Jennifer Lopez News

But when the Jennifer Lopez promotion machine arrives in town, the music is almost an incidental extra. If it’s not the behind, it’s the bust-up with Ben Affleck, or the new old man of eight months, Latin singer Marc Anthony. Or her box-office earning power (£6 million per film, we’re told), or her new range of perfume, called Still, or her first J-Lo store, which opened in Moscow last year. Or this month’s tabloid tittle-tattle, that she’s so desperate to start a family she’s all set to stop smoking cigars.

But to spend a few hours as a tiny cog in that PR machine is to understand a little more about the business of keeping a modern celebrity tanked up on tabloid attention. Turn up the magnification on the Petri dish of publicity, and you can just make out that busy family of microbes who are employees of the J-Lo fame corporation. At 35, Jenny from the Bronx is still Jenny from the block. She used to have a little, now she has a lot of people to peel her grapes and organise her next media junket.

That’s probably a bit harsh, because when I am finally summoned to the inner sanctum, I find a mega-celebrity closeted in spartan surroundings, with nothing but a bottle of water to distract her from an endless procession of press, radio and television people. But by the end of the bloodless experience, I was wondering why either of us had turned up at all.

I did so, of course, as a reasonably willing promotional lickspittle for Lopez’s new album, Rebirth. Out at the end of next month, it is a shoo-in to add to the 35 million worldwide sales she has racked up so far - not bad for a secondary career. Not too bad an album, either, as I had the chance to hear while waiting for my blink-and-miss-it moment with La Lopez.

But first, the set-up. Sony BMG call me to confirm the interview, with a very specific list of instructions. It’s worth explaining that in the high-security world of major album releases these days, with all the attendant neuroses about illegal uploads, downloads and everything in between, there is about as much chance of being sent an advance copy of Rebirth as there is of seeing Lopez shopping for frozen peas at Tesco. "Your interview time is 5.10pm. You need to be at Claridge’s an hour before, so that you can hear the album. You also need to be at a playback at Soho House the night before, because Jennifer wants to introduce some tracks to everyone who’s going to be interviewing her. You need to come to Sony to collect your invitation to Soho House, because you won’t get in without it."

Yes, yes, whatever. Oh, and how long have I got with her, by the way? "Ten minutes." I laughed out loud. But the laugh had turned into a vacant gaze by the time I left the swanky London hotel, after finding that they had exaggerated. It was actually only eight.

Record companies are very practised in the technicalities of running a full-on media day with a major artist. I arrive in the ‘holding room’ of a Claridge’s suite to the startling, unprecedented and ultimately misleading news that the interviews are running on time. A couple of foreign reporters are sitting politely listening to the album, or as much of it as we are allowed to hear at this point. In another 90 minutes, the place will be packed with journalists of every nationality and media format, all of us having the record drummed into our heads while we partake of sandwiches, fruit and coffee from next door. Meanwhile, the label people are on their mobiles planning mirror-image sorties to other locations on Lopez’s ruthlessly efficient European tour. "You know about Madrid, don’t you?" "Do you want to fly to Berlin?" "You know Lisbon’s not happening now?"

A journalistic league of nations sits around chattering in various tongues. It’s like being backstage at the Eurovision Song Contest. As we listen to ‘Still Around’, an Italian correspondent recognises a melody and is clearly racking her brains to place it. In my role as a smart alec of soul, I call out "Luther Vandross, ‘Never Too Much’."

Trying very hard to care that it’s suddenly my turn, I’m led out into a waiting area, then finally into that anticlimactic oval office itself. Lopez is sitting on a hard chair in the middle of a room devoid of accoutrements, with not so much as a television set. She’s wearing a green plaid top, rather like the top half of a business suit, that manages to be both demure and revealing. She looks alone, and, for all her pleasant enough greeting, rather joyless. Who wouldn’t be, I muse, cooped up like this all day long. There’s no chance at all of validating those enquiries about her rear end, since she does not move from this formal setting. So much for diva-like behaviour. It feels more as though I am visiting a Harley Street consultant than an international sex bomb.

