Ashanti

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ASHANTI

Born: Ashanti S. Douglas; Glen Cove, New York, 13 October 1980

Genre: R&B, Hip-Hop

Best-selling album since 1990: Ashanti (2002)

Hit songs since 1990: "Always on Time," "Foolish"

The guest-appearance cameo has long been a means of introducing a new voice into the worlds of rhythm and blues and rap. Few artists, however, so quickly and successfully capitalized on the strength of a handful of smartly placed guest spots as New York-born Ashanti Douglas, whose recordings eventually sold millions.

Trained as a dancer at New York's renowned Bernice Johnson Cultural Arts Center, Ashanti had harbored dreams of pop stardom since her childhood in Glen Cove, New York, in the home of a singing father and a dancing mother. After honing her chops in a gospel choir beginning at age six, the singer signed her first recording contract at age thirteen with Jive Records. Nothing came of the contract, and it took nearly eight more years before Ashanti made a name for herself.

In the meantime, Ashanti danced in a variety of settings: as part of the Senior Pro Ensemble at Carnegie Hall, the Apollo Theater, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and in Disney's television musical Polly. The singer also danced in several music videos and appeared in the hip-hop comedy Who's Da Man and Spike Lee's Malcolm X.

While focusing on her schoolwork, Ashanti, a talented runner, was offered track scholarships to Hampton and Princeton Universities, which she turned down in order to pursue her singing career. Two more record deals fell through before Ashanti was discovered in 2001 by Irv Gotti, the CEO of a rising record label. Mining a formula that he used to make his record label, Murder Inc., one of the most successful of the early 2000s, Gotti paired the girlish singer with the late Latin rapper Big Pun on the 2001 hit single "How We Roll," giving Ashanti her big break via a cameo vocal on the rapper's song.

Like many of her future hits, the song mixed Pun's street-themed, sometimes profane boasting with Ashanti's smooth, elegant vocals on the song's chorus, a formula that shrewdly appealed to both male and female hip-hop fans. Gotti tried the "gangsta and the lady" trick with Ashanti a few more times, pairing her with rapper Fat Joe, on the smash hit "What's Luv?" and with the Murder Inc. cornerstone Ja Rule on "Always on Time," which hit number one on the Billboard singles chart in early 2002. Ashanti also sang backup on the remix of the number one hit from Jennifer Lopez, "Ain't It Funny."

An Instant Hit Debut

With several hit singles under her belt working for Gotti in a freelance role, Ashanti was officially signed by him as the first R&B act in the label's nearly all-male, testosterone-heavy lineup. In addition to her facility with singing a song's "hook"—the catchy portion of the chorus between verses—Ashanti proved to be a deft lyricist, penning singles for Lopez and singer Christina Milian.

It was no surprise then that the singer wrote all twelve songs—many on the spot—on her self-titled debut (2002), which broke first-week sales records for a debut from a female R&B artist. The album easily topped the Billboard charts as her debut solo single, the obsessive love tale "Foolish," reigned on the singles chart. Owing to her sudden ubiquity, in a single week in March prior to the album's release, "Foolish," "Always on Time," and "What's Luv?" all sat in the Top 10 on the singles chart.

Ashanti songs such as "Happy" (featuring Ja Rule), "Baby," and "Rescue" explore the ups and downs of relationships with a mix of preternatural maturity and high school-crush sincerity, all delivered in the singer's understated, seductive style. In "Leaving (Always on Time Part II)," another tale of infidelity, Ashanti pleads, "When you was cheating you was probably thinking I won't sense a thing / But love got a funny way of catchin' up to lies."

"Foolish" relied on a sample of the same El Debarge song ("Stay with Me") used by the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. in his hit of the same name. A sample of a Notorious B.I.G. rap is included on the equally popular remix of the song, "Unfoolish."

Ashanti's mix of hip-hop rhythms, a girlish, sensual voice, and ties to a credible, street-tough label set the stage for the singer to quickly catapult into the same rarefied air as one of her idols, the "queen of hip-hop soul," Mary J. Blige. It also opened doors for the hip-hop community by finding a way to appeal simultaneously to male and female audiences.