Queen Latifah releases jazz album

Five albums and 15 years after her hard-hitting hip-hop debut All Hail the Queen, Queen Latifah is poised to release the jazz-obsessed The Dana Owens Album, in which she sings standards.

"This is definitely not a one-shot deal," the singer, whose real name is Dana Owens, told the Denver Post. "Hopefully, with the success of it, I'll be in it till I'm dead. I've always looked at singing as something I can do forever.

"I don't know if I can rap forever. I don't know that I can stay as hot as the hottest girl in the game."

It was her experience in the 1998 feature film Living Out Loud, co-starring Holly Hunter and Danny DeVito, that led to her new album. She played nightclub singer Liz Bailey and sang a couple of jazz standards.