I launch into some genuine enthusiasm about a track on Rebirth called ‘Cherry Pie’, which has a much rockier feel than anything else we’ve heard. "You like that?" she says, looking vaguely pleased. "A lot of the pop stations I played it for in the States like that too, but I didn’t play it for everyone. I love it. I mean, I wrote it. It’s more like rock’n’roll, an earlier Prince vibe."

My time has started, the clock is ticking. Having long since abandoned any game plan to get inside the mind of Jennifer Lopez in 480 seconds, I try a scattershot approach. We fall swiftly into talking about the album’s slinky first single, ‘Get Right’, on which she’s J to the Lo like a funky home-girl, fashioning a contemporary groove out of something intrinsically 1970s and essentially James Brown. The insistent horn on the record, which will pack dancefloors from now until Christmas, is a perfect audio match for the Godfather of soul’s classic sax man, Maceo Parker, and Lopez doesn’t deny that it’s the inspiration. "It’s basically a real club track, as far as I’m concerned," she says.

"The only thing that sets it apart from being just a dance track is that it has that element of funk to it. It has the horns and the heavy drums and the bass. That was something I wanted to incorporate into the music more this time - more alive, more funk, but still staying in my own area.

"I was listening to a lot of James Brown, and my old Atlantic rhythm-and-blues collection and stuff like that. It’s just about the way that music moves you in a different way. It’s so timeless. It’s like, how do we do that today? We can’t do that today, but you want to do something that resounds like that and has that feel to it."

The second-generation Puerto Rican recorded Rebirth last year with her long-time production partner Corey Rooney, and it continues her predilection for teaming up with cutting-edge names in R&B, such as Fabolous and Fat Joe. There’s also a guest appearance by Marc Anthony, the heartthrob singer whom she married in secret last June. Also a respected actor, whose credits include last year’s Man on Fire and 1999’s Bringing Out the Dead, he is the third Mr Lopez, after Ojani Noa and Cris Judd, whose marriages to her lasted 11 and 16 months respectively. Anthony, who has two children by his previous relationship, wed Lopez four days after his divorce came through.

Rebirth is Lopez’s first album since 2002’s This Is Me... Then which, despite producing the memorable ‘Jenny from the Block’ and another big hit in ‘All I Have’, failed to reach the top ten in the UK - although it did sell five million copies worldwide. Does she feel as though music has moved on since her last time in the studio? "I think the music industry is ever-changing," she says. "But it’s funny, I’ve never really gone with exactly what’s hot at the time. We’re seeing that more now. Artists that are considered pop artists, or pop/R&B artists, are trying different things. We have a Pink or a Christina Aguilera trying such different things on their second album than they did on their first."

She has said that hearing the breakthrough rap song ‘Rapper’s Delight’ changed her life, but ask her for her all-time favourite singers and she lists Luther Vandross, Marvin Gaye... and her husband.

Next month, we’ll see Lopez on screen with Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon in the romantic comedy Shall We Dance?, one of her favourite films. "What happened between Richard and me was very sweet and special," she simpers. She has also completed An Unfinished Life with Robert Redford and Monster-In-Law with Jane Fonda. Next, it’s a pre-Second World War musical, American Darlings, with Nicole Kidman.

Much has always been made of her screen chemistry with George Clooney, eight years her senior, in 1998’s Out of Sight. "That was fun. It’s almost like I always get to work with older actors. I’d like to work with more of my contemporaries. It’s always not exactly in the same age range for some reason."

And... time’s up. A fleeting dance comes to an end. It’s possible that we will not be sending each other birthday gifts, but at least it’s another tick on her promotional list. The next journalist is introduced as I’m still gathering my things, and I realise without disappointment that Jennifer Lopez has forgotten me while I’m still in the room.

The single ‘Get Right’ is released by on February 14.

The album Rebirth comes out on February 28.