There’s an article of Jen in the new issue of Entertainment Weekly. I don’t really like the article because it just seems like the interviewer (Margeaux Watson) tries everything to bring Como Ama Una Mujer down. Anyway, decide for yourself, It also has some interesting parts.

Jennifer Lopez has a split personality. There’s J. Lo, the ghetto-fabulous former Fly Girl, who brags about keeping it real in songs like ”Jenny From the Block.” Then there’s the internationally known movie star, who boasts an estimated $12 million-per-film price tag. J. Lo prefers curve-hugging jeans, belly-baring tops, killer stilletos, and chunky bling that reflect her street-chic Bronx roots. Meanwhile, the polished multimillionaire — who resides with hubby Marc Anthony in a mansion on New York’s Long Island — is an iconic portrait of high-end glamour who’s rarely out of step on the red carpet.

It’s a chilly January day in Miami, but inside a posh Mandarin Oriental hotel suite, Lopez, 37, looks muy caliente. Today, she’s dressed the part of the Hollywood celebrity in a sparkly vintage minidress. And yet she’s getting real about her most personal — and risky — album to date. Co-produced by Anthony, 38, and Colombian hitmakers Julio Reyes and Estéfano, the bilingual singer’s Spanish-language debut, Como Ama Una Mujer (translation: How a Woman Loves), ”is an opportunity for me to show my emotions, vulnerability, and passion,” she says effusively. ”I don’t get to do that as much in English.” Lopez even lets down her guard about her marriage. ”Marc and I are good partners. We love each other. We want to be the best person we can be for each other. And we work on that. That’s what a real relationship is about to me.” For a couple that barely acknowledged their surprise backyard nuptials at Lopez’s California home in June 2004, her newfound candor is an auspicious sign of their bond. ”When we got married, I was like, ‘I’ve been working for I don’t know how many years at [a high] level of intensity and exposure. I’m going to get back to what originally drew me to expressing myself as a creative person.”’

These days, the executive producer of the recent MTV reality series Dancelife seems genuinely motivated by passion rather than ambition. Releasing a Spanish-language album is a gutsy move for a pop star whose last CD, 2005’s Rebirth, sold half as much as its Bennifer-inspired predecessor, 2002’s This Is Me…Then. Her film career is in flux too. While 2005’s Monster-in-Law did well, An Unfinished Life was dead on arrival four months later. Is now the time to take such a gamble? ”My dream was always to make a Spanish album,” Lopez insists. The couple had collaborated on the project on and off for the last three years, Anthony said a few weeks later: ”This is the only album I’ve ever produced for any other artist. No one asked us to do it. We took our time, and she paid for it.”

Lopez continues: ”I don’t think you’re going to hear it all over English [radio] stations. But it’s not that type of album. It never was intended to be.”

The problem? ”Qué Hiciste” (translation: ”What Did You Do”), the first single from Como Ama, has yet to catch fire with its target audience: the Latin market. Even as Univision plans to adapt the disc for a five-episode mini music movie, ”Qué Hiciste” was, at press time, absent from Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and modestly ranked at No. 15 in the Hot Latin Songs category. ”She should have done [a Spanish CD] earlier in her career,” says George Mier, program director for New York’s La Mega 97.9 FM, the largest Latin radio station in the U.S. ”I think the record has just been thrown out there like, ‘Here’s the new Jennifer Lopez record. Play it.’ People are not going to pay attention just because she’s J. Lo.”

”Qué Hiciste” was the first all-Spanish-language video to hit No. 1 on MTV’s TRL. But unless it becomes a smash on Latin radio, it’s unlikely to cross over to pop stations (see Shakira’s ”La Tortura”). Another possible obstacle: In July 2005, then New York State attorney general Eliot Spitzer fined Sony BMG $10 million for bribing DJs and programmers with cash and gifts in exchange for giving more airtime to Sony artists — Lopez included. ”That could be why you’re not seeing ['Qué Hiciste'] take off — because the label’s not buying it,” says Romeo, music director of New York’s Z100. Whatever the case, by the time Lopez and I chat on the phone a month after our meeting in Miami, she seems on the defensive.

The Phone Interview:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What are your expectations for Como Ama?
JENNIFER LOPEZ: I don’t think of it that way. The joy is in creative expression and making something that’s true to your heart. It’s not about [sales].”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You’re going to perform ”Qué Hiciste” on a Latin-themed episode of American Idol on April 11. That’ll be great for mainstream exposure.
JENNIFER LOPEZ: I think you have the focus in the wrong place. For me, the focus is to get my music out there, but it’s for different reasons than what you are focusing on, which is kind of like…

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What do you mean?
JENNIFER LOPEZ: I don’t know. It’s just kinda weird to me — the questions seem like, ”What about the success?” That is like icing on the cake. At the end of the day, you’re an artist, and you do it because you love it.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You seem upset right now. Have I upset you?
JENNIFER LOPEZ: No. You know what it is? Sometimes I know where this stuff is coming from, and it’s not a pure and beautiful place, and that’s where [the work] I’m doing now is coming from. Please don’t take it the wrong way.

Como Ama may be a passion project, but electing to sing ”Qué Hiciste” on Idol is clearly a sign that Lopez hopes for crossover success. After all, when Rod Stewart appeared last April, sales of his four Great American Songbook CDs shot up 253 percent.

With two Latin-themed films in the can, Lopez isn’t playing it safe in Hollywood, either. The first, Bordertown, a crime thriller costarring Antonio Banderas, was reportedly booed at the Berlin film festival this February. Yet the highest-paid Latina actress earned props at last fall’s Toronto film festival for El Cantante (due Aug. 1). Directed by Leon Ichaso (Piñero) and produced by Lopez, the biopic of troubled ’70s salsa singer Hector Lavoe marks the first onscreen pairing of Anthony and Lopez, who costar as Lavoe and his wife, Puchi (born Nilda Roman Perez). ”There was nobody in the world to play [Hector Lavoe] but Marc,” says Lopez, whose Nuyorican Productions company recruited Anthony in 2002. ”Little did we know that we would be a couple when we filmed it.”

Say what?! Didn’t she learn anything from Gigli and Jersey Girl, two flops costarring ex-fiancé Affleck? ”Friends warned us about the dangers of working with your spouse,” Anthony says, ”but those experiences were, to the contrary, great for us.”

If El Cantante doesn’t put Lopez back on top, there’s always the dance-oriented English-language CD she has planned for fall, a project that’ll ”be back to choreography and big splashy shows,” she says. ”But for right now, the focus is a little different.”