Rock & Roll Hall of Fame <\/a>as an Early Influence awardee, and she\u2019ll be joining The Voice as a coach.<\/p>\n\n\tThis week, though, her focus is on the AMAs and on how she plans to bring her trademark warmth, wit and charisma to the ceremony.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tBelow, The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Latifah about her memories of that first AMAs hosting gig in the \u201890s, what she\u2019s looking forward to at the show next week, and her reaction to her Rock Hall induction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tWhat are your memories of co-hosting the AMAs in 1995?<\/p>\n
\n\tIt all happened so fast back then, but what I do remember was I had a team. There was several of us and we had to move from this place to that place. Just being with Tom Jones was one of the most amazing things to me. People say a lot about this guy. It was just overwhelmingly exciting to be a part of it and wear all these costumes and host and look at the crowd. I was 25, you know what I mean?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAll of it was a lot for me. All of it was exciting for me. I have so many pictures from that hosting gig. There was so many stars in the house that I was fans of from Mariah [Carey] to Stevie [Wonder] to on and on. Meeting people you\u2019ve been fans of for years is so exciting. The energy was great, but it\u2019s me this time, so I\u2019m going to have to make sure the energy goes to all the artists that are going to be on that stage. From New Kids on the Block to Pussycat Dolls, everybody needs to feel that energy from me when they see me. I can give it to them and the audience is going to give it to them.<\/p>\n
\n\tThere is an excitement that comes with your presence. Sombr doing his dance with you at the Grammys this year was my favorite part of the entire ceremony.<\/p>\n
\n\tDid you see that? The cool thing was I got to just be a music fan. I love being able to just be there and enjoy music. I was privy to a very special night, and I\u2019m about to be privy to another very special night. I can\u2019t wait to get to Vegas, and read through this whole script, and look at the run-throughs of everybody practicing for this big moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s so exciting. Out of the millions of artists in the world, we are the ones that are going to have this stage and be able to perform in front of the world. I know they\u2019re all going to try to knock it out of the park. I want to see what tricks they\u2019ve got up their sleeves and who\u2019s just in the zone.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhat are you looking forward to the most?<\/p>\n
\n\tI like to see the younger artists watch the artists who\u2019ve been around the block a few times do it. There\u2019s a certain comfort level when you\u2019ve been rocking shows like this for a while. When you\u2019re an up-and-coming artist who hopes to do this for years and years to come, like maybe an Olivia Dean, you get to see someone who\u2019s been doing this forever and [they\u2019ll] say, \u201cOK, that\u2019s what I got to do. I got to be comfortable like that.\u201d You get to take a little tidbit here and there that you can keep and use for yourself and make sure you\u2019re one of these longevity artists 30 years from now doing the same thing.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt always feels like the AMAs are a fun time for the artists. Plus, being in Las Vegas in such a large venue with fans in attendance, it\u2019s like an eclectic festival.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s music, you should be able to have fun with it. And you\u2019re right. It is a different Vegas. Today\u2019s Vegas is not even the Vegas from when I was younger. You can take the whole family to Vegas. There\u2019s like a family vacay that you can have in Vegas on a normal basis. You can live in Vegas, it\u2019s all good. I\u2019m hoping that festival vibe comes across, because that\u2019s what it should be.<\/p>\n
\n\tI took some friends of mine on tour years ago whose cousins live in Vegas. Back then, I had my motorcycles on tour. My bus was towing my bikes. I got to ride my motorcycles. I went to church with their family, had a barbecue, and I was like, \u201cThis is nothing like The Strip, you know what I mean?\u201d There\u2019s normal life here in Las Vegas. I got a glimpse into that a long time ago, but The Strip is a pretty fly place to be.<\/p>\n
\n\tCongratulations on your Rock Hall induction. Did that come as a surprise?<\/p>\n
\n\tI\u2019m excited about it, and I\u2019m getting more excited because there\u2019s so many different family members and friends who\u2019ve heard about it that are calling from all over the place. I always know when it\u2019s something different when I get calls from every direction. It\u2019s not just a small thing that means something to me. It really means something to a lot of different people, and we can have whole conversations about it. I\u2019m just fortunate that I\u2019m in there. I had nothing to do with it, so thank you everyone who wanted me to be a part of it. Thank you very much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Queen is back. Over 30 years after Queen Latifah made her hosting debut alongside Tom Jones and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[75326,9,24,63,34055,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-238882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-american-music-awards","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queen-latifah","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}