— by Corey Moss, with additional reporting by Mark Bella
Her stepfather's a jukebox hero — as in Foreigner's Mick Jones — and her brother's a star DJ — that'd be Mark Ronson — so for Samantha Ronson to get a word in at the dinner table, she had to know her tunes.
And now her musical roots are paying off, as the 25-year-old singer has the distinguished honor of being the first rock act on Roc-A-Fella Records.
If that sounds like an identity crisis waiting to happen, take comfort in knowing that at least she's used to it. Ronson was 20 before she discovered her music talents.
"I wanted to be a teacher," she said. "I still want to be teacher at some point. Everyone is surprised that I have stuck this long with music 'cause they really thought I would play for like, three weeks and then be like, 'Next.' "
Ronson grew up around music — going on tour with Foreigner for family vacations and cutting class at her stepfather's studio — but she was never interested in playing.
Then, after spending a year in Paris after high school, she returned to New York and realized she had nothing to listen to.
"I had [Del Rios'] 'Macarena' and like, a Motown box set and I was like, 'I've got to do something,' " Ronson recalled. "I had a guitar that my dad had given me, hanging on the wall, and I just started playing and I was just like, 'Ah, this is love.' It made me realize why [my stepfather and brother] did the things they'd done. I was like, 'I gotta be a part of it ... it's so much fun.' "
Ronson taught herself to play and sing and eventually put her poetry to the music. She was still a closet performer, though, when a different sort of music opportunity knocked.
"I got a call one night from a club that I used to hang out at and they were like, 'Do you want to DJ?' " Ronson remembered. "I was like, 'No way,' [but] my friends were like, 'Come on, just do it. How hard could it be?' I was always in the club; [I figured I] might as well get paid for it. And basically they didn't care if I was a good DJ ... they just wanted my friends at their club."
Samantha took the gig and before she knew it she was filling in for her brother at other clubs while he finished his album. "I was like, 'I am working seven days a week ... why don't I actually practice [DJing] while I am doing it?' " she said. "I am a pretty good DJ. I give myself props."
Through DJing around New York, Ronson made a lot of music industry friends, including Damon Dash, who employed one of her sisters as a Roc-A-Wear designer.
Dash liked Ronson's taste and asked that she make him a mixtape. When he nagged her about it at a party late one night, she finally admitted why she was too busy to put one together.
"At the end of the night I just plugged in my iPod and had some rough mixes of some songs that we had just laid live drums and everything on," she said. "And Damon heard it and he was like, 'That's you? I may have to have you come down to my office tomorrow.' And I was like, 'Why? Dude, you have a hip-hop label. I was just playing this for you because you are my friend and maybe you will shut up about the mixtape.' "
The next morning, Ronson woke up to a phone call from Dash's assistant. She went in and again questioned her place with a hip-hop company. "He's like, 'It's all right. It'll be the first for the both of us.' "
Ronson's material, which her brother, along with singer Duncan Sheik, Damon Elliott (Destiny's Child) and Dallas Austin (Pink) are producing, is as infectious as an Avril Lavigne single with the maturity of a Sheryl Crow tune, although neither are necessarily influences.
"I love Joni Mitchell," Ronson said. "I like anything lyric-based. I know most people listen to melody first ... but I've always liked Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder."
The singer's as-yet-untitled debut, due in early 2004, will sound nothing like the mixtape she did eventually get around to making for Dash (with tunes from Justin Timberlake, the Strokes and Bow Wow Wow, among others), but that's not to say her DJing experience hasn't affected her music.
"When I first started doing music stuff it was really folky and acoustic because that was what I was listening to at the time," she explained. "And then I started thinking about, 'Well, do I want to be that girl playing on a stool, with, like, flowers and candles or do I want to have a fun record?' And as I got more and more into hip-hop, I was like, 'Oh, let's have loops and let's make it more fun and let's make it move.
"Now, with the live show, I am so used to having no gaps in between songs that the guys want to kill me because I am like, 'All right. We will go straight out of this song into this [one] and let's make that work and then we will blend right into the next one,' " she continued. "They are like, 'We are going to need a break at some point ... I am going to need to rest my hands.' The drummer is like, 'I'm tired.' "
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