Gray, Macy

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MACY GRAY

Born: Natalie McIntyre; Canton, Ohio, c. 1970

Genre: R&B, Pop

Best-selling album since 1990: On How Life Is (1999)

Hit songs since 1990: "I Try," "Sexual Revolution"

Possessed of an unusual, high-pitched, immediately distinctive singing voice and an almost cartoonishly freewheeling personality, the Ohio-born Macy Gray emerged, after years of music-industry frustration, as one of the most arresting new voices of rhythm and blues and soul in the late 1990s.

Born Natalie McIntyre in the industrial city of Canton, Ohio, to a steelworker father and teacher mother, Macy Gray was self-conscious about her voice as a child. A grainy, high-pitched whine of an instrument, Gray's voice manages to sound raspy and helium-high at the same time, mixing the range of jazz singer Billie Holiday with the raw power of the 1960s rock singer Janis Joplin. Although exposed to classic 1970s soul and R&B by her African-American parents, Gray also learned an appreciation for everything from rock to classical music while attending an all-white prep school as a teenager and studying classical piano for seven years.

Gray was asked to leave the school after making an unkind comment about one of its deans (though, despite her good grades, the school said it was a performance-based assessment), Gray moved to Los Angeles to attend film school at the University of Southern California and soon began writing lyrics. She made her performance debut when a friend for whom she'd written lyrics failed to show up to a recording session. The tape of those sessions circulated, and Gray was asked to join a local jazz band as its vocalist.

Working as a secretary at a pair of movie studios and as a hostess at the hot underground Hollywood rap and R&B club, We Ours, Gray honed her stage presence on the coffee shop/club's small stage. After landing a recording contract with Atlantic Records in 1994, the former Natalie McIntyre took the stage name Macy Gray as an homage to a pool-playing pal of her father's, who had assured her that she was going to be famous some day.

Gray gave birth to two children in 1995 and was dropped by Atlantic after completing her debut album just before the birth of her third child and her 1997 divorce from Tracy Hinds, a mortgage collector. Dejected, the singer left Los Angeles and moved back to Canton. Inspired to give it another shot by the music publishing executive Jeff Blue, Gray wrote an album about her experiences under the pseudonym "Mushroom," which landed her a deal with Epic Records.

Life Is Good

Gray's debut, On How Life Is (1999), garnered acclaim for its lyrical sophistication and classic soul sound, with critics lauding Gray's distinctive, wholly original singing voice. The soaring, gospel-tinged soul ballad "I Try" became the album's signature single, built around Gray's clear-eyed lyrics about romantic obsession: "I try to say goodbye and I choke / I try to walk away and I stumble / Though I try to hide it, it's clear / My world crumbles when you are not near."

In addition to songs about drug abuse and violent relationships, the album has a healthy, funk-inspired dose of another one of Gray's favorite topics: sex. With a world-view that owes much to the free-love ideal of 1960s hip-pies, Gray expresses her sexual liberation on the aptly titled grinding funk tune "Caligula" and the self-explanatory "Sex-O-Matic Venus Freak."

In 2000 Gray took home an MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist, an LA Weekly Music Award for Best New Artist, and two BRIT Awards for Best International Newcomer and Best International Female Artist. In 2001 she won the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "I Try," besting such competitors as Madonna and Britney Spears.

Gray recorded two guest vocals for the 2000 album by the techno artist Fatboy Slim, Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, and appeared on albums by the Black Eyed Peas and Stevie Nicks. She played a drug dealer's wife in the Denzel Washington film Training Day (2001) and appeared as herself in the 2002 blockbuster Spider Man. At the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards, the singer famously wore a dress with the release date of her second album, The Id, emblazoned across the front.

Though it failed to connect with critics and audiences as much as her debut, The Id (2001) is a daring experiment in genre-hopping soul. Piled high with layers of backing vocals, drum machines, burbling guitar solos, tape loops and retro keyboard sounds, the album is the sound of 1960s soul and funk brought into a modern setting.

The anthemic, Technicolor dance song "Sexual Revolution" is the high point of the album, encouraging people to liberate their sexual being: "I got to be . . . the freak that God made me / So many thangz that I want to try / Got to do them before I die." Also included is the hip-hop inspired song "Hey Young World Part 2," featuring rapper Slick Rick, the sweeping R&B ballad "Sweet Baby" with Erykah Badu, and the reggae-inspired slow burn "Gimme All Your Lovin' or I Will Kill You." Gray's third album, The Trouble with Being Myself, was released in mid-2003.

Combining a seemingly constant altered state with a bizarre style, Macy Gray became one of the most unpredictable, exciting soul divas of the late 1990s.