Music and Songwriting: Songwriting vs. Singing vs. Performing
7th grade I ended up moving back to Dallas, TX. Of course I joined the choir. My love for Amerie’s ♫All I Have♫ grew more and more every day to the point that I was looking at the credits like, “Who is responsible for this beautifully crafted music?” That CD made me start paying attention to the production of songs as well. Rich Harrison’s sound became something that I began to be familiar with. I wanted to write songs like that but I hadn’t experienced anything worthy. I had lost weight and had guys’ attention but I never was the reporter type. I’m not going to get with someone to have something to write about especially when I’m not making money off of it. Yes I had this crush that I used to write about but that wasn’t enough. Off topic: he is the only crush that I never confronted; I should have though…oh well. 2nd semester of 7th grade I ended up moving back to Pasadena, CA. I reunited back with my friends and gained a couple more. What made it the greatest thing was that we all were in choir together. If I wasn’t doing music, then I was dancing. Going to the Le Studio 3x a week taking Jazz, Flamenco and Hip-Hop influenced my music taste as well. I began paying attention to beat break downs, and learned about more genres. But it is only one singer that opened me up to something other than singing. Beyoncé showed me what performing/entertaining is. I had given up on trying being the best singer. It was not going to be possible; I didn’t and was never going to have the range of Mariah Carey and then runs of Christina Aguilera was so far-fetched for me. One thing I had was confidence, loved being on stage and I love acting/putting on a show for the crowd. I watched everything Beyoncé was on, I brought her DVDs, I taped her interviews, was front row at all her movies. It was freaking ridiculous! I didn’t want to be her, but I did want to be her best friend…so pitiful lol. Now-a-days I could care less about anyone that I don’t know personally. I had to learn how to separate the real person from the entertainer. As I digress, during the end of 7th grade at the yearly carnival I performed ♪Crazy In Love♪ by Beyoncé with two of my friends that had performed ♪Foolish♪ by Ashanti in 5th grade with me. I choreographed the whole thing. It was a mix of the ♪Crazy In Love♪ DVD dance movies with ♪Talk About Our Love♪ by Brandy. I had fun and the performance went well. Yeah my girls forgot some of the moves but who cared! 8th grade brought another realization for me. Marvin, my choir teacher brought in Jacques Apollo Bolton. I had remembered him for in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with Will went back to Philly and confronted his bully Omar. We’ll, he played Omar. We had to audition for him. If he liked us, he would invite us to a singing workshop with Patrice Rushan with Teena Marie as a guest. Teena’s daughter was in our choir so I knew she already had a spot. My good friend Alexia was the daughter of singer Aaron Hall, so automatically you knew she could blow and she had a spot. I ended up performing ♪If I Ain’t Got You♪ by Alicia Keys. I got in! I wasn’t so excited about singing, but more so about learning. There were a lot of amazing young singers at the workshop. I knew once again that I was mediocre as I performed ♪Have You Ever♪ by Brandy at the workshop. By then I had learned how to sing within my range so when they thought I was about to hit a super high soprano note, I had learned how to bring it down to just a high alto note. But one thing that I had over some of the best singers there, were my looks. I had begun to see the industry changing. The industry was starting to get sexed up and more clothes were coming off, and you couldn’t even count an ugly or fat person. I ended up leaving the workshop because I ended up moving to Palmdale, CA to this beautiful house, but it was soooo boring out there. Songwriting kept me company like no other. I fell into “Puppy Love” at 13. Boy, did I have so much to write about. He would treat me nice, then dirty, I became confused, he would disappear when I expressed how I felt, I would get angry…it was just a never ending cycle. I wrote, I wrote, I wrote. I guess you can say that that started my “relationship” styled songs. To this day I write the best relationship songs out of everything. I can tailor them any type of way: Sad, happy, angry, my fault, his fault, break-up, make-up, miss you, miss you and hate you, etc. A couple of weeks before my 14th birthday, I ended up moving back to Dallas. I no longer had interest in joining choir, because I could never stay at one school long enough to plant my feet.