Brown Sista

When India.Arie broke up with what she thought would be her lifetime love, she was saddened, angry, confused and hurt - and spent the next four years unleashing her emotions through song.

But those who pick up her latest album, Testimony, Vol. 1: Life & Relationship, won’t hear any of the bitterness she once harboured. Instead, in what has become India.Arie’s philosophy, she manages to find the positive, even in a devastating split. Instead of songs about a no-good man or falling into despair, India sings about the power of forgiveness, the appreciation of a past relationship and even learning to love being alone.
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As a teen, Fantasia Barrino seemed destined to become another statistic—a wayward youth succumbing to her circumstances, which included being a ninth-grade dropout, a functional illiterate, a victim of child molestation, and a mom at age 16. But instead, as the world looked on, Barrino became a superstar with first-name-only recognition. In 2004, on the finale night of American Idol , 65 million votes were cast, more than President Bush received in the federal election that year. Fantasia received more than half of those votes. Her straight-from-the-streets soul spawned platinum record sales, four Grammy nods, one Billboard Music Award and one NAACP award.

Despite her success, Barrino, who grew up in High Point, North Carolina, refuses to forget those early struggles. In fact, she’s hoping others can learn from her mistakes. “I want to use my story as a testimony,” she says. “I want to tell people you don’t have to be perfect to be what you want to be. You want to be a lawyer or a banker? Pick yourself up and go get it.” This month Lifetime Television premieres Life Is Not a Fairy Tale: The Fantasia Barrino Story, based on her gritty New York Times best-selling autobiography.
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Keyshia Cole graced the stage on the last day of the Essence Music Festival and brought the house down.Backed up by a 6 piece band and 2 backup singers who should have their own recording contracts, Keyshia ran through the entire catalog of her first album and even threw in a few oldies to boot.

The pics below are courtesy of Anthony Pierson.

Enjoy!

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Former SWV Singer Cheryl “Coko” Clemons
Hand Delivers ESSENCE A Sneak Peek at Her New Gospel Album

Thursday, June 8, 2006

ESSENCE: The songs you�ve played from the new album sound like contemporary gospel. Will you have anything traditional?

Cheryl �Coko� Clemons: Yes. I’m doing a song called �Hymns for the Soul,� and I have a duet with my mom. She actually wrote the song. She sings high like me. Well, I sing high like her.
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Jeffrey Wright has been described many ways: brilliant, underrated, an actor’s actor. But the description that seems most apt is scene-stealer. Whether he’s playing a Dominican drug kingpin in Shaft, the iconic civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., in Boycott, or commanding a Tony Award for his turn as an acerbic gay nurse in Angels in America: Perestroika, you can’t take your eyes off him. That is, until his 4-year-old son tromps into the room, merrily singing a tune. The little boy (Wright prefers to keep his kids’ names private) has already learned a thing or two about grabbing the spotlight. “Give me a little space so I can have this conversation,” says Wright, 40, gently shooing his son for the third time. “Parenthood is a never-ending story. That’s my best role right now.”
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Actress Meagan Good did a very classy spread for Essence Magazine and the pics can be seen below. For more Meagan just click her name in the above link to be taken to her gallery on BrownSista.net.