Jennifer Lopez will celebrate her 50th birthday early in San Diego

June 6, 2019 10:45 AM PT

What’s Jennifer Lopez cooking up?

We’ll soon find out.

Of course, it’s not unusual for superstar acts to take a personal chef with them when they go on the road. But JLo could just end up being the first to bring a baker or two along as well.

Then again, her about-to-launch “It’s My Party Tour” does coincide with this Bronx native’s upcoming 50th birthday, more or less. And it seems more than possible her 36-city around-the-world concert trek will be a suitably celebratory affair for her and her audience.

Or, as the woman born Jennifer Lynn Lopez on July 24, 1969, recently told Entertainment Tonight: “There might be a cake. There might be several cakes. It’s going to be a concert tour, but my aim is to make it feel like an intimate party as well.

“We’re all celebrating together. We’re dancing, we’re singing, we’re having a good time. I want to create a different atmosphere than (the) normal ‘Just watch me do my thing’ (kind of show). I want it to be interactive.”

While many Hollywood celebs subtract years from their age as they near the half-century mark, JLo appears set to embrace her impending birthday in a very public way.

Then again, if you were a household name throughout much of the world, and a reigning sex symbol who looked several decades younger than your actual age, and had a fortune estimated at $400 million, and had a combined 190 million followers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, well, you probably wouldn’t feel very conflicted either.

“This year’s a really big year for me,” JLo, a divorced mother of 10-year-old twins, acknowledged in her Entertainment Tonight interview. “I was like: ‘We could all be together. We can have like, a special moment, and I can share that with my fans.’

“I’ve just been on this journey — my life has been about my work and my family, and to have all of that kind of converge on this big birthday of mine, I think (is) perfect. And I just feel like it’s gonna be a really, really special time.”

Her success and seemingly tireless work ethic are all the more impressive given the fact that JLo has long seemed like an entrepreneur who happens to dabble in music and movies when not promoting her latest product lines.

By sheer force of will and charisma — as opposed to any serious singing or acting chops — she has propelled her career to stratospheric heights.

And while it may have seemed surreal for such a slight-voiced pop idol to give singing tips on “American Idol,” JLo’s multi-year run earlier in this decade saw her become one of the show’s most popular judges.

Since 2017, she has been both a judge and producer for the TV show “World of Dance.”

Intriguingly, despite having released her debut album in 1999, “It’s My Party” marks the first solo headlining tour JLo has ever undertaken in the United States.

Her 2012 “Dance Again” world tour did not include a single U.S. date. Her joint tours with Enrique Iglesias and her former husband, Marc Anthony, did traverse the U.S. But the tour with Iglesias skipped San Diego, while the show here on her tour with Anthony was canceled because of an unspecified “scheduling conflict.”

That means JLo’s Monday concert at Pechanga Arena San Diego (the venue known until last fall as Valley View Casino Center) will mark her headlining debut here. Expect a glittering production with lots of dancing, lots of pomp and circumstance, and — with any luck — lots of cake.

Did you know?

JLo’s 2002 hit, “Jenny From the Block” — on which she declared that she is still “grounded” and “down to earth,” despite her superstar status — is credited to 11 different songwriters.