The Queen saluted the king at the Oscars.
Queen Latifah took the stage at the 2025 Academy Awards Sunday to pay tribute to Quincy Jones with a musical performance.
The New Jersey multi-hyphenate Oscar nominee, who wore a sweeping metallic cape, honored her fellow multi-hyphenate talent by singing the song “Ease on Down the Road” from “The Wiz" (watch below).
Jones, who was 91 when he died Nov. 3, produced the 1978 movie.
He was posthumously awarded an honorary Oscar this year. In 1995, Jones won the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
The celebrated composer and producer, whose work spanned music, film and TV, won 28 Grammys and was nominated for seven Oscars in his career.
His nominations included a best picture nod for “The Color Purple” (1985) and nominations for best original score and best original song from the same movie.
Two stars from “The Color Purple,” EGOT winner Whoopi Goldberg, who lives in Essex County, and Oprah Winfrey, introduced Latifah’s musical tribute to Jones.
Both were nominated for Oscars for their performances in the Jones-produced film.
The maestro was also nominated at the Oscars in 1979 for “The Wiz.”
Latifah, 54, a Newark native who grew up in East Orange, is a Grammy-winning trailblazer in hip-hop as well as an actor, producer and singer.
She played the Wiz in the 2015 NBC production of “The Wiz Live!” alongside Rahway’s Shanice Williams (now known as Shanice Shantay) as Dorothy. In 2003, Latifah was nominated for an Oscar for the film adaptation of the musical “Chicago.”
Diana Ross and Michael Jackson performed the Charlie Smalls-penned “Ease on Down the Road” in “The Wiz,” the film adaptation of the musical that debuted on Broadway in 1975.
Quincy Jones adapted the musical’s songs for film and served as music supervisor as well as producer.
Stories by Amy Kuperinsky
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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup on Twitter/X, @amykup.bsky.social on Bluesky and @kupamy on Instagram and Threads.