Pop group Danity Kane sizzles on tour & on top of the charts

Jet, July 7, 2008 by Melody K. Hoffman

Multiplatinum group Danity Kane is heating up the summer with a hot tour celebrating the success of their sophomore album Welcome To The Dollhouse, which debuted at No. 1 in the country.

Dawn Richard, D. Woods, Aubrey O'Day, Aundrea Fimbres and Shannon Bex are the first multicultural group nominated for a BET Award and are the most successful female multicultural pop group since The Spice Girls.

Following their 2006 RIAA platinum-certified, self-titled debut, Danity Kane has the distinction of being the first female group in Billboard chart history to have both their debut and sophomore albums enter the main album chart at No. 1.

"We reach every ethnicity, every age group, every demographic and I think that's the beautiful thing about our group," Richard tells JET. "Not only that, but we can relate to every different type of girl. Strong women to women who have been through different things."

Danity Kane, which was formed in 2006 on the MTV reality series Making The Band 3, executive produced by Sean "Diddy" Combs, will return for the show's new season, premiering in August.

Though the show boasts 55 million viewers a week, D. Woods says what drives Danity Kane's career is the music.

"We were never a TV group," insists D. Woods. "In our minds we were always serious artists when we came into the competition ... Everyone gets their break a different way."

The group admits it is difficult to meld five personalities, but they have learned to make it work. "We tried to come into this in the very beginning trying to be best friends and that didn't work," O'Day says. "We had to learn to really see each other as family and come back with the respect of what our business is and start to look at it as a formula. It took us an entire album cycle to do that."