennifer had her first crushes on boys in her class. But she remembered that her very first crush was a boy named Charles. He had blue eyes and black hair. Jennifer said of him, “He was so cute. I never kissed him because I was only ten years old. He’d come over to my house every day and my mom would give us sandwiches and milk. I dreamt of marrying him. I saw him years later when he’d grown up, and let’s put it this way – he peaked early.”
Chapter 2 – Growing Pains
Just like any other girl, Jennifer went through growing pains and awkward phases in her adolescent years. She was still very young when her body began to develop the curves that would later make her very famous.
During one interview, she said, “I had a very voluptuous body from the time I was eleven. My mother used to say, ‘I’m so worried about Jennifer because she’s so sexy. I’m afraid she’s going to get pregnant.’ The taste in my neighborhood was for voluptuous women, see? I knew guys liked me. Back then, in the third, fourth grade, there were girls who already had tits and boyfriends, they were always kissing in the school closet. Not me. I was more of a late bloomer, like I didn’t get into it until seventh grade, twelve years old.”
It was only natural for her parents, particularly her mother, to be concerned for her and her sisters. It wasn’t impossible for their girls to be preyed upon by neighborhood boys. And so Lupe always warned her children to be extra careful, to not draw attention to themselves while out of the house and never to be flirtatious with the opposite sex.
When Jennifer was 11, her family went on a trip to Puerto Rico, and it was her first visit to her parents’ homeland. There was one incident that Jennifer couldn’t forget. She recalled, “I went into a store and asked if I could see something. The clerk said, ‘Talk to me in Spanish.’ I understood Spanish but didn’t speak it. She said, ‘Aren’t you Puerto Rican?’ I just ran out of the store. I remember feeling such shame.”
Early on, their parents taught Jennifer and her sisters to speak English at home as a way of assimilating into the American way of life. Her grandparents, who lived nearby, were the ones w
ho taught the Lopez girls to understand and speak Spanish.
Aside from her interest in sports, there was a time when she became seriously interested in a boy. Jennifer was 15, in the tenth grade, when she met and began dating her first real boyfriend, David Cruz, and continued dating him for the next nine years. She said about him, “He made me feel like a hot babe. We started dating when I was fifteen and dated only each other for nine years. We were very careful. I’m not saying we weren’t having sex, because we were.” She also added that she lost her virginity to David when she was seventeen. But she quickly pointed out that she was more interested in pursuing a career than settling down.
Jennifer with her first boyfriend, David Cruz, attending the premiere of My Family
Her relationship with David lasted that long because he happened to be someone who respected her. Living in the same neighborhood, David would sometimes see her in “a weird hat, wearing something I’d cut together from a picture I’d seen in a magazine and I’d be just going to the track to run.” David also admired the fact that Jennifer had a strong sense of self and wouldn’t just follow the crowd.
Jennifer indicated that in her neighborhood, anyone who tried something different was labeled as peculiar and with suspicion. She said, “If people see you striving for things, it threatens them. I was like, ‘This two-bit town isn’t big enough for me.” And if she’s wearing something different, people would look at her as though she was a nerd. They would say things like, What is she doing? What is she wearing? – “because people didn’t do that in my neighborhood; people didn’t work out or take care of their bodies.” But David would always support and understand her. He would just say, “Jennifer has bigger plans.”
Modern Divas Boxed Set Page 19
