How pissed am I? Were I in NYC this very night I would be about to embark on a dream evening. Mr Kanye West live in concert would be just about enough, but then you go to the afterparty and whut? Keyshia Cole is live onstage? Oh man, you frikkin New Yorkers are lucky sonsabeatches! If anyone NYC-based is going, please let me know how it is - I hear big things about Cole live and would like to know if they're true.
Posted below is the RWD piece I did on Ms Cole...I'm not sure if this will be the album to blow her really big cos peoplea ren't really ready for her yet, it's her '411', but wait for the equivalent 'My Life' and you'll be seeing her everywhere.
Key To Success
With hot albums from Faith, Mariah and Amerie all competing for your cash, is there any spare for yet another R&B star? Boasting one of the best albums this year, you’d better start saving your cheddar for Keyshia Cole.
Very few artists boast beats by Kanye West, Alicia Keys and 112 on their debut disk. But then not every newcomer can sing and write a song like 22 year old Keyshia Cole; no wonder Jadakiss, Shyne et all were queuing up to work with the Cali crooner. ”I‘m not sure exactly why, but I think people respect me and what I’m doing,” says a modest Cole, live and direct from New York City where she’s promoting her too-hot-to-handle CD The Way It Is. “Alicia just rang me up one day wanting to work and Kanye, I’ve known for some time. He knows exactly what he wants when he comes into the studio, which is pretty impressive. He’s a cool dude.”
Name-dropping is no new thing to Cole, who had her first brush with stardom at 10 years old. Hailing from Oakland, California, Cole’s producer brother hooked her up with local-man-made-good MC Hammer before introducing her to the Death Row camp two years later. “I met ‘Pac, Suge and the whole camp in ’95, when I was 12 or 13,” she remembers. “Tupac just took to me, he would call me his little sister. I don’t know why, but he just saw something in me. He was always telling me I would be a star. I have some many great memories of him; he was so crazy and outspoken.”
Making music was not only a way of hanging out with hip hop stars; for Cole laying down lyrics was a way of escaping hard surroundings. “As a child my mom wasn’t there for me, and she still ain’t around. She know what I’m doing and she reached out, but I’m cool,” she says. “Where I’m from is the ghetto, definitely the ghetto. There’s not really a lot to do there with yourself, there’s no places to go, there’s no options,” she says of O-Town. “I took the music route because I wanted options and I wanted to do other things. I didn’t want to be stuck in that life.”
So she wrote and sang her way out of the hood. Signing a deal to A&M records two years ago, Keyshia is making her name thanks to hard-hitting tracks that offer an alternative on the standard soul slush. I Should Have Cheated is about turning the tables on your dirty-acting other half, while You’ve Changed is a reply to the Jigga slowie Song Cry. “Jay has heard that song and he wanted it for Beyoncé,” Keyshia reveals. “He was feelin’ that track like crazy. But I said no, it’s my song.”
It’s not hard to understand Hova’s love for Keyshia’s song-writing skills. On the realio, this is one of the best R&B albums RWD has heard all year. But don’t expect Cole to big herself up. “I could tell you all day that I’m the hottest out, but why? What does it mean,” she insists. “I’d like people to buy my album cos they’re feeling it or because their girl told them about it. I think people like me, but I don’t question too much why,” she decides. “I just do it.”
Keyshia Cole’s album is out now on A&M records
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