J.Lo At 20: Celebrating The Album That Made Jennifer Lopez An Icon

J.Lo At 20: Celebrating The Album That Made Jennifer Lopez An Icon




By Yasmine Shemesh


Once Jennifer Lopez started recording her sophomore album, J.Lo, in 2000, she was in the midst of an astounding career high. With a $1 million salary for 1997’s Selena, she’d become the highest-paid Latina actress in Hollywood history and had no far less than three new movies in the works. “Waiting for Tonight,” her dance-infused 1999 single, had become an anthem for the new millennium and was nominated for a Grammy. And she was about to prepare style history, thanks to a certain plunging Versace dress. In hindsight, given how long she’s been a multihyphenate, Lopez’s early ambidextrousness wasn’t one bit surprising. Case in point, as she told Rolling Stone the following year, she felt like she hadn’t even began although. “I’m looking forward to the ninth album, the 30th movie. I'd like to write more songs, tour, find the correct roles, have my own family member. That’s why I have so much energy. I know what lies ahead.”


Lopez brought the same resolve into acting, and her title efficiency in Selena served because the ideal jumping-off point into the pop-music sphere. Beginning with the sultry, groovy single “If You Had My Love,” her debut, On the 6, also made Lopez — alongside Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony, and Enrique Iglesias — a key supporter to 1999’s Latin Explosion, which seen a substantial increase in the mainstream visibility of Latin music.


With everything she already accomplished, Lopez proved she may evolve artistically and do it well. Nevertheless J.Lo represented the most significant turning point for Lopez although, securing her status as an icon. Released on January 16, 2001, the same week The Wedding Planner opened in theaters at No. 1 at the box office, J.Lo debuted on the Billboard 200 at the very top spot. She was already a star; this — the only double No. 1 debut of its kind to date — made her intergalactic. With four singles, subsequent smash Murder Inc. Remixes featuring Ja Rule, as well as a refreshed image that presented Lopez through a glamorous-yet-still-relatable lens, J.Lo became an influential catalyst that positioned its star  to define nearly every corner of Y2K pop culture.


The shift was imminent any time J.Lo’s lead single, “Love Don’t Cost a Thing,” dropped in December 2000. Sparkling and bass-heavy, with empowered lyrics that dismissed lavish gifts because the glue holding Lopez’s love in place, it was more confident than anything she’d released before. The press speculated the song was a wink at Lopez’s high-profile relationship with Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, who also co-wrote and produced four tracks on J.Lo. The music video saw Lopez — draped in gold jewelry, a cream duster, and caramel-gradient sunglasses — tearing off her luxuries up until she was just about bare on the beach. J.Lo, the stage name given to her by fans, had arrived.


As a producer and co-writer, Lopez had creative control over J.Lo and leaned into R&B and hip-hop. On the 6 did also, nevertheless J.Lo was distinctly shaped by the influences and yielded some impressive collaborators. Lopez breathlessly yearns for a lover on the Diddy-produced slow jam “Come Over.” “Play,” co-written by Christina Milian with the singer on background vocals, combines a funky groove with ’80s dance sensibilities. Hip-hop meets Latin pop over a subtle sample of the Sugar Hill Gang’s “8th Wonder” on “I’m Going to Be Alright,” while Mambo-inspired “Cariño” and “Si Ya Se Acabó,” with flutters of flamenco guitar, totally embrace Latin sounds — another formative influence on J.Lo.


Hip-hop played an even larger role on the album through Murder Inc. Remixes, particularly with “I’m Real” featuring Ja Rule. The song was a standout in its original iteration (with its now-infamous sample of Yellow Magic Orchestra’s “Firecracker,” which Mariah Carey recommended to use for “Loverboy”), yet the remix — an entirely new track, written by Ja Rule with backup vocals from Ashanti as well as a melody sampled from “Mary Jane” by Rick James — was an impressive hit, becoming a signature for Lopez and carving out a place in the cross-genre prism of featuring rap on a pop song.


The model gained massive traction by means of the decade with, as an example, Carey’s “Fantasy” remix featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody?” Featuring Timbaland. However as “I’m Real” dominated the airwaves and obtained key acclaim, Lopez’s duet with Ja Rule helped cement the lasting power of the pop/hip-hop composite. Over the next decade, each person from Beyoncé (“Crazy in Love” featuring Jay-Z) and Usher (“Yeah!” Featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris) to Justin Timberlake (“Like I Love You” featuring Clipse) tapped in. The success of “I’m Real” led to other J.Lo remixes, including “I’m Gonna Be Alright” with Nas and “Ain’t It Funny” with Ja Rule and Cadillac Tah. "It's gonna put her in another zone,” Ja Rule told MTV at the time. “After this one, they gonna be expecting hot crossover R&B joints from J. Lo."


Lopez kept them coming right after J.Lo: “All I Have” featuring LL Cool J; “Jenny from the Block” featuring Jadakiss and Styles P; “Get Right” featuring Fabolous. With 2018’s “Dinero,” pairing her with DJ Khaled and Cardi B, and 2019’s “Medicine” featuring French Montana, Lopez keeps it up and continues to bridge pop and hip-hop today. She’s also still blazing genre-crossing trails, dipping pop into trap and reggaetón: “Te Guste,” a 2018 duet with Bad Bunny, was described as a “trap-pop gamechanger,” and her two-track group effort with rising Colombian star Maluma, “Pa’Ti” and “Lonely,” appears on the soundtrack for the forthcoming romantic comedy, Marry Me.


While J.Lo was contributing to the trajectory of early 2000s music, Lopez herself was making her mark in style and aesthetics. Soon after wearing the palm-print chiffon Versace dress to the 2000 Grammys — and inadvertently spurring the invention of Google image search — Lopez’s fashion speedily permeated into the era’s aesthetic. Athleisure, nude tones, fur-lined puffer jackets, hoop earrings, French-tip nails, and high-heeled Timberland boots proudly channeled her Nuyorican roots and fused them with Hollywood glamour. Lopez rocked the looks in her music videos, which right now serve as chic time capsules, from the pink terrycloth shorts set in “I’m Real (Remix)” to the long fur coat and taupe bucket hat in “Play.”


Months soon after J.Lo was released, Lopez launched her clothing line: J.Lo by Jennifer Lopez reflected her own fashion and included sweatsuits, bedazzled tops, and denim. “The voluptuous woman is essentially ignored,” Lopez said while in a press conference. “I aspire to provide clothes that are wonderfully designed and will fit ladies of all sizes.'' It’s hard to overstate how the visibility of Lopez’s body inspired a cultural shift. The ’90s, especially, were the era of “heroin chic,” an impossible regular of aesthetics that excluded anyone who wasn’t 5’10” as well as a size zero. With so much attention fixed to her organic curves, Lopez — repeatedly asked to lose weight early in her career (she declined) — undeniably contributed to the media’s more inclusive view of all body types. Her clothing line was a physical realization that.


Lopez, needless to say, is currently at the helm of a multimillion-dollar empire spanning film, television, music, style, and aesthetics. She is one of the most versatile, influential, and recognizable artists in the world, not only increasing Latin representation in entertainment industry by means of the strides she took in the early 2000s yet helping to redefine the full media landscape while doing so. She’s an icon — a critical one. And J.Lo, with the reverberating impact it made, was a vital stepping stone in that path: Because of that album, those three letters are forever embedded in the vernacular of contemporary pop culture.









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