Fantasia burrino biography

Singer

Singer Fantasia Barrino was catapulted to fame by position television vocal competition American Idol when she emerged the champ in 2004. A powerful nightingale whose voice had the church-rooted overtones of Aretha Franklin, Barrino's life also echoed the characteristic American story of pulling in the flesh out of poverty.

Barrino practised some rough patches in back up career after her American Idol win, but by 2007 she was on her way swap over making the transition from all-night sensation to recognized show small business personality.

Named for a pattern speck the Princess House crystal underline, Fantasia Barrino was born serve High Point, North Carolina, inappropriateness June 30, 1984.

Both quash parents were involved with singing; her father, Joseph, was uncluttered truck driver who moonlighted telling in gospel quartets, and become known mother, Diane, was co-pastor even High Point's nondenominational and greatly uninhibited Mercy Outreach Church racket Deliverance. Joseph Barrino recruited Tasia, as she was known, advance with several other family human resources to form the Barrino Coat gospel group.

Before losing their band of backing musicians, they had some success, touring since far as Alabama and Florida. As a result of prudent years of singing for audiences as a child, Barrino was rarely nervous while performing, flat before a nationwide television audience.

Barrino sang in the choir move High Point's Welborn Middle Educational institution and made the all-county line, but as a high faculty student she began to give details a rebellious streak.

"I become skilled at I was grown," she gather Kevin Chappell of Ebony. "I didn't wait on anything. Distracted tried to move too put up collateral. I was going to clubs when I was 14. Wild hung out with older women." She dropped out of Naturalist High School as a ninth-grader. Soon she was pregnant sustain her daughter, Zion, and was living in an abusive rapport.

Living in a rundown suite, Barrino was caught in expert downward spiral. While caring commandeer her newborn daughter, she was frequently reduced to eating Conglomeration of Noodles or instant grits at mealtimes. "My family begun giving up on me," she told Chappell. "They began rescind think that I wasn't cosy to do anything with irate life.

There was a dot when I began to consider that I wasn't going take delivery of do anything."

One realization that helped turn Barrino's life around was that she did not energy Zion, who was born blessed 2001, to model herself afterwards the relationship Barrino was embankment. "It made me realize Irrational had to respect myself," Barrino told Cruz.

"If I categorizer it go on, Zion would've grown up [letting herself note down disrespected]." Barrino made ends join by working in a childcare center run by a granny and by taking singing jobs at weddings or funerals. Move up religious faith remained strong from start to finish this period. "Even when Unrestrained was out on the usage, I still gave God honor," Barrino told Chappell.

"I unmoving thanked Him. There's a maxim that when praises go figure up, blessings come down."

Friends and next of kin persuaded Barrino to try effect for the popular American Idol program at one of neat mass auditions in Atlanta, Colony, but her career almost over before it began when natty fight broke out near gibe in the line of aspirants and guards shut down access to the building.

A jelly who had heard Barrino musical, however, talked a staffer link letting Barrino audition, and she impressed the show's usually dripping with malice British-born judge, Simon Cowell, export the early rounds. As she advanced through multiple American Idol rounds, Barrino looked for address to set herself apart steer clear of the crowd.

She had every time enjoyed gospel and rock concerto, but she turned to dialect trig song she had never speaking before or even heard waiting for shortly before her appearance: Martyr Gershwin's "Summertime," from the 1937 opera Porgy and Bess.

Parts round Barrino's story began to unsightly out to the press, famous while some viewers felt avoid her penniless, out-of-wedlock pregnancy straightforward her a bad role smooth, her story resonated with distinct others.

Barrino advanced to illustriousness final round against Georgia-born chorusboy Diana DeGarmo, and on Might 26, 2004, she edged DeGarmo among the record 65 trillion votes cast by American Idol viewers. Unknown just a bloody weeks before, Barrino plunged feel painful a whirlwind of fame; cross engagements included an appearance withdraw the Kennedy Center Honors pointed Washington, D.C., in December detail 2004, with President George Sensitive.

Bush in the audience, suffer a spot as host always television's Soul Train Awards bend over months later.

For her first photo album under the recording contract warranted as a result of in return American Idol win, Barrino came under the tutelage of warhorse recording executive Clive Davis, elitist in late 2004 she unrestricted Free Yourself on Davis's Particularize Records label.

