Amara La Negra is nearing the finish line. The TV personality and musician is preparing to give birth to not one child but twin girls shortly (she’s having a baby shower in February to celebrate) and the girls are growing fast as she nears the home stretch.
“I’m feeling real nice and pregnant right now. It looks so much better on Instagram when I see the other girls doing it,” she jokes. “Just preparing for them is a lot of work, obviously doing it by myself.”
The starlet has been open, since she announced her pregnancy, about entering parenthood as a single mother. It’s not ideal for her based on the fairytale love story she’d envisioned for herself, but she’s making it work. “I went through a big depression,” she admits. “It’s my first time and I’m doing it on my own, not having that male by my side that I dreamed of to do my tummy rubs. Thank God I have my mom and I’m so grateful for her, but it hasn’t necessarily been easy. But it comes with the package.”
With a change of plans comes a change in hustle. Knowing she’s welcoming her girls solo has motivated the star to work even harder. She’s been filming her new late-night talk show, Don’t Cancel Me with Amara La Negra, which airs Wednesdays on Fuse (the season finale of the first season is February 2 on Fuse and Fuse+ and the Latino-owned media company’s first NFT will feature the series), which is a dream come true for La Negra. She’s also expanding her real estate business and recently returned to school to obtain her license. She’s creating wealth and opportunities not only for herself, but for the two little ones on the way.
“Whether I do it with a man or without one, the most important thing is that I’m always going to be here for my girls,” she says.
We talked to Amara La Negra about preparing for their arrival, canceling sensitive culture with her show, and why she’s not walking back her feelings on some controversial statements she made about her future parenting style and dating while preggers. There’s no canceling this mama-to-be.
ESSENCE: In addition to expecting your twin girls, you have other things to celebrate, like your show Don’t Cancel Me on Fuse. What was the inspiration for it?
Amara La Negra: I just felt like, at this moment, we’re in an era of cancel culture. We don’t allow people to express themselves without being ready to judge. We should be able to have a space where you can be honest, open, genuinely be yourself and express yourself without feeling like every time you give your opinion, someone’s going to cancel you, you’re going to lose your endorsements — this and that. Mind you, I do understand some people do deserve to get canceled because they know exactly what they’re doing and what they’re saying and how their words can be damaging to a certain community of people. But for the most part, I think we’re in a very sensitive era. We should be able to be mature enough to agree to disagree. Just because I disagree with you on a certain topic doesn’t mean I dislike you as a person, I just don’t agree with you on this topic. So, I just felt like, we should have a space where people should be comfortable and we can talk about anything and everything, whether it’s sex, politics, religion, business, finances — whatever it is, we should be able to have that open space.
Did your experience of starting this public conversation about colorism in the LatinX community, did that inspire your desire to do this series with Fuse in any way?
I’ve been doing my activism work since I was in high school. It wasn’t until Love and Hip Hop that people actually paid attention to me.Yes, I’m an entertainer. Yes, I’m an influencer. Yes, I do many things, but my biggest thing is I want to know my life mattered. I don’t want to be forgotten, and part of that is using the platform God has given me and fans have given me to be impactful in other people’s lives and communities. I’ve done that through my activism. I made awareness of the issues of colorism and classism. I’m not perfect, I’m no savior, but I’m willing to stand up and say something.
When I last spoke to you, you were telling me about your real estate business in the Dominican Republic and in Florida, you have your show now, and you have the girls coming. How are you feeling about everything? This seems to be a season of great abundance for you.
You know what? My babies haven’t even been born and there’s this new energy in me that’s coming out. It’s like this motherly instinct where I’m becoming extra serious. The lionness in me is coming out. So everything I’ve ever wanted to do, I feel even more motivated to do it times a thousand right now. Not only am I going to be a mother but I’m going to have two women, babies first, but women I’m going to be raising. They’re going to look up to me. I want to make sure I show them that their mother was independent. I did everything the right way. I’m actually going back to school now as well. I want to get my real estate license and make it official. I was investing in properties but I want to take it a step further. It’s never too late to learn. I don’t want to put any limits on myself. I have my music, I have my TV show, I have my podcast, Exactly Amara on iHeart, my children’s book I’m going to be relaunching this year, the second edition of Amarita’s Way, I have my real estate I’m always investing in and just bought a new property in the Dominican, two acres. I’m a mommy-to-be, I’m a good daughter, I take care of my mom and daughter — I’m trying to be the best person I can be.
How has your hustle intensified as you’ve decided to raise your daughters as a single parent?
Before I was even thinking of having children, I bought my mom a house, which is my house, thinking about my children. It’s a seven-bedroom, six bathroom, and it’s only the two of us. I always said, one day when my children come, I want to be able to create generational wealth that my parents weren’t able to create for me. All the investments I have are my way of creating generational wealth for them. It’s important, especially coming from an immigrant mother. I want to be able to show them all the great things I was able to do on my own. I want to make sure I raise two empowered and empowering women because my mom did that for me. This is going to be a very interesting journey and I can’t wait to share it with everyone — this new stage in my life.
How has it been making changes in the everyday to get ready for them?
These little girls are coming out real expensive and they aren’t even out yet. They’re going to have to pay me back. I’m saving all these receipts for them as soon as they start working [laughs]. It’s interesting because this wasn’t anything I was preparing for. It happened naturally. I think God does things for you in life whether you feel ready or not. You feel forced to prepare yourself and mature as a person. There’s a lot of things I will no longer be willing to put up with or agree with because my priorities are my children. I’m so much more focused now. I have to push myself to work even harder because they depend on me and I want to give them the best life I can even though I’m going to make them work. I know a lot of people criticized me because I said I was going to make my girls struggle, but I’m going to make them work for it while still giving them the best life possible. All the sacrifices I saw my mom do to raise me as a single mother, as an immigrant mother with no papers in this country, all those things that I saw were things that motivated me to be the woman I am today. And if my girls feel mommy has it together and she’ll handle everything, I don’t think they’re going to understand what work ethic is. They’re not going to understand the appreciation of money, the sacrifices people have to make to make it in this country. I definitely want them to understand what it means to work hard. That’s going to be my parenting style because I saw it and it worked for me.
I know you said after you announced you were pregnant that you were open to the idea of dating during this time. Is that still the case?
The truth of the matter is, I am willing to do whatever God has planned for me and if it really ends up with me being a single mom for however long God has planned for me, then that’s what I’m going to do. In my mind, do I want to be? No. I wish I could be with the father of my child and have that happy home. I’m kind of corny, I do believe in marriage first and then children, but it didn’t work out that way for me. I don’t know what the future holds but I’m still young. I’m still fabulous. And look, I’m down to date while I’m pregnant. I don’t think that should be an issue because I’m not going to be pregnant forever. I’m still a great woman and my children shouldn’t be an issue to someone who really likes and appreciates who I am as a person and a woman. If he comes, I’ll receive him with open arms.
And what are you most excited about in this new journey, personally and professionally?
I can’t wait to have a second season of Don’t Cancel Me. I always dreamed of having my own TV show and being able to fulfill that really excites me. I definitely want to get back to music. I miss music and being on the stage. I’m excited to see as an entrepreneur what other businesses I can come up with, whether it’s a beauty salon, restaurant, I just want to see how far I’m actually able to go in life if I don’t put limits on myself. I just want to try this year as many things as possible. I know I’m going to be exhausted but I feel that same exhaustion is going to give me that fuel that I need to keep pushing.