LOVE SETS Kelly Price FREE - Brief Article

Ebony, Oct, 2000 by Kimberly Davis

SOULFUL R&B singer Kelly Price, whose latest CD Mirror Mirror has stormed up the charts, is riding high after a time of turmoil, uncertainty and heartbreaking loss.

And now with a new look, a new ho,e, and a new attitude, the 27-year-old mother of two seems poised to take her place alongside the great female singers of this generation.

From Mariah Carey's back-up singer to Mariah Carey's contemporary, Price, who has been called the Aretha Franklin of her generation, has set her sights on becoming the "baddest diva of them all."

With Mirror Mirror, the follow-up to her platinum-selling debut CD, Soul of a Woman, Price reveals a woman of many layers, each adding up to a renewed confidence in life and love.

"Captain of her soul?" Yes, Price has taken charge of her life: It's her career, her music, her image and her time. But it took a heartbreaking loss a year ago for Price to really change her life.

Her storm came just before the 1998 release of her first album, when she learned that her mother-in-law was suffering from breast cancer. Just after the release of the CD, Price's own mother, the woman who nourished her gospel roots, also was diagnosed with the disease. It was a devastating blow.

At the time, Price was touring and promoting Soul of a Woman. But instead of being able to focus on selling records, she and her husband/manager Jeffrey Rolle were busy flying back and forth from New York to Atlanta to visit her mother-in-law, and to Dallas to take care of her mother. Price says she wanted to be strong for both her mothers, so she kept her tears to herself.

Depression set in, and only grew worse when her mother-in-law succumbed to the disease a year ago. Price says she was the one trying to keep it all together for the family, not because they asked her to, but because she thought she should. And the pressure and the stress began to build up.

"I think there was an implosion at [one] point, because I wouldn't allow myself to [let] my emotion out," Price says during a telephone interview from the new home outside Atlanta that she shares with Rolle, and their children, Jeffrey Jr., 8, and Jonia, 6. "It was, I think, the hardest time of my adult life."

Along with the deep depression came abrupt weight loss. It wasn't the most healthful way to drop the pounds some in the music industry said would hold her back, but the illnesses helped her realize that she had to focus on her personal health. She started eating right and exercising, walking her 2 1/2-acre property, and has lost about 100 pounds.

"Once I was able to pull myself up from that (depression), I made a choice that I had to take control of my life, every aspect of my life, from my career to my health and my weight," says Price, whose mother's cancer is in remission. "It really made me think about my own mortality and understand that nobody's here forever."

That revelation led to the recording of Mirror Mirror, which is dedicated to her mother-in-law.

"It's liberated. There's a sense and a feeling of freedom that I get when I listen to Mirror Mirror that I don't get when I listen to Soul of a Woman," Price says. "I'm more mine this time around."

And to understand how far she's come, you have to start with a child who grew up in the projects of Queens, N.Y., where her family often went hungry, and who never really knew her father, who died when she was 9 years old.

Most of all, you have to understand how being overweight added glass edges to the sharp, insulting taunts from neighborhood children. And you have to visualize a young Kelly Price going around her strict Pentecostal upbringing to secretly listen to the R&B and rap that would revolutionize music -- the music that would eventually set her free.

"I had to sneak to listen to R&B, and I wasn't very good at it in the beginning," says Price, whose grandfather was pastor and mother was the musical director of the church. "I had to learn that when I shut the radio off, I had to remember to turn it back to the gospel station."

And while "Little Mahalia Jackson"--her nickname when she began singing in the church as a 6-year-old with a big voice--didn't choose a career in gospel music, her faith-base has set the tone for her career and her life.

"When you come up in a strict Pentecostal home, everything from church rules every other aspect of your life," Price says. "I look back on it, and even though we didn't have a whole lot, the things that I learned as a child really are the foundation for the person who I am today."

Price understands now that there are few second chances, and has made it a priority to spend more time with her family, especially her children, who sing with Mom on "Lullaby," a sweet track on the latest CD.

"Being in this industry," says Price, who wants to have one more child, "if you're not careful, it will consume every waking moment of your life."

Hers is a from-the-projects-to-Platinum fairy tale every little girl with a hairbrush for a microphone dreams about.

Although Mirror Mirror borrows its title from Snow White, don't be mistaken: Hers is a Cinderella story.