In a spacious, stylish apartment across from Chelsea Piers, a six-year-old girl sits contentedly curled up in a chair, oblivious to the fact that a reporter is in an adjacent office, waiting to interrogate her famous mum.
The girl, whose name is Emme, begins to hum. Her voice is sweet and clear, which shouldn’t be terribly surprising, given that both her parents – Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez – are professional singers. When Lopez crosses the apartment, a friend’s home, into the office, Emme follows and bounces into her mother’s lap. Complimented on her unwitting performance, the girl smiles shyly.
“She has a very pretty voice, with vibrato,” Lopez notes. “But it’s funny, she doesn’t like to sing in front of anybody. You’re lucky.”
Emme is off a few minutes later – enticed by an offer to have Lopez’s makeup artist paint her face – but motherhood comes up repeatedly in conversation with the singer/ songwriter/ actress/ dancer/ producer/ American Idol judge.
“It changes your whole life,” says Lopez, 44, whose new album, A.K.A., came out last week. “You look at the world differently. You look at love differently, and that has always been my big subject in music.”
Emme and her twin brother, Max, have had their own revelations. “They’re becoming very aware now” that their amicably divorced parents elicit extraordinary interest. “Just this past week, one of them said to me, ‘You’re famous.’ They’ve seen me do shows on the road and notice that people like to sing along, take pictures. It’s different than being on a movie set, which is closed.”
Lopez currently has two films in postproduction: The Boy Next Door, a “sexy thriller” that casts her as a teacher who, on the brink of divorce, meets the wrong guy; and Lila & Eve, in which she and Viola Davis play women who have “lost their children in a drive-by, and they both go out for revenge. It’s very intense.”
For now, though, music is again her focus. A.K.A. arrives on the heels of two high-profile concerts: Lopez performed with Pitbull and Brazilian singer Claudia Leitte at Thursday’s opening ceremony for the World Cup, after “premature” notices that the appearance had been cancelled. (“It was one of those scheduling things that get away from you, and people get nervous,” Lopez explains.)
Earlier in June, she returned to her native Bronx for her first-ever concert in the borough, at Orchard Beach in Pelham Bay Park. “I have pictures of myself on that beach when I was 1 year old. Everything I am is because of where I grew up, and after touting that around the world, it was nice to be able to come back and say thank you. My whole family was there; it was very moving.”
Asked if she’d want to see Emme or Max follow in her path, Lopez says, “This is what I know: If you’re an artist, nobody’s going to stop you. If they’re like me and their dad that way, nothing will stop them. So I would support them. Would I want it for them I don’t know. It’s a tough life.”
But not always. Emme re-emerges, as if on cue, her face now streaked in pink with glittering whiskers. “Whooo,” Lopez says. “You’re a sparkly, rose-gold cat. Very cute.”
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As Emme runs back into the den, her mother observes, “It’s a great time in my life, all around. When you get to a certain age, you think, ‘How long will this go on, and what will happen next’ But right now, everything seems limitless.”
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“This is not the girl you used to know,” Lopez sings on the title track of the new album. “It took you too long to find out/ What you want right now.”
Some will, no doubt, be keen to interpret the lyrics as a dig at Casper Smart, the dancer/ choreographer who was, until recently, Lopez’s beau. But chatting in a girlfriend’s apartment about a week before the album’s arrival, Lopez insists that she and Smart are still “good friends, and I hope we always will be.”
Instead, the songs on A.K.A. reflect what Lopez describes as a general period of transformation, informed by both professional developments and personal ones, such as her split from third husband Anthony.
Lopez entered the studio in February 2013, just after wrapping her first world tour. The final product finds Lopez working with producers and co-writers such as Cory Rooney, Max Martin, RoccStar and Detail, with T.I., Nas, Pitbull, Rick Ross, French Montana and Iggy Azalea popping up as guests.
Single First Love is No. 27 on USA Today’s top 40 airplay chart. Us Weekly entertainment director Ian Drew, who reviews the album favourably this week, notes that while “big divas aren’t selling like they used to” (her last album, 2011’s Love, sold 346,000 copies), Lopez “stretches herself emotionally and vocally” on the new effort. Drew adds that Lopez will likely benefit from the loyal support of her Latin audience: “She still owns that demographic, which is no longer a minority.”
Lopez believes “you’ll hear a different kind of strength on this album, and a different perspective about love. These past four years I’ve been questioning a lot of things. There’s been a lot of facing fears, standing on your own, feeling your own power.”
Watching Max and Emme grow figured into the process, naturally. “They’re yin and yang,” Lopez says. “They complement each other in the best way.” Emme, who quietly cuddles her mum during part of the interview, is generally more “agreeable,” though no pushover. “Don’t get her upset, beacuse then Max – as rambunctious as he can be – is no match for her.”
Lopez also drew inspiration from her experience as a judge on American Idol. “In mentoring people, you wind up discovering so many things yourself. It definitely helped me return to the stage a more confident performer, and a more informed person.”
She has yet to confirm that she’ll return for Idol’s Season 14. “I want to go back, and they’ve asked all the judges back,” meaning her colleagues Harry Connick Jr. and Keith Urban. “Scheduling is the only challenge; I have to figure out my next year. Just give me a little longer, and then I can tell you, “It’s on!'”
-USA Today
