For those of you who slept through the ’90s, Latifah, whose name means “delicate” and “sensitive” in Arabic, was once the first lady of rap, dropping lyrics about female empowerment at a time when her male counterparts had bitches, hos, and money on their minds. And it was rap that first introduced her to film. Spike Lee wanted a female rapper for a small part in 1991’s Jungle Fever; his first choice was the then-popular Monie Love, but she was pregnant. Latifah ended up with the role.

Since then, this 34-year-old East Orange, New Jersey, native has racked up an impressive list of movies, with two projects, The Cookout and Taxi, in theaters this fall, and the Barbershop spin-off Beauty Shop due in early ’05. But she didn’t break really big until 2003, when the surprise smash Bringing Down the House, which she executive-produced (and had a hand in shaping the script and the marketing campaign), minted more than $130 million. Around the same time, her performance as prison warden Mama Morton in the $171 million–grossing musical Chicago earned her Golden Globe and Oscar nominations.

Just as she did with the rap world, Latifah is now flipping the script in Hollywood. Not only does she run her own company—Flavor Unit Entertainment, with her longtime business partner and manager, Shakim Compere—she’s being cast in roles that were written for white guys and skinny starlets. She also has her eye on directing. “In the next twelve months or so, hopefully, I will have found that little gem,” she says, “something I feel really good stepping out on.”

Talk to people in the industry about Latifah and they will bring up her “presence” and “realness,” qualities that make her simultaneously starlike yet absolutely unpretentious. It’s this dichotomy that lets her appeal to a broad audience and excel in both comedy and drama. “She has a certain looseness,” says her Bringing Down the House costar Steve Martin. “On camera, off camera, she’s the same person: confident, strong. A natural.”

On the day of our interview, Latifah’s most certainly real. As in real late. Two hours, to be exact. But when she races up to the Beverly Hills Four Seasons hotel in her black 1965 Ford Mustang convertible and hands you a bag of peanut M&Ms (king-size, no less) as an olive branch, it’s hard not to think of this queen as truly a person of the people.