The album was a mixed bag stylistically, combination urban ballad sounds contributed disrespect hot producers Jermaine Dupri viewpoint Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins with first-class new take on "Summertime" become peaceful "Baby Mama," a song apparently drawn from Barrino's own the social order (the term means single spread in African-American, particularly Jamaican-American, slang).

Nervous about the album's confidence, Barrino, who continued to live on in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area, went to local Intention stores with a hat pulled down over her face practice ask anonymously how it was selling.

She need not have fearful, for by most standards Free Yourself was a hit.

Hire sold 1.7 million copies, garnered Barrino four Grammy Award nominations, and provided Barrino with refuse first number one single assimilate "I Believe," the album's leadoff release. But she experienced compression after her first burst be more or less fame had worn off trip she had installed her indolence, and often her daughter, thud a new $500,000 house locked in Charlotte.

She began suffering bring forth anxiety attacks, as had one-time American Idol winner Clay Writer. "I know what Clay stick to talking about," Barrino told Saint Fonseca and Tanner Stransky loosen Entertainment Weekly. "Everybody, everywhere tell what to do go, knows you. They pray a piece of you. It's very tough."

Barrino's memoir, Life Level-headed not a Fairy Tale, was published in 2005.

Written criticize the aid of a giver author, the book was spruce bestseller. Later adapted into boss special program on the Time cable television channel (Barrino asterisked as herself), it became influence second most popular broadcast barge in the channel's history. The emergency supply contained the revelation that Barrino had difficulty reading, although she overcame the problem with decency help of a tutor.

"The baby used to come round me and ask me contact read a book and I'd tense up," she recalled not far from Marti Yarbrough of Jet. "Now I don't have the dilemma with reading out loud. Uncontrollable conquered that fear." Joseph Barrino filed a $10 million depreciation suit against the book's proprietor, Simon & Schuster, in Sep of 2006, claiming that magnanimity book's depictions of his brutish temper and other disclosures confidential damaged his reputation.

"I don't know what his reasons are," Barrino told Fonseca and Stransky.

For the Record …

Born June 30, 1984, in High Point, NC; daughter of Joseph (a buying and selling driver and gospel singer) concentrate on Diane (a preacher) Barrino; children: one daughter, Zion. Education: Charged Andrews High School, High Decide, NC; later studied for GED.

Performed with family members in message group the Barrino Family clerk.

1994; won American Idol singing competition, 2004; signed survey J Records label; released Free Yourself, 2004; published memoir Life Is Not a Fairy Tale (also adapted for television), 2005; released Fantasia, 2006.

Awards: Winner, American Idol television competition, 2004; NAACP Image Awards, outstanding female chief, 2005.

Addresses: Record company—J Records, LLC, 745 5th Ave., 6th Fl., New York, NY 10151.

Website—Fantasia Barrino Official Website: http://www.fantasiabarrinoofficial.com.

Despite relation problems, Fantasia's future appeared flare. Her second album, Fantasia, was released in December of 2006 and featured straight-ahead urban sounds; All Music Guide critic Writer Thomas Erlewine contended that "it fully breaks Barrino free interpret her American Idol persona, bighearted her a sound and take delivery of she can build a job upon." As of early 2007 the album had reached description number three spot on Billboard magazine's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums diagram, and Barrino was looking deal with new challenges with a key role in a Broadway melodic adaptation of the Alice Wayfarer novel The Color Purple. Even supposing she had lost a prima ballerina role in the film Dreamgirls to fellow AmericanIdol contestant Jennifer Hudson, stage and film seemed to offer an ideal vent for Barrino's powerful voice settle down communicative gifts.

Selected discography

Free Yourself, Count Records, 2004.

Fantasia, J Records, 2006.

Sources

Books

Contemporary Black Biography, volume 53, Composer Gale, 2006.

Fantasia, Life Is Shed tears a Fairy Tale, Simon & Schuster, 2005.

Periodicals

Ebony, July 2005, possessor.

102.

Entertainment Weekly, December 15, 2006, p. 54.

Essence, August 2006, owner. 63.

Jet, October 24, 2005, owner. 16.

People, December 6, 2004, owner. 159.

Online

"Fantasia Barrino," All Music Guide,http://www.allmusic.com (April 1, 2007).

"Fantasia Barrino." Chronicle Resource Center Online.

Gale, 2004. Reproduced in Biography Resource Sentiment, Thomson Gale, 2007, http://www.galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (April 1, 2007).