NEW Singers HOT & RISING - African American rock singers

Ebony, Sept, 1999

THEY'RE young, they're hot, and they're rising. Under 25 with hit albums, great looks and rave reviews, the four singers on the following pages have unique sounds and are poised to take center stage. One of them--Tracie Spencer--is an old name in a new context. The others, rapper Cha Cha, Mya and Grenique, recently made their debut with critically acclaimed albums. All are set to sizzle in the millennium.

Grenique

With her defiant tresses, exotic Mehndi tattoos, and a funky, Bohemian-meets-retro-'70s chic, 23-year-old Grenique hits the music scene with a sound as unique as her look and her name. And she hits it hard. She describes her music as "freedom music, a combination of different sounds, an expression." Her Motown debut album, Black Butterfly, definitely expresses Grenique's complexity and the diversity of her musical influences, from classic jazz greats like Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, to balladeers like Phyllis Hyman and Minnie Riperton, and soul-funk stylists such as Cameo, Chaka Khan and the Average White Band.

It was Grenique Harper's mother, a poet, and her father, a singer and musician, who first exposed her to music, teaching her to express herself through lyrics. It was also her parents who labeled her with her unusual name. (Her father's name is Greg; her mother felt her baby girl would be unique). Apparently, mom's intuition about her daughter was on point. Even as a child in Landover, Md., Grenique suspected she was destined for the spotlight. "When I was about 4, my dad was working on a TV in the living room and he specifically told me, `Grenique, don't touch the wire,'" she recalls. "So I asked my mom, `If I touch the TV, will I be on TV?' Ten minutes later, the lights went out. I touched the TV because even at that age, I knew I wanted to be a star." And two weeks before her 22nd birthday, the artist signed her first record deal and finally got her wish.

Tracie Spencer

She first touched our hearts more than a decade ago as the cute pre-teen who sang about the excitement of that first love in the single "Symptoms of True Love."

She followed that with a stunning rendition of "Imagine" worthy of John Lennon's praise. At the time Tracie was only 11, still very much a little girl catapulted into the very adult world of the music business. Now, the 22-year-old Midwestern girl is back on the music scene with the album, Tracie, her first since the early '90s. While she still possesses that eternal, girl-next-door charm, Tracie Spencer is unmistakably all woman.

"I was being true to myself when I wrote songs for this record," says Tracie of her coming-of-age album. "I think it shows my growth from teenage girl to young woman. The fact that I co-wrote seven songs and was very involved with the production and everything from beginning to end, when people listen to the record, they're getting a huge part of me." Tracie explains that her long absence from the music industry had much to do with the reorganization of her former record label, and her desire to finish high school back home in Waterloo, Iowa, and live a more "normal" life. Tracie admits that while she initially was concerned about returning to the spotlight after her hiatus, her passion for singing ultimately drove her back into the studio. "I knew I loved what I did," she says. "I had to put it out and see how people would accept it."

MYA

When you see the multitalented Mya ("Ghetto Supastar") Harrison in her It's All About Me video showcasing a sexy, little red number that she personally designed, or when you watch her strutting her stuff in that same video, which she also choreographed, or hear her asserting her independence in that single from her double-platinum debut CD, Mya, it's hard to imagine this barely 20-year-old singing, dancing, acting, songwriting, choreographing, fashion-designing phenom as the quiet, painfully shy girl who rarely raised her hand in school and always sat at the back of the room.

So shy, in fact, that Mya, who was named in honor of Maya Angelou, never auditioned for school talent shows or Christmas pageants or even the church choir: Mya jokes that she was 14 before even her father, himself an R&B musician, discovered his little girl had a voice for singing. When he finally did, he had her record some demo tapes, and at the age of 16, Mya found herself auditioning in her Landover, Md., living room for University Records. Since then, Mya has made an indelible impression. She lent her vocals to the Grammy-nominated single "Ghetto Supastar" from the Bulworth soundtrack, performed on the soundtrack to Eddie Murphy's film Life, and even is co-starring in her first movie, In Too Deep, with '70s movie icon Pam Grier and rap legend LL Cool J. She's also putting the final touches on her second album, which is scheduled to be released this fall.

Cha cha

Affectionately dubbed the "radio-friendly" rapper, 18-year-old Cha Cha proves that in an era of parental-advisory warnings, she can keep it real and keep it tasteful, refusing to rely on a raunchy image and lewd lyrics to sell records. "My lyrics and my image are just me," says the Detroit native, whose debut album, Dear Diary, features R&B and hip-hop artists like Latocha Scott of Xscape fame, Juvenile and Nas. "I don't have to rap about things that a typical 18-year-old wouldn't know about, because then it wouldn't be real," she says. And what this "typical" 18-year-old raps about are her recollections of her journey into womanhood, hence the album title.