|
 |
Browse Bands by Name
|
|
Or enter a band name below to search:
|
 Bands Main
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ashanti's mom, dad, and little sister Kenashia, or "Shi-Shi" (that's her big-upping her sibling on Ashanti), have been the 21-year-old's support system the last eight and half years as she's tried to crack into the music game. No one has believed in her as much as her family. Momma Douglas, who plays Ashanti's parent in the "Foolish" video, says she knew Ashanti was going to make an impact early on.
"From the moment she was born ... I just had a feeling she was gonna be a star," Mrs. Douglas says. "I couldn't find a birth announcement that was sufficient for the way I felt about my child, so I made my own up. It had all kinds of musical notes on it, and it said that she was going to be a dancer. We said, 'Dancing to the boogie-woogie beats of the lyrics written by her dad.' "
"Shani," as her family nicknamed her, took two years to live up to her "MoManager's" maternally instinctive prediction that she would be able to get her boogie on. She had to get that tiny obstacle of learning how to walk down first. Ultimately, Ashanti would inherit her dad's love and talent for singing. It took her around a decade longer to learn she had that talent.
"Singing was kind of accidental," Ashanti says. "I was cleaning up one day and my mom was like, 'Don't listen to the radio, do your chores.' She comes storming down the steps: 'Didn't I tell you to turn the radio off?' I'm like, 'Yeah, that wasn't the radio. I was just singing.' "
"She sang Mary J. Blige's 'Reminisce,' and I'll never forget it," her mother adds. "I put her in a couple of local talent shows and she came in first place. Once I found out she could sing, it was a wrap."
However, the next few years were riddled with disappointments and life-altering decisions for the family. Ashanti signed her first recording contract at 13, but nothing ever came of it. In the meantime, she kept her nose to the grindstone in high school, rolling with her crew of "it" girls who dubbed themselves the Magnificent Seven. She wrote for the English club and won medals on the track team. (Her mom credits dancing for the development of strong legs.) Universities such as Princeton and Hampton offered her athletic scholarships, she says, but she decided to stick with singing.
"The track thing, it was competition," her father, Kenkaide, says. "Singing is her true love."
Things were beginning to look bleak after failed dealings with labels such as Jive, Epic and Noontime. After a business associate hooked her up with Irv Gotti for some production, the tide turned. Gotti threw her on Pun's single, which he produced, and he signed her soon after.
Mrs. Douglas recalls one of the initial conversations she had with Gotti as he was wooing her daughter. "I was like, 'Well, why do you guys call yourselves Murder?' He said, ' 'Cause we're killing them with our music.' So I said, 'Oh, OK. That's a little different,' 'cause I'm like, 'What are you, a bunch of guys who go around shooting people up that mess with you?' The way that he explained it ... that's how I always wanted people to perceive Ashanti. Like, 'Wow — she is so hot, she's killing them.'"
Right now, we're all walking dead.
|
|
|
|
Photo: Murder Inc.
|
|
|
|
