Queen Latifah spoke at 2019 Essence + New Voice Entrepreneur Summit in Atlanta. The crowd greeting the Queen with so much royalty as she graced the stage in a multicolored metallic print dress with royal flair. She sat down with ESSENCE Global Beauty Director, Julee Wilson, to discuss the evolution of the New Jersey native rapper to superstar in television, music, beauty, film, and business. “For me, evolution is really just a way of saying longevity,” she said. “It’s really just a way of saying growth and that’s a wonderful thing to have, to be able to evolve.”
The legacy of Queen Latifah is something no one will be able to forget. Throughout all of the films and music she has brought to us she is the definition of her name Queen. She reflected on her 15-year partnership with Covergirl Cosmetics where she elaborated more on her Queen Collection, which was created with the late makeup artist Roxanna Ford. There was a woman at the first-class JFK lounge who Latifah would always see and the young lady would always tell her how proud she was of Latifah and that she “wish y’all had a shade for me.” She made it her mission to get a shade in the lady’s complexion. Latifah removed that “thing of makeup that made black women skin look ashy and grey.” As she reminisces about that business enterprise and the superfluity of black beauty lines currently, Latifah expressed, “Ultimately, it wasn’t about me making money. It was really about me, about you and I being able to access makeup just like every white woman can access makeup in every drug store across this country or every beauty counter across this country, even at a decent price point.”