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Her Time Is Now
06/01/2003 10:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Jeff Lorez
If Urban Music Marketing 101 is taught at colleges, Ashanti's breakthrough should definitely be included on the syllabus. Let's examine the facts: At the start of 2002, "Ashanti" was nothing more than a name used by scores of ethnic clothing and hair salons up and down the country. But by mid-April of that same year, the 23-year-old singer who goes by that name had replaced Celine Dion at the top of the album charts with her self-titled debut, selling 500,000 copies and racking up three top 10 hits in the process. Obviously her A&R and marketing people did something right.
"The amount of songs I have out on Billboard, the success has been amazing," Ashanti enthuses. "I could never ask for a better team. The marketing has been great. I could never ask for a better set-up."
But as the old adage goes, behind every "overnight" success are many years of hard work, and such is the case for Ashanti, despite her young age. The budding diva feels that if her dues paid were converted into CDs sold, she deserves every unit of her impressive sales .
"It's been an eight and a half-year struggle," she explains. "I'd been signed to Jive Records at 14. It didn't work out--they wanted me to go in a poppy direction, which wasn't me. I was signed to Noontime/Epic Records at 17; that didn't work out because the guy who signed me got fired. There's been a lot of ups and downs.
"Finally, when I was 19 or 20, my co-manager, Linda Burke, introduced me to a guy named Mario Biaza," Ashanti continues. "He had a record label, AJM Records. Mario's family and Irv's [Gotti, the producer/president of her Def Jam-distributed label, Murder Inc.] family were very close. We had a meeting; Irv said, 'I don't do R&B!' [But] his brother Chris gave me a shot on the Big Pun record, and things just sort of happened from there."
That Big Pun record was "How We Roll," a single from the late rapper's Endangered Species album, and it set the precedent for Ashanti's breakthrough: By piggybacking on the credibility of hip-hop artists, Ashanti wove her way into the fabric of urban music and culture. She teamed up with rapper Ja Rule, the jewel in her label's crown, on "Always On Time," which became the biggest-selling single in the history of Def Jam. Next up was a guest spot on Fat Joe's "What's Luv?" (another top 10 hit), and then of course, "Foolish," her solo debut single. Based on a sample of the 1983 DeBarge song "Stay With Me" (popularized by the Notorious B.I.G.'s "One More Chance"), "Foolish" not surprisingly, was also a major smash.
Ashanti points out that, like her professional life, her personal life hasn't always run so smoothly--hence why so much of her album's subject matter addresses the gray area of relationships. With a little probing, Ashanti confesses that one person in particular was the inspiration behind her melancholy meanderings ("Foolish" and "Over" being the obvious examples).
"I kind of went through that experience," says Ashanti of the aforementioned songs. "We still talk. Now it's very hard, because I'm on the road so much. He always tells me, 'You owe me 10 percent of your publishing!'" And with Ashanti having co-writing credit for all the songs on her album, that check would likely to be for quite a large sum.
"I've always enjoyed writing" Ashanti says, citing her favorite author, Toni Morrison. "It was fairly easy for me write papers, essays, things like that. I used to win awards for it. I was actually in all honors English classes. I want to write children's books in the future, but for right now, the songwriting keeps me busy."
And, from one writer to another: It pays a lot better, too.
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